Am I on the right track to lose 1 kilo per week?

tmakary

Hi there,

Just wanting some information so I can set some realistic weight loss goals (a bit pedantic about exact figures).
Currently my details are: 90.60 kilos, 1.65 metres tall, 28 years old, Female

I want to lose minimum 30 kilos in 8 months, which I think is perfectly doable if I aim to lose 1 kilo per week.

Below is my current plan:
Workout: 30 minutes x 5 times per week
(15 mins brisk walk on Treadmill, 10 mins Rowing and 50 reps of Crunches)
Drinking: only Water, Tea and Coffee
Sugar: only 2 x brown/natural sugar in my tea/coffee
Carbs: only 4-6 times a week
Meals: Proslim Shake for Breakfast (on the way to the gym)
Coffee and fruit (morning snack)
1st Small lunch around midday (usually salad and a form of protein)
2nd Small lunch around 2pm (similar to 1st) and another coffee
Small Dinner (usually rice and vegies) and eaten before 7pm
Late-night: Usually just have a piece of fruit or a cup of tea if I’m feeling peckish

What are your thoughts? Am I on the right track?

pebble4321

Sure, give this a try and see how you go. Be aware though, that if you are taking in more calories than you are burning, you won't lose weight. MFP provides a good structure to help you - log your meals (accurately) and your exercise (conservatively) and see how you are progressing after a few weeks, then make some changes if needed.

Be aware that you don't need quite so many rules:
- using brown sugar vs white makes no difference at all, except for taste.
- eating lots of small meals is fine if you enjoy it, but makes no difference vs eating a few big meals for losing weight.
- Stopping eating at 7pm is handy if it helps you control snacking behaviours at night that mean you consume too many calories, but otherwise won't impact your weight loss.
- Carbs seem to vary from person to person - some people do well on low carb (feel great, lose weight), others find it makes no difference at all to their weight loss whether they eat low or high carb.
- You can drink anything you like - within your calorie goal. You have to decide if a high calorie drink is worth it to you, as you then get less calories to "spend" on food. Some people prefer to just drop the calorific drinks and save those cals for food, others like the drinks so fit them in. It's your choice.
- Shakes are fine if you like the taste and the convenience, but they don't have magical weight loss properties.

In other words - keep it simple and find something that is sustainable for you:
Don't eat too much (or too little), move a bit more, change things up after a few weeks if you need to in order to see results.

Machka9

Maybe I missed it, but you don't mention how many calories MFP gave you to do this ... and how many you're eating.

mlinci

A kilo per week requires a massive 1000 calorie deficit a day, i.e. you will have to eat 1000 calories below your total calorie expenditure. That's not easy. In fact, it's really difficult. So-
- don't get too discouraged if your weight loss rate ends up slower, it's slower than that for most of us. It's not a sign of any kind of failure.
- remember, your calorie expenditure will go down as your body mass goes down. So it will become more and more difficult, and finally pretty much impossible, to maintain such a high deficit without dangerously starving yourself. After a while you'd be advised to switch to 0.5kg per week, and when you are close to your goal weight, even just 0.25kg per week. This is to ensure you are not starving yourself and that you are losing in the healthiest possible way.

FYI my stats were similar to yours when I started - I am 166cm tall (5 foot 5) and my starting weight was 84 kg over a year ago (Oct 15). I am now at just under 66kg, currently losing very slowly but very steadily. I never had a goal of reaching a particular weight by a particular time, I'm just taking it slowly.

Good luck!

jelleigh

One of the MFP members (sorry couldn't find their post to give them proper credit) developed this prediction calculator that I thought was pretty interesting. I'm a bit of a data junkie myself so I like things like this : http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

jelleigh

Oops! Sorry wrong link. That one is an energy expenditure calculator I like. THIS one is the prediction one http://www.weightloss-calculator.net

Francl27

Completely unnecessary to starve yourself IMO. I'm your height and I was 34 when I lost the weight (from 96 to 63) and never had to eat less than 1600 calories.

I'd be completely starving with your diet.

Machka9

BTW - I lost 1 kg/week during my first 15 weeks with MFP.

I entered my details into MFP and selected sedentary as my activity level. Then I chose to lose 0.5 kg/week.

MFP gave me 1250 calories to eat.

By the end of about the 4th week, MFP dropped my calories to 1200, so I manually upped them again to 1250. 50 cal isn't much, but it made the difference between having a small yogurt snack in the evenings or not, and I wanted my small yogurt snack.

In addition to those 1250 calories, I also exercised every day (walking and cycling usually), and ate about half of those exercise calories back. So I was often burning a minimum of 300 cal/day in exercise, which meant ...

1250 cal + 150 cal = 1400 cal/day ... which really isn't too bad.

Then on weekends, I exercised a lot more, which gave me the calories to do things like having a filling roast dinner, or pizza, or fish and chips, or something.