Don't Set Yourself Up To Fail

Machka9

lemurcat12 wrote: »

I get 1200 with 1 lb too. Even when I started and had lots to lose it told me I'd lose 1.8 lb/week at 1200. (It was wrong, though -- I lost 2 lb/week at net 1250 for quite a while.)

What's helpful is to remember that that's pre exercise.

Yes!

Charabz69

Hi I have used MFP for a couple of years just as a tracker, I have always been able to eat what I want as I do a lot of exercise. I was recently on medication which basically wrecked my metabolism that and the fact that i am now 46 has meant that i am really struggling to lose weight (despite exercising 5 times a week, sometimes twice a day). I recently went to a Fitness assessment at my gym and i was advised that my calorie intake should be 1267 to re-adjust my metabollic rate. (I'm 5ft 3" & 133lbs). I manage quite well on 1267 until I hit the wknd! But like someone posted earlier, I still log the 'bad' stuff even though I don't want to!
I am starting to see a shift in the right direction weight wise which is encouraging and reading all your posts (and laughing cos i do a lot of them myself ie moving the scales onto a different bit of floor lol) has also been encouraging! My advice would be eat what you like, have that cake but log it all and try and get a bit of exercise into the mix :)

dragon_girl26

Machka9 wrote: »

fr33sia12 wrote: »

Francl27 wrote: »

Machka9 wrote: »

beautifulwarrior18 wrote: »

Well, for starters getting the body you want requires work. Keeping the body you have does not. It's human nature not to want to do extra work. Second, its easier to stay motivated when you see quick results. I know so many people that are sold on a fad diet because they lost 10 lbs in a week and then are pissed and lose interest because they don't lose that much weight the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th week not understanding that the first week they didn't actually lose 10 lbs they just rid their body of extra water.

What I can't figure out is the fad diets. The next person who adds me that's on a low carb diet I'm going to block. Yes, you should be counting your carbs, fats, and proteins but no only eating 20 carbs a day is not going to make you the poster child of optimal health. I mean com'on you can't even eat healthy fruits or veggies without consuming 20 carbs a day. And I can tell you that 100 grams of fat you're eating in that bacon while limiting yourself to 20 carbs of spinach a day isn't going to make you healthier than someone who eats a well balanced diet. Now obviously that balance is going to be different for everyone. For me, yes I tend to eat less carbs (not low carb) because I do very intense exercise sessions and want to limit bloating and inflammation and need protein and fats so that I can perform. Someone who doesn't do that may not need as much protein as I do. There is no way you should ever believe that a diet that tells you watermelon and apples are unhealthy is a good diet. Yes, they have sugar, but the benefit of all the micronutrients far outweigh the effect of the sugar. Dr. Atkins can go take his diet and and shove it for all the people he's gotten to follow that *kitten*. The same goes for the South Beach, Shakeology, every diet pill on the market, avocare, cleanses, etc.

I want everyone reading this to understand unless your doctor tells you otherwise you have the rest of your life to lose weight. That even if you lose weight at a rate of a half a pound a week at the end of the year you're going to be 26 lbs lighter than you were at the beginning of the year. That's awesome. Your body will love you for that. After two years you'll have lost over 50 lbs. Nothing wrong with that! You have the rest of your life. Don't give up because it doesn't happen tomorrow.

I agree with just about everything you said here ... except ...

Yes, you do have the rest of your life to lose weight, but what if you want to start living your life before the end of your life?

When I hit my peak weight (in the middle of the Overweight BMI category for me), I struggled to do the things I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to cycle to the top of Mt Wellington. I wanted to be able to cycle ultra-distances again. I wanted to be able to walk up the hill from the waterfront to work without looking and sounding like I was going to die halfway up. I used to be extremely fit and active, and I wanted that again ... and I didn't want to spend the rest of my life getting there. I'm not getting any younger here!

And that was one of the reasons I chose to lose weight at a slightly brisker pace (1 kg/week). I was sick of being tired, and slow, and unable to do the things I had been doing just a few years before.



_______________________

And additional comment in general ... when I started losing weight I didn't approach it that I wanted to be a certain weight by a certain date. I knew we were planning to travel approx. 16 weeks after I started with MFP and I figured I would give it my best effort for those 16 weeks and wherever I ended up, that's where I would end up. I thought maybe I might lose 2 kg or 4 kg or if I were really fortunate about 8 kg. But whatever ... I would at least have lost some and that's better than none.

It wasn't until I was 8 weeks in and had lost 8 kg that I realised that maybe I could lose a whole lot more than anticipated.

Well, yes and no. For a lot of people, losing too fast won't help them one bit with the stuff you mentioned, because they'll lose too much muscle mass and still won't be able to cycle to the top of the mountain... except it will take even longer to build that muscle back than it would have taken to lose the weight more slowly while retaining it in the first place.

Totally agree about not getting younger but still, it took me a year to lose 75 pounds while never picking the '2 pounds a week' setting, so it's not like it's necessarily very slow either.

Will you lose muscle mass if you exercise while losing 2lb a week? I go walking most days and have started taking the steps up to the 18th floor of my flats I live in. Edited: not all at once I might add, I have a rest half way up Also doing a 20min exercise video on Youtube.

No ... I increased my strength while losing 2 lbs per week. While losing 2 lbs per week, every single day I exercised ... walking, climbing stairs, cycling, lifting light weights, hiking, etc.

I started the 2 lb/week loss toward the end of February 2015 ... 16 weeks later I flew to Canada and about a week later my husband and I cycled a comfortable century (100 miles). It was comfortable because I had built up the strength and endurance to do it over the previous 16-ish weeks.

About a week later, my husband, cousin and I did a several-hour hike to the top of a mountain. It was work, but I felt really good.




