Effort v loss=why not more?
marler_ann
Posts: 4 Member
I lost 4.5 lbs my first week. I expected more. I was under calorie amount everyday-a few days less than 100 but the others were more than 200. I’m recuperating from a hip procedure, so there was no exercise. On most days, I exceeded eight 8 oz glasses of water. I’m a female, 56 yo and about 100 lbs overweight.
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Replies
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4.5 lbs is a great loss ..weight loss in not linear....you will have great losses and no weight loss on some weeks ....you didn't gain weight over night and it will not come off over night...be patient....Congrats on your 4.5 weight loss
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Reality check time. You'll have a much better time with this if you manage your expectations.
Some things to keep in mind:
- 1lbs-2lbs per week is a reasonable expected rate of loss. 4.5lbs is twice this, so hardly a disappointing result and almost certainly not a result that you can expect to maintain week after week.
- 1lbs of fat is approx 3500cal so assuming you undershot your calorie target by 100-200 calories per day this would net you an additional 1/3rd of a pound loss over the course of the week. Be careful not to deprive yourself and under eat for such a minimal return. Deprivation and under eating can put you at the risk of 'falling off the wagon' and undoing all the good work.
- Many people (myself included) experience a larger loss during the first week. This is usually attributed in large part to a drop in water weight since dropping 4.5lbs of body fat would require a calorie deficit of 15,750 calories over the course of the week or a daily deficit of 2250cals. While this can be exciting to see such a large number it's important to keep in mind that water weight fluctuates and this 'whoosh' can be followed by a rebound that can mask losses in the next few weeks. Be prepared for that possibility, don't get discouraged and stay the course.
Please take the above comments in the constructive manner they were intended. It's vital to be realistic about this process to avoid getting discouraged by unrealistic expectations.
G'luck41 -
Good advice ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️2
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Yep, what Danp said.2
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Reality check time. You'll have a much better time with this if you manage your expectations.
Some things to keep in mind:
- 1lbs-2lbs per week is a reasonable expected rate of loss. 4.5lbs is twice this, so hardly a disappointing result and almost certainly not a result that you can expect to maintain week after week.
- 1lbs of fat is approx 3500cal so assuming you undershot your calorie target by 100-200 calories per day this would net you an additional 1/3rd of a pound loss over the course of the week. Be careful not to deprive yourself and under eat for such a minimal return. Deprivation and under eating can put you at the risk of 'falling off the wagon' and undoing all the good work.
- Many people (myself included) experience a larger loss during the first week. This is usually attributed in large part to a drop in water weight since dropping 4.5lbs of body fat would require a calorie deficit of 15,750 calories over the course of the week or a daily deficit of 2250cals. While this can be exciting to see such a large number it's important to keep in mind that water weight fluctuates and this 'whoosh' can be followed by a rebound that can mask losses in the next few weeks. Be prepared for that possibility, don't get discouraged and stay the course.
Please take the above comments in the constructive manner they were intended. It's vital to be realistic about this process to avoid getting discouraged by unrealistic expectations.
G'luck
Yes, this!1 -
Another supporter of DanP's post, with this additional comment:
It's not a good plan to be trying to lose weight rapidly, and maybe not even to try to lose weight at all, while in the first weeks of recovering from a surgical procedure. When doing that, you're asking your body to repair/heal but giving it fewer building materials to do that with. This can be even more an issue when we aren't age 20 anymore. (I'm 64 BTW, so I'm not considering you "old"
).
Not realizing this, I kept losing weight after a minimally-invasive gallbladder removal, and eventually became weak and fatigued between the combination of healing and low calories. Fortunately, my body put a higher priority on healing, so that was all that happened (that I know of), and I healed OK: I figure I got lucky.
Please be careful! :flowerforyou:19 -
I will echo @AnnPT77 comment who echoed @Danp.
Your daily energy expenditure goes up when you are trying to heal. I am not totally aware of how it all works specifically but a smarter MFPer than me on this subject, @magnusthenerd, said that it can be as much as a 20 percent increase. I believe I got that number right.
While I normally have my hunger fairly well controlled I recently went through a recovery period and I was much hungrier than normal. I fed that hunger within reason. I was trying to eat at a little over my maintenance. The surgeon remarked recently that I healed faster than normal and he attributed, in part, to my high protein intake. High in this case means comparatively high to what he sees or knows about from his other patients not some insanely high level (1-ish gram per pound of top goal range weight).
