How do I get out of the mentality of wanting to lose 5lb a week

Vortex88

1-4 lbs per week is the range. 4lbs for large man. 1lb for a small woman. Everyone else in between.

ziggy2006

My advice is to try to change your focus from what might be called the small picture, or the details, the temporary stage of losing weight. There are a lot of people who are great dieters. I am one of them. I have always been wonderful at eating healthily, incorporating more exercise, and losing weight. Of course, once I achieved my goal, I'd bounce right back up to where I'd started in a year or two. I did this over and over and over and over....

The last time I lost a significant amount of weight (80 pounds) it finally clicked for me. How do I want to live my life even if I never lost a pound? What is the healthiest way for me to eat foods that I enjoy? What kind of relationship do I want to have with food? How can I stay active doing activities I enjoy and actually want to do? What are the flaws in my thinking that are keeping me stuck in this cycle? How can I manage everything to set myself up for success?

For me, one of the many things I had to learn was to stop empowering my scale. I really, really wanted the scale to be a measure of how healthy my lifestyle was at that moment, and sadly, it can not do that on a daily basis. For instance, I might have a great week where my food and exercise choices were spot on and made me feel great. But I couldn't depend on those results showing up on the scale immediately. The number on the scale did not always reflect my reality, and I had to accept that and move on.

So, I make choices based on what I know about being healthy, and trust that the scale will reflect that in the long term (over weeks and months). And, yeah, my weight still bounces around in a 10 pound range or so. I am not surprised by it - I generally know why I am at the higher or lower end of that range (and it is almost always related to my activity level, which greatly influences my food choices). Recently, some health issues cropped up that made it impossible to participate in my regular exercise routine, which led to me acting a bit of a petulant brat regarding food choices, and I ended up seeing a rather unpleasant number on the scale. So I'm back to take off that extra weight and figure out how to adjust so I can stay in my comfort zone and silence my inner two year old.

TL;DR Stop giving your scale so much power over you. In the big picture, it doesn't matter whether or not you lose 2 pounds or 5 pounds or half of a pound this week. What matters is that you are on a trend to become healthier and be able to sustain that level of health for the rest of your life. If achieve your goal weight in September 2016 or May 2017 is an irrelevant detail - achieving and maintaining excellent health is what matters. Make choices that allow you to achieve your goals, and let the details (such as on what date that happens or how many pounds are lost each week) take care of themselves.

emmycantbemeeko

Vortex88 wrote: »

1-4 lbs per week is the range. 4lbs for large man. 1lb for a small woman. Everyone else in between.

2 lbs is the top of the range for steady loss for nearly everyone.

Extremely large people with lots and lots of weight to lose may see larger losses in the early days, as they deplete their water and glycogen and reduce their intake (which means less food and water in their stomachs registering on the scale) but 4 lbs is not a sustainable goal for nearly anyone and 1 lb is very aggressive for a small woman.

Half a pound or less is a very reasonable rate of loss for a small woman. Very reasonable. Achieving the 500-calorie-a-day deficit needed to lose a pound a week is *hard* when your BMR is ~1500 calories. That's not a sustainable rate for most people.

PAV8888

emmycantbemeeko wrote: »

but 4 lbs is not a sustainable goal for nearly anyone and 1 lb is very aggressive for a small woman.
Half a pound or less is a very reasonable rate of loss for a small woman. Very reasonable. Achieving the 500-calorie-a-day deficit needed to lose a pound a week is *hard* when your BMR is ~1500 calories. That's not a sustainable rate for most people.

Hallelujah!

LivingtheLeanDream

@ziggy2006 great post

WinoGelato

It's interesting with weight loss. In so many other aspects of our lives, we complain about how fast the time passes. "Can't believe Christmas is already here". "Can't believe the weekend is over already". "Wish my kids weren't growing up so fast". "Where does the time go!?"

In almost every other situation I can think of we wish we could slow time down, EXCEPT weight loss. OP with 60 lbs to lose it should realistically take you about a year, maybe a little longer. Even if it takes twice that long, wouldn't you rather slow down a little and not make yourself miserable with either radical calorie restriction that you can't maintain, or unrealistic expectations that make every pound you lose that doesn't add up to 5 lbs/week seem like it's not good enough?

Expecting to lose 5 lbs/week is unhealthy.
Expecting to lose 2 lbs/week is unrealistic.
Losing weight slowly will help you learn the habits you need to keep that weight that you're so desperate to lose, off forever.
Enjoy the process and celebrate the progress.

Orphia

WinoGelato wrote: »

It's interesting with weight loss. In so many other aspects of our lives, we complain about how fast the time passes. "Can't believe Christmas is already here". "Can't believe the weekend is over already". "Wish my kids weren't growing up so fast". "Where does the time go!?"

In almost every other situation I can think of we wish we could slow time down, EXCEPT weight loss. OP with 60 lbs to lose it should realistically take you about a year, maybe a little longer. Even if it takes twice that long, wouldn't you rather slow down a little and not make yourself miserable with either radical calorie restriction that you can't maintain, or unrealistic expectations that make every pound you lose that doesn't add up to 5 lbs/week seem like it's not good enough?

Expecting to lose 5 lbs/week is unhealthy.
Expecting to lose 2 lbs/week is unrealistic.
Losing weight slowly will help you learn the habits you need to keep that weight that you're so desperate to lose, off forever.
Enjoy the process and celebrate the progress.

So very true.