Help! Nothing is working!!! :(

I have been trying to lose weight for about a year now and have found nothing is actually having any effect!

Originally I was just working on dieting and had little to no exercise really but in the last two months I've cut my calories to under 1000 a day and am exercising day on/day off at the gym doing about 50 mins of cardio (for which I raise my heart rate to around 160-181) and doing 100 reps on leg resistance machines (i.e. adductors and abductors set at about 25kg).

I'm a 21 year old girl and I'm 5'3 weighing about 117lbs. My diet is mainly vegetarian and quite healthy (I don't eat much junk food and am keen on cooking with pulses, grains and vegetables).

Over the last year I have had no real weight loss at all and in the last two months I have actually gained about 1/2 kg.

Please can someone tell me if I'm doing something wrong??? I literally don't know what else I can change to actually see results and its driving me crazy! I also want to say that I love how supportive everyone is on here and think its a real inspiration for people who are actually trying to make their lives healthier and themselves fitter!

Any help anyone could give me would be much appreciated!

First off, under 1000 calories a day, ESPECIALLY if you are exercising so much, is very unhealthy and your body has most likely gone into starvation mode. Your weight is perfect for your height and you could probably even gain a few pounds and still be at a healthy BMI. You should be eating a bare minimum of 1200 calories a day and the way you've been eating has probably put your body into starvation mode. The reason you are not seeing any results is because your body cannot handle the intense diet you're putting it through! Lighten up a little and appreciate your body because it sounds like it is perfect how it is!

you're at a perfectly healthy weight and starving yourself. your body is resisting your efforts by slowing down your metabolism to compensate for the increased expenditure and decreased calorie intake. you are doing yourself a disservice and the weight is likely going to cling to you for dear life. it would be better for you to simply accept your body where it naturally wants to be and eat a more balanced diet with the appropriate amount of calories.

at moderately active you burn about 1960 calories. That's almost double what you're eating now, so if you're maintaining your weight with an intake of 1000 calories then you have severely blunted your metabolism.

There's nothing left to lose. If you keep trying to lose more weight, it's going to be muscle and organ tissue, NOT FAT. Very unhealthy, which you say is the opposite of your goal.

If your goal is to be more "fit" as you say, then I would focus on gaining muscle (which will increase your weight, as it's more dense than fat). You'll gain a couple of pounds, but you'll be leaner. And in order to gain this muscle (which is really your only option at this point), you need to have excess calories. You can't build muscle on a deficit.

thanks for all of your advice! I can assure you that although I accept that my weight is at a good level for my height its more the state of muscle tone vs fat on my body that I'm worried about, not really weight. I realise my diet might sound extreme and I can understand the logic of possibly being in a starvation mode but when I count calories I tend to leave out drinks (whether it is tea and coffee with milk or fruit juices) which probably do boost  my calories up to 1200 and over. The issue is that I used to do a lot of ballet and built large muscles on my legs which was obviously good at the time. But now I've stopped the ballet (3 years ago) the muscle has all turned to fat and I can't seem to tone or shift it. This new diet and exercise is the last in a long line of attempts to tone it up/lose it.

I appreciate that you might feel you want to change certain areas of your body but I can assure you that nobody else notices or cares about what you might think are massive problem areas.  When you are at a healthy weight, dieting isn't going to help much with changing your shape.

If you want to tackle "problem areas" you are going to have to build some healthy muscle, and you can't do that in a calorie deficit.  So I would advise you to stop damaging your body, eat a lot more, and go to the CC fitness forum to learn of the wonders of doing weights and building muscle to change shape. You won't "bulk up" or develop freaky muscles, but build lean tissue, and lose the flab!

Good luck with being healthy,

Ax

Did you read this article about skinny thighs and health?

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/09/ 03/2052314.aspx

If you want to add muscle, you must add protein to your diet!  Don't starve yourself, which is close to what you're doing.  Being a vegetarian, this is harder to do than us meat-eaters, but you could always add eggs and nuts to your diet.  Good luck and be smart about it!  Your body can't add to your muscles what you don't/won't give to it to use.