Unrealistic expectations??
ReenieHJ
Posts: 9,724 Member
Aside from losing what I had gained during the holidays, I have stayed pretty much the same weight since Thanksgiving. Being 5'9" at 135-136 lbs. I guess that's a good weight but my brain still wants to get lower, like more between 130-132. Should I shut my brain down and consider that my scale is maybe trying to tell me to maintain where I'm at? Or should I decrease a small amount each day, such as 100 calories, just to see if I can keep moving down? I've started exercising a bit more and am eating closer to my calorie allotment than I used to also. Most days, due to exercise, my calories allowed end up being between 1400-1500 and I eat pretty much up to it.
I know the issue is I have to change my goals(now that I'm near where I had originally envisioned) somehow; that's the reason for increased and different exercise. But a part of me would still really like to lose another few lbs. And another part of me is afraid I'll get lazy about tracking and keeping to the healthy lifestyle.
Any advice? I respect all the wise insight given here and I know this question has been asked a lot of times in a lot of ways. But thank you!!
I know the issue is I have to change my goals(now that I'm near where I had originally envisioned) somehow; that's the reason for increased and different exercise. But a part of me would still really like to lose another few lbs. And another part of me is afraid I'll get lazy about tracking and keeping to the healthy lifestyle.
Any advice? I respect all the wise insight given here and I know this question has been asked a lot of times in a lot of ways. But thank you!!
3
Replies
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Hi Reenie - I’m not sure what your goal is and I don’t have any issue with people preferring to be lean, but 130 sounds pretty low to sustain at 5-9”. Maybe practice maintenance at your current range for 6 months and see how you feel, then make small tweaks to drop if you really think there would be a benefit to being 5# lighter. Sometimes our goal weights find us, and are not exactly what we had in our mind.21
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Hi Reenie - I’m not sure what your goal is and I don’t have any issue with people preferring to be lean, but 130 sounds pretty low to sustain at 5-9”. Maybe practice maintenance at your current range for 6 months and see how you feel, then make small tweaks to drop if you really think there would be a benefit to being 5# lighter. Sometimes our goal weights find us, and are not exactly what we had in our mind.
Thanks! That's what I was wondering too, if my goal weight had found me before I considered myself done with that part of it. It just seems easier to focus on losing another .5 lb instead of creating the next part to this journey. And as I said I'm afraid of getting lazy and losing self control.5 -
Sounds like you have been maintaining well, usually it is a range of 3-5lbs so don't be alarmed if you go a bit above since it can be really difficult to stay between 1-2lbs. I would keep on tracking and even if you get a bit lazy, you know exactly what to do to bring it in again.
Why do you feel like you want to get lower? Are you not happy with your body composition? Are you scared you are going to gain again and want that safe zone? You are already on the lower end for your height, so I would focus more on other goals at this point. Do you do any resistance training? That would be something that could help take your focus of your weight and will help you tighten up and focus on strength goals.
I know it can be hard to switch off the losing weight mindset and maintain, I am in that zone right now but I really want to build muscle and I know losing weight won't get me there. I am going to focus on killing it at the gym and having all the energy to get my strength and endurance up!11 -
Do you think you would be satisfied psychologically and emotionally as well as physically with a lower calorie intake? It would mean making more compromises about how much you can eat and how many indulgences you could include.4
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Thanks for the replies
I just started adding some resistance exercise to my treadmill routine; not really sure if I know what I'm doing yet but will keep trying. Plus planking and hula hoop(but dang, that actually bruises if I try to do too much at a time). Plus on the TM I'm increasing the incline as I go and a few minutes a week, to get ready for hiking when winter's over.
I really don't have a good answer for why I want to keep hitting a lower weight except yes, I feel it gives me a cushion in case I indulge and/or it's hard to go from the mindset of actually lose a lb. to getting more fit.
I have a hard time as it is, staying within my calorie allotment each day, not terrible, but find myself wanting/needing to add snacks at the end.
As far as indulgences, I'm the kind of person where temptation can get slippery awfully quick so try to avoid most of them. Christmas week was horrible. Example, I over baked just so *I* could eat treats but there comes a rude awakening when a treat becomes half a pan or pie.
So hard to recover from that.
Anyways.....thank you. 4 -
Thanks for the replies
I just started adding some resistance exercise to my treadmill routine; not really sure if I know what I'm doing yet but will keep trying. Plus planking and hula hoop(but dang, that actually bruises if I try to do too much at a time). Plus on the TM I'm increasing the incline as I go and a few minutes a week, to get ready for hiking when winter's over.