The type of surgery is not important and I am not able to comment about the speed of recovery because I know nothing about it. It makes sense that getting enough protein and calories would help. I was motivated to take any reasonable action to make recovery successful and get it over with so I could get back to my health and fitness goals.
If you are wondering why you may not have gotten any nutritional after care instructions it would not be that surprising. That is often overlooked.
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marler_ann wrote: »I lost 4.5 lbs my first week. I expected more. I was under calorie amount everyday-a few days less than 100 but the others were more than 200. I’m recuperating from a hip procedure, so there was no exercise. On most days, I exceeded eight 8 oz glasses of water. I’m a female, 56 yo and about 100 lbs overweight.
Be consistent, be patient and most of all be kind to yourself. The results will come...2 -
About that. The healing factor to calorie expenditure is usually supposed to be a 10 to 30% increase on your calorie needs.I will echo @AnnPT77 comment who echoed @Danp.
Your daily energy expenditure goes up when you are trying to heal. I am not totally aware of how it all works specifically but a smarter MFPer than me on this subject, @magnusthenerd, said that it can be as much as a 20 percent increase. I believe I got that number right.
While I normally have my hunger fairly well controlled I recently went through a recovery period and I was much hungrier than normal. I fed that hunger within reason. I was trying to eat at a little over my maintenance. The surgeon remarked recently that I healed faster than normal and he attributed, in part, to my high protein intake. High in this case means comparatively high to what he sees or knows about from his other patients not some insanely high level (1-ish gram per pound of top goal range weight).
The type of surgery is not important and I am not able to comment about the speed of recovery because I know nothing about it. It makes sense that getting enough protein and calories would help. I was motivated to take any reasonable action to make recovery successful and get it over with so I could get back to my health and fitness goals.
If you are wondering why you may not have gotten any nutritional after care instructions it would not be that surprising. That is often overlooked.
If you are recovering from surgery or other serious injury, it usually isn't a good idea to be in a deficit, but I'd assume the medical personnel associated with it are okay with you losing weight during recovery?6 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »
About that. The healing factor to calorie expenditure is usually supposed to be a 10 to 30% increase on your calorie needs.I will echo @AnnPT77 comment who echoed @Danp.
Your daily energy expenditure goes up when you are trying to heal. I am not totally aware of how it all works specifically but a smarter MFPer than me on this subject, @magnusthenerd, said that it can be as much as a 20 percent increase. I believe I got that number right.
While I normally have my hunger fairly well controlled I recently went through a recovery period and I was much hungrier than normal. I fed that hunger within reason. I was trying to eat at a little over my maintenance. The surgeon remarked recently that I healed faster than normal and he attributed, in part, to my high protein intake. High in this case means comparatively high to what he sees or knows about from his other patients not some insanely high level (1-ish gram per pound of top goal range weight).
The type of surgery is not important and I am not able to comment about the speed of recovery because I know nothing about it. It makes sense that getting enough protein and calories would help. I was motivated to take any reasonable action to make recovery successful and get it over with so I could get back to my health and fitness goals.
If you are wondering why you may not have gotten any nutritional after care instructions it would not be that surprising. That is often overlooked.
If you are recovering from surgery or other serious injury, it usually isn't a good idea to be in a deficit, but I'd assume the medical personnel associated with it are okay with you losing weight during recovery?
I think unless you have a procedure that would normally be linked to weight loss it is probably not common for medical personnel to worry about their patients in a calorie deficit. If asked they probably would lack the experience and training to know whether or not it was okay and would always assume it is a good idea to lose weight if it is needed.
When I asked my surgeon how much longer I should eat at maintenance his response was that he didn't know and that I seemed to know more about the subject so I should use my own judgment.2 -
I am new to this so if I am doing it wrong, please advise. I lost 6 1/2 lbs the first two weeks and was estatic then the next two I maintained with no loss. The next week I started exercising and kept my food intake under my goal amount and I have gained 2 1/2 lbs back. Of course, this is very discouraging. Is it normal or should I look at something else that I am doing incorrectly. Thanks.3
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fsutphin7731 wrote: »I am new to this so if I am doing it wrong, please advise. I lost 6 1/2 lbs the first two weeks and was estatic then the next two I maintained with no loss. The next week I started exercising and kept my food intake under my goal amount and I have gained 2 1/2 lbs back. Of course, this is very discouraging. Is it normal or should I look at something else that I am doing incorrectly. Thanks.