If I had lost a whole bunch of muscle mass ... I doubt I would have had the strength to do those things (plus a whole lot of other cycling and walking).

That said, if I were bodybuilding again (as I did many years ago) I wouldn't want to be in a big deficit.

First off, congratulations on such an amazing accomplishment! That's so awesome, and what an experience, too!

When I started my weight loss plan several years ago, I was class II obese. At that time I was losing 2 lbs/wk, though I've since switched to the 1 lb/wk setting. Most of my exercise routine looked pretty similar to yours (walking, cycling, light weights, etc..) I've even started jogging here lately, which as a former obese girl, is something I never dreamed was possible. I do 25 mile cycling events regularly. My endurance is better than ever.
Having said that, now that I'm closer to my goal (I'm barely in the Overweight category for my height now) it's very obvious to me that by doing mostly all cardio, while my endurance is good, I'm not particularly muscular. I used to have a lot more. I know it because I see it every time I look in the mirror now...where I used to have some muscle just looks like flab now. It makes me sad because I know I should have been doing strength training all along to preserve it, but I didn't.
I guess that's why I like to encourage strength training...it's something I wish I had done/ listened to. It's a thing, unfortunately.

megomerrett

I'm only 5'1" and over 11 stone. My husband is taller and twice my weight - he looses weight much more quickly than I ever could so we prefer to look at the percentage of overall weight as a more realistic marker of how we're doing. A stone off me makes a dress size of difference but on him it's barely noticeable.

godlikepoetyes

NadiaMayl wrote: »

Like most of us, I've done the roller coaster weight loss a few times. The basic rule is always the one which has worked for me, burn more calories than you consume, log everything and log it honestly. In my many attempts, I've quit early, I've injured myself, I've driven myself nuts with silly fads, I've made myself depressed and it has not worked... But in this recent round of weight loss I'm in, I've come to -very consciously and shockingly- discovered that some of us -ME- sometimes fall into a bizarre mental game/block/pathology/lie/self-sabotage (don't know exactly how to classify it). And it's the dumbest, simplest, probably most pathetic, but it happens. At least to me, am I the only one? After a few weeks of logging accurately (weighing most foods and complimenting with cups and spoon measuring tools), I start looking for the foods listed which contain the least calories. Example, if I eat a beef Pho at a Vietnamese restaurant, and I really have no clue how it was made, I look for it on MFP and find the one which lists least calories, so I cheat. Because I will log the 400 calorie bowl of soup, while it could very easily be 600 calories.

Ha! I've caught myself doing this. And I know it's only cheating myself, but it becomes a psychological game.
So besides all the fear people have with losing weight, some ignorance, some stubbornness, some societal (magazines, tv, fads) retraining, some of us also end up falling into a psychological trap!!

Go read this. I talk about my mind-games and everything--

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10373426/how-making-choices-has-helped-me-lose-over-80-pounds#latest

emmadonaldson95

Honestly for me I'm struggling to hit normal calories atm because i'm so busy revising and just not hungry. However I'm not that sorry because i know some people here are really looking for a life change but that wasnt what i wanted or needed i just wanted to ditch a few lb in the weeks before my holiday. Decided to use mfp because it makes logging and counting easy not so much for the calorie guidance etc. That said I'm at stupidly low calories but for now i feel great so can't complain yet.

becca1380461

godlikepoetyes wrote: »

It is true that the setup is not perfect, but from the posts I read, so many people are on 1,200 calories a day and they say that THEY set them that way. There is no way that a 250 lb woman would be set at 1,200 a day. Obviously people are either fooling with the numbers, or they are setting a ridiculous deficient on custom goals.

And yes, MFP should suggest that people just log their calories for a week so they can see just how much they are eating, but I doubt that would work very well. But I was very honest and soon realized that it was no big thing for me to eat over 2,000 in one sitting. I did this by logging a huge meal that I ate while on MFP--I was honest and logged everything event though I didn't want to. Perhaps people cheat more on logging than they can admit to themselves. I've read so much about weight loss and people have some really wacky ideas about food.

I started at 244 5'5'' and sedentary and it gave me 1200/day for a 2lb a week goal. Since then I started waiting tables (I walk 22-25k steps per shift). I changed my activity level and MFP went up to 1450/day. As I've lost weight (down 40lb!!) it's reduced my calories for an active life style at 204 to 1280/day. I've lost on average 2.lb per week...

I didn't find 1200 unreasonable and now at 1280 I don't find that unreasonable either. My first step was adding more vegetables and more exercise. I eat a HUGE salad after a work out and drink about 4 glasses of water. That fills me up! I haven't cut any macros from my diet...mostly just changed portions.

LivingtheLeanDream

Good post OP. Totally agree, my plan was always to lose weight eating as much as possible

For me at 5ft 2 I lost 1/2lb per week eating 1600-1800 calories. Took me a year to get to goal in 2012-13 but never at any stage felt I was on a *shock horror* diet! We all know they don't work as they are inclined to have an end date. (And for me 20 yrs of yoyo dieting!)

Been maintaining my goal range since 2013

I'm a daily weigher here, my weigh in day used to be a Monday well whaddya know, Fri and sat are actually my lightest days each week. On a Monday I'm usually up 2lbs of water weight each week - that still happens even at maintenance but it's only noise not real gain - knowledge is power

Rachel0778

I love this post! At 5'5 and 26 years old and at the top of my healthy BMI range I lose 1/2lb a week at 2000 calories a day (I'm also pretty active). I drove myself crazy my first attempts to lose weight because I was trying to eat 1400 calories a day and was starvingly hungry all the time. With the lower deficit it's so livable I don't have to feel restricted or unreasonably hungry. I wish more people realized that they don't have to torture themselves to lose weight.