Hello!

VervainHelsdottir

I've been on MFP before but I never really needed to lose weight. I used to hover around 150 and said I'd never get above 165. Well I found one more dress that doesn't fit anymore and I'm 174-ish, so it's time to get serious before my weight actually becomes a serious problem.

I'm trying to lose 1.5lb per week. Yesterday was my first day but I'm feeling good about this. Not sure if I'm looking for friends or support or anything... Although an accountability partner would be good, I suppose.

6502programmer

First of all, good job on recognizing it before it becomes a tougher problem to fix!

With a planned loss of 39 pounds, 1.5 is "aggressive". Conventional wisdom is .5 pounds per week per 25 pounds you have to lose. You can push it beyond that, but there are limits. It revolves around your ability to generate the calorie deficit to support that rate of loss. You can do 1.5, but it will take a good bit of work and you won't be able to sustain that rate for long without increasing the work to keep it up. You'll see your calorie recommendation go down and (assuming you're using some sort of activity tracking) your exercise adjustment go down as well. As long as you know this and are prepared for it, that's fine. It's more of a problem when folks don't know it, and get frustrated that they can't keep losing at the same rate they were before and see it as a failure on their part, derailing their successes to that point.