I really don't have a good answer for why I want to keep hitting a lower weight except yes, I feel it gives me a cushion in case I indulge and/or it's hard to go from the mindset of actually lose a lb. to getting more fit. I have a hard time as it is, staying within my calorie allotment each day, not terrible, but find myself wanting/needing to add snacks at the end.
As far as indulgences, I'm the kind of person where temptation can get slippery awfully quick so try to avoid most of them. Christmas week was horrible. Example, I over baked just so *I* could eat treats but there comes a rude awakening when a treat becomes half a pan or pie. So hard to recover from that.
Anyways.....thank you.
@ReenieHJ
You are not alone. I faced that same slippery slope Thanksgiving to Jan 8. Had to realize I’m a “Formally Obese Slim Person” not a “Never Obese Slim Person.” Big Difference. We have to really know & accept ourselves, and what our bodies need to be healthy.
The Half Size Me podcast is helpful.
The most important thing is to give it time. #NeverGiveUp
If you’re having to go over your daily calorie allotment on a regular basis, perhaps up your allotment & work to maintain for 1-3 months. Get that “locked in.”
Then reconsider whether you feel you can sustainably live on fewer calories.
My Best,
Maddie4 -
Very true ma'am...Hi Reenie - I’m not sure what your goal is and I don’t have any issue with people preferring to be lean, but 130 sounds pretty low to sustain at 5-9”. Maybe practice maintenance at your current range for 6 months and see how you feel, then make small tweaks to drop if you really think there would be a benefit to being 5# lighter. Sometimes our goal weights find us, and are not exactly what we had in our mind.MadisonMolly2017 wrote: »Thanks for the replies
I just started adding some resistance exercise to my treadmill routine; not really sure if I know what I'm doing yet but will keep trying. Plus planking and hula hoop(but dang, that actually bruises if I try to do too much at a time). Plus on the TM I'm increasing the incline as I go and a few minutes a week, to get ready for hiking when winter's over.
I really don't have a good answer for why I want to keep hitting a lower weight except yes, I feel it gives me a cushion in case I indulge and/or it's hard to go from the mindset of actually lose a lb. to getting more fit. I have a hard time as it is, staying within my calorie allotment each day, not terrible, but find myself wanting/needing to add snacks at the end.
As far as indulgences, I'm the kind of person where temptation can get slippery awfully quick so try to avoid most of them. Christmas week was horrible. Example, I over baked just so *I* could eat treats but there comes a rude awakening when a treat becomes half a pan or pie. So hard to recover from that.
Anyways.....thank you.
@ReenieHJ
You are not alone. I faced that same slippery slope Thanksgiving to Jan 8. Had to realize I’m a “Formally Obese Slim Person” not a “Never Obese Slim Person.” Big Difference. We have to really know & accept ourselves, and what our bodies need to be healthy.
The Half Size Me podcast is helpful.
The most important thing is to give it time. #NeverGiveUp
If you’re having to go over your daily calorie allotment on a regular basis, perhaps up your allotment & work to maintain for 1-3 months. Get that “locked in.”
Then reconsider whether you feel you can sustainably live on fewer calories.
My Best,
Maddie
This resonates hard. When you have people see you as "normal" , whatever that may be, and expect you to act like they do. It can make things awkward at times.12 -
-- recovery from over-indulging: just continue the next day with the previous plan as normal. Making it any more complicated or self-flagellating is fraught with issues.
-- losing weight just because it is what I'm used to / seems like a safe goal / without a clear reason that indicates why the loss would be a good thing / because it helps me not move on to the next phase.... NO!
Whether the weight finds you or you find the weight... the next phase is here! You will have to work yourself in it and decide which form your "vigilance" / "mental involvement" will take.
And yes, I think that anyone losing significant amount of weight myself included, better have an expectation of remaining "involved" for a very long time post weight loss.
Also @psychod787, I was at a buffet event last night at one of the Fairmont hotels I find it fascinating how different people "scrutinize" your eating when they've known you for a long time vs people who first met you after you had already lost the weight. People who have seen you lose the weight and keep it off for a while expect you to be eating nothing and are shocked when they see you eating more than them. People who had not known you but hear the story are thinking (guaranteed): well if you keep eating like this you will of course regain all the weight... another yo-yo waiting to happen! And of course I blame neither as I was definitely in an "eat all da foodz" mode...
Back to normal, on plan, eating today!13 -
Thanks for the replies
I just started adding some resistance exercise to my treadmill routine; not really sure if I know what I'm doing yet but will keep trying. Plus planking and hula hoop(but dang, that actually bruises if I try to do too much at a time). Plus on the TM I'm increasing the incline as I go and a few minutes a week, to get ready for hiking when winter's over.
