Question about weight loss

deboyd5004

My mom has been working with a nutritionist through the company she works for (a major health insurance provider). The nutritionist told her she should lose 10% of her body weight, then maintain for two months before she tried to lose more. I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has heard something like this. I have considered taking 1 month to maintain, 2 seems a lot, to see if that could help with my current plateau.
Thanks!
Diana

cajuntank

Sounds like good advise to me. Not saying a month break wouldn't be enough, but maybe there are factors/variables involving your mom's weightloss that the nutritionist suggested doing 8 weeks instead of 4.

Your body gets used to being/operating at a certain weight. If you lose weight, you need to periodically let the body settle at that new weight to get used to the "new you". This in essence, "re-sensitizes the body" to a new settling point which helps make going back in a deficit easier to lose. This is typically why you see dieting cycles last between 12-16 weeks, then a few weeks of maintenance (4-8 weeks is appropriate), then rinse and repeat if more weight loss is needed.

Lounmoun

deboyd5004 wrote: »

My mom has been working with a nutritionist through the company she works for (a major health insurance provider). The nutritionist told her she should lose 10% of her body weight, then maintain for two months before she tried to lose more. I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has heard something like this. I have considered taking 1 month to maintain, 2 seems a lot, to see if that could help with my current plateau.
Thanks!
Diana

How long has it been since you have lost weight? How much do you have to lose?
A plateau is when you haven't seen the scale go up or down for 3+ weeks. If that is the case then you are maintaining already.
Have you adjusted your calorie goal down as you have lost weight? If you haven't you might need to do that.
Check the accuracy of your logging. Weigh and measure everything and check that the entries you are using are accurate.
Are you logging exercise and eating exercise calories? Your calorie burn numbers may be off. Many people only eat a portion of exercise calories to compensate for that.

jemhh

I tend to agree that it is good advice. It is good to take diet breaks and I am a fan of longer breaks.

vingogly

I lost about 50 pounds, got tired and lazy and stopped logging food but continued to watch what I was eating and making better choices. Over about a year a few pounds crept back on, then last November I started logging again. I've lost about another 30 pounds, and am now 10-15 pounds from my goal.

What this experience taught me was that yes, I would be capable of hitting my final goal and keeping off the weight permanently -- but I might need to continue logging food for the rest of my life to keep it off permanently without having it creep back on again. Sort of practicing at maintenance to prove to myself I can do it. Anyone can lose weight, keeping it off permanently is a different matter.

Regarding plateaus: I pay no attention to them because I'm in this for the long haul. It's the permanent lifestyle change that's important, not the numbers on the scale.

koreangurl

You can but ask her if the person giving the advice is in shape herself? That's a good indication

deboyd5004

Thanks for all the replies. I started again at the end of January (28th I think) at around 245. About April 17th I got down to 216. I got on the scale 2 days ago and had lost .6 lbs.
I haven't been exercising as much the last 2 weeks because of standardized testing and tutoring after school (I'm a teacher). I've been counting calories, but not weighing food. I thought about picking up a food scale, but haven't yet. I'm sure I'm not really losing because of those two reasons. When I do exercise, if I burn a lot of calories (8 mile hikes), I usually eat a portion of my calories back. Usually not all.

itsbasschick

i had no luck losing weight without weighing good myself.

i don't know how you would know if you're eating back part or all of your exercise calories without weighing unless you're only eating single serving foods like a 6 oz cup of yogurt or a whole protein bar (btw, my quest bars are sometimes 10% or a bit more over their listed weight). every bread i've weight has slices that can vary up to 20% of the listed weight per serving.

btw, if one is trying to build a lifestyle and doesn't really know what to eat for maintaining their weight, seems like it would be easy to put the weight back on during the breaks between dieting.