It is hard to know because you only have 5 weeks of data. That seems like a long time but in this instance it really isn't.
It is common to have a big initial drop of weight. This is largely water weight loss. Water weight will always come back at least partially. When it does it can mask fat loss on the bathroom scale.
New exercise will often result in additional water retention for a time while your body deals with inflammation and muscle repair.
Here is an article to read about scale fluctuations:
https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations/
The important thing to do when waiting for the scale to finally give you good news again is to really work hard to reach a good level of food logging accuracy. If you can verify you are in a calorie deficit you will always know you are continuing to lose fat weight even when it does not show up on the scale for a period of time. I strongly suggest getting a food scale to improve accuracy and always cross check new-to-you database selections against the label or USDA site.6 -
What Dan said. And confirming the "healing" calories too
Someone else asked about scale ups and downs in the beginning.
Just to confirm what Novus said, that they are quite probably normal.
First of all you have to deal with time of the month issues if you're female.
Second we don't really know if the initial drop was as high because one or two weigh ins don't establish an actual trend. So if caught exactly right the initial drop may have been higher or lower. Usual recommendation mental aspects permitting would be to weight daily at same time and plug numbers into weight trend app or average using spreadsheet or some such to minimize daily variation. Once a week leaves you more vulnerable to either an unexpected low or high until you can establish a weight trend with enough observations.
Third, initial drops often contain water weight drops and fat loss continues and is masked in subsequent weeks.
And of course fourth new exercise often results in water retention which actually sometimes ticks around for a while.
So yes... figuring out rate of loss is tricky unless insanely large deficits are applied and this issue by itself is responsible for a goodly percentage of diet failures as far as I can tell!2 -
The first few weeks are when you're most likely to quit - remember it's a long game! It's like anything hard. If you want to reach the end of the book, you have to start with the first page.4
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magnusthenerd wrote: »
About that. The healing factor to calorie expenditure is usually supposed to be a 10 to 30% increase on your calorie needs.I will echo @AnnPT77 comment who echoed @Danp.
Your daily energy expenditure goes up when you are trying to heal. I am not totally aware of how it all works specifically but a smarter MFPer than me on this subject, @magnusthenerd, said that it can be as much as a 20 percent increase. I believe I got that number right.
While I normally have my hunger fairly well controlled I recently went through a recovery period and I was much hungrier than normal. I fed that hunger within reason. I was trying to eat at a little over my maintenance. The surgeon remarked recently that I healed faster than normal and he attributed, in part, to my high protein intake. High in this case means comparatively high to what he sees or knows about from his other patients not some insanely high level (1-ish gram per pound of top goal range weight).
The type of surgery is not important and I am not able to comment about the speed of recovery because I know nothing about it. It makes sense that getting enough protein and calories would help. I was motivated to take any reasonable action to make recovery successful and get it over with so I could get back to my health and fitness goals.
If you are wondering why you may not have gotten any nutritional after care instructions it would not be that surprising. That is often overlooked.
If you are recovering from surgery or other serious injury, it usually isn't a good idea to be in a deficit, but I'd assume the medical personnel associated with it are okay with you losing weight during recovery?
I think unless you have a procedure that would normally be linked to weight loss it is probably not common for medical personnel to worry about their patients in a calorie deficit. If asked they probably would lack the experience and training to know whether or not it was okay and would always assume it is a good idea to lose weight if it is needed.
When I asked my surgeon how much longer I should eat at maintenance his response was that he didn't know and that I seemed to know more about the subject so I should use my own judgment.
That's probably true, yet kind of disturbing to consider that a surgeon isn't like to consider or possibly not even know the impact of nutrition on recovery from the procedure they're doing.4 -
fsutphin7731 wrote: »I am new to this so if I am doing it wrong, please advise. I lost 6 1/2 lbs the first two weeks and was estatic then the next two I maintained with no loss. The next week I started exercising and kept my food intake under my goal amount and I have gained 2 1/2 lbs back. Of course, this is very discouraging. Is it normal or should I look at something else that I am
Some of what you lost the first week was fat loss. Some was water weight or you had less food in your intestines/waste that day. So you are seeing some of what wasn’t actual fat loss fluctuate up and down. Also I never weigh myself before my period. Ever.0
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