I really don't have a good answer for why I want to keep hitting a lower weight except yes, I feel it gives me a cushion in case I indulge and/or it's hard to go from the mindset of actually lose a lb. to getting more fit. I have a hard time as it is, staying within my calorie allotment each day, not terrible, but find myself wanting/needing to add snacks at the end.
As far as indulgences, I'm the kind of person where temptation can get slippery awfully quick so try to avoid most of them. Christmas week was horrible. Example, I over baked just so *I* could eat treats but there comes a rude awakening when a treat becomes half a pan or pie. So hard to recover from that.
Anyways.....thank you.
If you find yourself wanting to add snacks at the end, have you experimented with different eating strategies to deal with that productively (or at least not unproductively
)?
I'm not clear whether you're saying you want snacks beyond your calorie goal, or not. Budgeting snack calories is one option. Another is to consider whether different meal timing, or different relative size of meals, or different macro composition of what you eat at different times, would make a difference in your personal night-snack cravings. (It does for me.)
You can also work at increasing your TDEE, either by increased exercise (if that's possible while maintaining happy life balance), increasing non-exercise activity, or by sloooooowwwwwly increasing muscle mass. (That last one's the long game, fer shure ).
You're already pretty light for your height, so if you'd like to look a little different, recomposition might make more sense (and contribute to the slow-lane TDEE increase idea ).
Usually, we suggest people set a maintenance range, so losing down to the bottom of that range is an OK thing to create some wiggle room for dialing in true maintenance calories (which could turn out to be a little higher than you think, if you turn out to be one of those folks who reacts to increased intake with a subtle NEAT increase). But just to keep losing, and losing, and losing . . . not a good health strategy. Really, really not.
Maybe new goals: Body composition, fitness, nutrition, something off in a different realm altogether where you can exploit your the new skills at accomplishing long-term goals that you've honed during weight loss (learn a new art/craft, play a musical instrument, study a foreign language, gourmet healthy-food cooking, gardening, etc.)?
Don't be afraid that you'll be lazy and lose self-control. Just don't be lazy or lose self-control. Minor slips, even a few pounds worth, are recoverable if you get right back on it. (You obviously know how to lose a few pounds, right? Just be firm that you'll get right back on that if you start staying persistently at/above the top of your maintenance range.) The longer you practice good habits, the more automatic and natural they'll become, too.
BTW, as an aside: I'm a bit of a skeptic on how truly different we are psychologically or physiologically from never-fat people, at least once we get through an adjustment period to our new normal. Two of my closest rowing buddies are in that "always healthy weight" category. It's emphatically not the case that they never think about how much they're eating, or what, and how that relates to their health and fitness goals. They adjust and monitor and moderate to maintain weight, just as I do, and it isn't always completely automatic or super easy for them. What they don't have is nostalgia about some self-indulgent past habits, and they have longer-practiced so better-honed-in non-food coping strategies for non-food issues (emotions, stress, etc.).
You can make this transition: Hang in there! :flowerforyou:9 -
I agree with a few of the posters above, the goal shouldn't be what the scale says but how you feel, how you see yourself, and your body composition. I know several people who weigh absolutely the same but some will have a bodyfat % of 25 + and the other at 14%... same weight VERY different look.3
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Thanks again, everybody.
I've re-entered some of my stats and am developing more of a routine that I'm comfortable as far as exercising goes. The most challenging part of my day seems to always come between 7-8 p.m. I usually have some calories leftover from the day that exercise has left me with, so I do have something. It's making sure I track every single little thing and not start going over that; I've noticed that can make me slip all too easily. I just need to tighten down the hatches with a couple of my habits to keep me accountable. AND I need to stop buying certain foods(fudgesicles)because they're just triggers for me. One a day, that's fine. But 6 a day, nope. Working on upping my protein too.
My biggest fear is seeing my scale creep back up and feeling all those old feelings once again. It truly does scare me; I never want to go back there.
One day closer to longer and warmer days, more outside time. 4 -
Years ago I lost a lot of weight. I was wearing a size 8, which I can't ever remember being this small. I got greedy and tried to lose more weight, so I could be a size 6. I started the rollercoaster of gaining and losing. I started a weight loss program this August (after I passed 200 on the scale) and I am determined this will be the last time. Part of the program is genetic testing. My physique rating is 3-solidly built, so I was never have a petite frame. I have come to accept this fact and have adjusted my expectations. A large part of my goal is to be comfortable with how I look and feel. Of course, I want to be healthy. But...my healthy and that takes a huge mindset change. I know I'm going to achieve my goal because I have not only made physical changes, but also mindset changes.
