Slow weight loss stories

pink_mint

I'm hoping for a bit of encouragement and perspective. Have you lost weight slowly?

My weight loss is roughly 1/2 lb per week. I thought that being 55 lbs above the healthy weight range was enough to warrant faster weight loss but it's really slow going. Currently I've clocked in between 10-12 lbs (scale fluctuations) lost in 3 months.

I have the largest calorie deficit I can stand without getting emotionally unstable... Being hungry all the time does that to me. Trying to get as much protein as possible. Also carbs, fat, veg etc.

I'm trying not to get discouraged but I do sometimes.

SuzySunshine99

It look me a year and a half to lose 40 pounds.

Some weeks I lost, other weeks I didn't, but as long as I felt there was SOME overall progress, I was happy.
I did not want to make myself miserable, and wanted to learn habits that would help me keep the weight off.
Honestly, my deficit was so small, that when I reached my goal weight, there was not that much difference to switch to maintenance...just a few hundred more calories. I've been able to maintain my weight loss for 4 years now.

Hang in there, you are making great progress, so try not to get too discouraged. If you torture yourself, you're more likely to give up on it or fall back into old eating habits. Good luck!

RelCanonical

I've lost 70 pounds in about two years, and most of that was in the first year. I think a record month for loss for me was like 6 pounds, and most months are 1-2 pounds. My biggest thing was to make the habits the goal, rather than the weight loss, and also to make sure I had goals outside of weight loss (like working on my house, writing, etc) so that weight loss was not the focus of my life.

BuddhaBunnyFTW

15 lbs over 5 years and then 30 lbs over 1 year. Not only do you train yourself better habits but you also train yourself that eating pizza, french fries, and ice cream occasionally don't blow your weight back up. I find that I have natural portion control now and I just don't eat as much as I used too. I've retrained my taste buds to enjoy less salt, less sugar, less fat and enjoy the natural flavors of unprocessed foods.

Strudders67

It took me about a year to lose 7kg (about 16lbs). Like SuzySunshine, my deficit was so small that when I switched to maintenance, earlier this year, I gained 140 calories a day.

How are you tracking your intake? Are you weighing everything you eat and measuring every liquid? Your diary in MFP doesn't show any entries. If you're not losing as fast as you think you should be with your current calories, it's possible that you're not tracking accurately.

cmentis182

Strudders67 wrote: »

It took me about a year to lose 7kg (about 16lbs). Like SuzySunshine, my deficit was so small that when I switched to maintenance, earlier this year, I gained 140 calories a day.

How are you tracking your intake? Are you weighing everything you eat and measuring every liquid? Your diary in MFP doesn't show any entries. If you're not losing as fast as you think you should be with your current calories, it's possible that you're not tracking accurately.

I am trying to lose exactly that amount 16 pounds/7kgs by the end of this year. Meaning, in six and a half months. Reading your comment makes me think I will probably do it slower to build sustainable habits. That's much better for me, building lifestyle/lifelong changes. I know it will be easier for me to stick to it then.

pink_mint

About my diary, I actually hand track my calories on paper. I'm old school and low budget. My phone is cheap and can't handle many apps, so I don't have the MFP app and don't track that way. I just check in here for the forums in my web browser. 🙂

cupcakesandproteinshakes

I’m losing at a maximum of .4 of a pound a week. I can’t deal with any bigger deficit.

cmriverside

Are you getting any exercise? Exercise helps with anxiety and also allows you to eat a little more while still losing.

I don't do well on deficits either, the last 15 pounds I lost took me nine months because I had to keep eating over my goal, even with exercise.

Keep going. You'll get there!

AnnPT77

I have been lately. My original loss from obese was quicker, but I decided to lose a few vanity pounds in maintenance. My 7-day weight trend is down from a peak of 138.4 in mid-October 2019, to 129.4 now, so about 9 pounds in 8 months.

I know our situations are not really similar, except that sometimes slow loss is really the best plan, for a variety of reasons.

Each individual is going to react differently physically and emotionally to different stimuli, but we might still end up doing similar things at the practical level. I think self-knowledge is an extremely useful ingredient in weight-management success, and that some failures have to do with a mismatch between physical/emotional/practical needs and the strategy that's attempted.

Sometimes it can seem frustrating or unfair that different people get faster results with different plans, but if that's not a plan that would give me good results, that's not really the right standard of comparison for me to use, IMO. At n=1, I care most about what's going to work in my own lane, i.e., in my case, at this stage, the choice is between a good but slow plan, and not losing (for various reasons)

Your eating strategies sound good. I'm a little confused by "losing 0.5 pounds per week" and "10-12 pounds in 3 months" which sounds more like 0.75-0.9 pounds a week, or thereabouts. That seems like a good rate of weight loss, pretty sensible and sustainable at 55 to go. I totally understand about wanting it to go faster, but it seems to me like you're doing pretty great. (I suspect quite a few people who started when you did, and were losing fast, have given up already ).

Hang in there!

pink_mint

Thanks everyone!

I am figuring out exercise. I was doing a strenuous bodyweight workout and found that it made me hungry enough to eat probably twice the calories it burned. So I'm trying walking now and it's been better so far.

It's been trial and error to figure out what helps me stay in a deficit that I can handle without ending up snapping at people, crying or having stomach pains.

AnnPT77

pink_mint wrote: »

Thanks everyone!

I am figuring out exercise. I was doing a strenuous bodyweight workout and found that it made me hungry enough to eat probably twice the calories it burned. So I'm trying walking now and it's been better so far.

It's been trial and error to figure out what helps me stay in a deficit that I can handle without ending up snapping at people, crying or having stomach pains.

For many/most people, I think intense and strenuous exercise is over-rated. It's more fatiguing, it can have more injury risk, beginners tend to find it less enjoyable, and duration is self-limited to a much greater extent than duration of moderate steady-state or other less-strenuous work.

Intensity or strenuousness are physical stressors, so I think perhaps even less suitable for people in a calorie deficit than for others, and the duration limitations and fatigue can be counter-productive if calorie expenditure is a goal.

I'm not totally against intense/strenuous exercise - it has its important place in development of well-rounded fitness/athleticism, some people enjoy it, and it does have physiological benefits somewhat distinct from moderate exercise - but it seems like the current touting of intense/strenuous exercise (especially HIIT, AMRAP, etc.) just reinforces the idea that we need to be exhausted and miserable in order to gain any fitness or calorie-burn benefits, as if weight gain or lack of fitness were sins to be expiated. That's just not true.

Ooop, sorry for the rant!

Main point: Here again, I think you're being very sensible, and paying attention to what works best and is sustainable for you. Good show!

yirara

I regained a bit of weight in a period where I didn't feel well and lost it at the slowest rate possible. And ate a bit more still. I don't want to be grumpy and think of food all day but enjoy life, eat what I like and have calories left over for a very nice desert in the evening. Nothing wrong with that, right?

cmriverside

I didn't read Ann's posts, so she may have said this; for me exercise also blunts my hunger. So if I take an hour walk it helps me stay within my calories far better than if I don't take that walk and it's more than just the couple hundred calories I "earn" with a walk. It seems to just make the whole thing so much easier.

NadineHolmes

Joining the slow loss group too 🖐 I'm also at least 300 + in deficit each day, do a load of walking at work each day and currently on intensity max 30 ( mad but enjoy it though) and my loss is also about 1/2 lb each week at the best. It is hard not to be discouraged and I swing from thinking I shouldn't have had that biscuit too maybe I'm not having enough 🤷‍♀️ I do weight and measure and log everything down too. Its just disheartening after giving it all xx