Good luck. Be consistent. You can do it.4 -
just add that 14-1500 calories sounds very low for a person of 5'9". Perhaps you need to up them a bit? I know I lose weight (albeit slowly) on around 1400 and I am only 5 foot and 105 pounds.1
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Pipsqueak1965 wrote: »just add that 14-1500 calories sounds very low for a person of 5'9". Perhaps you need to up them a bit? I know I lose weight (albeit slowly) on around 1400 and I am only 5 foot and 105 pounds.
But being 66 yo and sedentary most of the time, except housework, taking my 2 dogs outside, and the exercise which I add into my CICO logging, I'm thinking that makes a big difference in calorie needs? I've seemed to have settled in at 133.5 for a couple weeks now, which I'm very happy with and am not as tight around my cal. allotment as I was, so if I eat 1600 cal. one day I don't panic. But thankfully, I'm usually right around my mark. If my weight stays stable, I think I'll be right where I want to be. Thanks for your input everybody!!
I look at what others say about how many calories they're taking in and I gasp, how does a body maintain on 2000-3000 cal. a day, for ex.?? I feel cheated by merely allowed 1400-1500 cal. a day. Lol But then I don't have the energy to work an exercise routine where I use up that amount of calories either. 0 -
My base maintenance is around 1400. I am 63 and 5'5" tall. I walk 6 days a week (8,000 to 13,000 steps) but on those days I get another 100 or so calories for my steps.0
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Pipsqueak1965 wrote: »just add that 14-1500 calories sounds very low for a person of 5'9". Perhaps you need to up them a bit? I know I lose weight (albeit slowly) on around 1400 and I am only 5 foot and 105 pounds.
But being 66 yo and sedentary most of the time, except housework, taking my 2 dogs outside, and the exercise which I add into my CICO logging, I'm thinking that makes a big difference in calorie needs? I've seemed to have settled in at 133.5 for a couple weeks now, which I'm very happy with and am not as tight around my cal. allotment as I was, so if I eat 1600 cal. one day I don't panic. But thankfully, I'm usually right around my mark. If my weight stays stable, I think I'll be right where I want to be. Thanks for your input everybody!!
I look at what others say about how many calories they're taking in and I gasp, how does a body maintain on 2000-3000 cal. a day, for ex.?? I feel cheated by merely allowed 1400-1500 cal. a day. Lol But then I don't have the energy to work an exercise routine where I use up that amount of calories either.
Part of this is because you are at the very lowest end of a normal BMI for your height. The heavier you are, the more calories you burn existing and moving around. Part of this is male v. female...males tend to carry more muscle mass and burn more calories. Part of this is age...we do burn slightly less calories as we age. Part of this is activity...a more active person burns more calories (energy).
For example, I'm 5'10" 45 years old and at 180Lbs about 15% BF. I maintain on around 3,000 calories per day namely because I get in around 8K-10K steps per day and also do 5 to 6 or more hours of deliberate moderate to strenuous exercise per week. With a light active setting calculators give me a maintenance of around 2,400 calories. Same calculators give me right around 3,000 with 5 to 6 hours or more of moderate to strenuous exercise...which jives pretty close to my real world results.5 -
To kind of broaden the experience picture: At age 64, 5'5" and around sedentary (as far as I can tell**) outside of intentional exercise, with a weight in the mid-130s pounds, I maintain at a base (pre-exercise) calorie level of around 2000, possibly a bit more. (** Less than 5,000 steps most days.)
The standard TDEE calculators do estimate a lower calorie burn with higher age (but same body size, activity level, etc.) Keep in mind that these are spitting out the statistical average for broad populations of people of that description.
Much of the calorie intake "age penalty" is believed to be the decreased muscle mass that tends to occur with increasing age.
A TDEE calculator (Sailrabbit, which is multi-formula) says I should expect to maintain, at sedentary, at 1396-1498 calories daily. At the same size, at age 24, it would be 1636-1721 . . . a little over one serving of peanut butter's difference daily, maybe the peanut butter plus a slice of moderately calorie-efficient bread.
Suppose I fill in an estimated body fat percent (BF%), so that Sailrabbit can use formulas that utilize that data in addition to the age/size data. (I don't know my accurate BF%, but I'll use 25% for this example.)
With that added data, Sailrabbit now includes a range for 64-year-old me of 1635-1813 calories at sedentary; and for theoretical 24-year-old me, a new range of . . . 1635-1813 calories.
Food for thought. 2
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