Should I aim for .5 a week or 1 pound

ladybug4233

I am 5'3'' and 133.5 pounds. I was at 125 and want to get back there. I am working out 5-6 days a week. Due to a neck injury I haven't been able to lift weights but just got the go ahead. YAY!! Do you recommend I try to loose .5 a week (which seem so slow-lol) or do you think 1 pound a week is ok. I am 50 and don't sleep well but I keep trying to workout an hour to an hour and half a day plus get 10, 000 steps and never sit down. I am exhausted. LOl

sijomial

If you are exhausted going for a bigger deficit would only make that worse.

cwolfman13

If you're exhausted, you should dial back the exercise...and seriously, it's ok to sit down and rest. You don't have to punish yourself to lose weight. Rest is actually extremely important to fitness as well as weight management. If you're going all of the time, your cortisol levels are probably through the roof. I'm training for a triathlon and I don't train 60-90 minutes everyday.

westrich20940

.5 or less.

AnnPT77

ladybug4233 wrote: »

I am 5'3'' and 133.5 pounds. I was at 125 and want to get back there. I am working out 5-6 days a week. Due to a neck injury I haven't been able to lift weights but just got the go ahead. YAY!! Do you recommend I try to loose .5 a week (which seem so slow-lol) or do you think 1 pound a week is ok. I am 50 and don't sleep well but I keep trying to workout an hour to an hour and half a day plus get 10, 000 steps and never sit down. I am exhausted. LOl

Go for the 0.5.

You've been injured. You want to heal well and stay that way, right? That requires calories and nutrition.

You seem to want to lift weights, which is a performance goal. That requires calories and nutrition.

You're working out much more than the average person, and don't sleep well. Those are physical stresses. A calorie deficit - of any size - is another physical stress, and stresses (both physical and psychological) are cumulative. You're already exhausted. Fast loss is a bad plan, in that context.

You aren't dangerously overweight. That suggests weight loss is not a huge, screaming emergency.

You're not 19 years old anymore. (I'm not either: I'm 66.) I dunno about you, but I see very little difference in my body from a potential-gains and performance standpoint as I age . . . but I do see a small bit less resilience to extremes of overdoing that I could've tolerated better at 19.

I lost weight at 59-60 (obese to healthy weight), but more recently needed to re-lose a small regain within the healthy weight range, to get back to my preferred weight range (mid-120s pounds). I actually chose to lose slower than half a pound a week. I lost 10+ pounds. It was virtually painless. I don't have all the stresses that you report, either. It was still a good choice, for me. I admit, it was a viable choice for me to go slower than half a pound a week because my calorie-counting practice (almost 7 years now) has made me pretty good at it, in a practical sense. It ended up being about a 100-150 calorie daily deficit, which is a narrow tolerance. I wouldn't suggest that to someone new at counting, if you are. But half a pound should be fine.

A thing to know about half a pound a week: Daily water retention and digestive contents fluctuations - not fat, so not worth worry - can be 2-3 pounds from one day to the next. In that context, it can take several weeks for half a pound of fat loss to show up clearly on the scale. A weight trending app (Happy Scale, Libra, Trendweight, Weightgrapher, etc.) may help, but even those can mislead sometimes.

I'd still recommend half a pound a week for you. Best wishes!

ladybug4233

Thank you for all of the advice and the thought out responses. Yes, I do have some stresses which include menopause, 19 year old, and recovering from an injury. Im just frustrated because it seemed so much easier even a year ago. The main issue is I keep loosing a couple of pounds and then my DH and I go on a trip ( I don't go overboard) and gain it back and a couple more. Im not complaining we are very fortunate that we are empty nesters and are financially able to travel quite a bit. It just plays havoc on my weight.

ladybug4233

A thing to know about half a pound a week: Daily water retention and digestive contents fluctuations - not fat, so not worth worry - can be 2-3 pounds from one day to the next. In that context, it can take several weeks for half a pound of fat loss to show up clearly on the scale. A weight trending app (Happy Scale, Libra, Trendweight, Weightgrapher, etc.) may help, but even those can mislead sometimes.

I'd still recommend half a pound a week for you. Best wishes![/quote]

Thank you. This is very helpful to know. I do use Happy Scale.

AnnPT77

ladybug4233 wrote: »

Thank you for all of the advice and the thought out responses. Yes, I do have some stresses which include menopause, 19 year old, and recovering from an injury. Im just frustrated because it seemed so much easier even a year ago. The main issue is I keep loosing a couple of pounds and then my DH and I go on a trip ( I don't go overboard) and gain it back and a couple more. Im not complaining we are very fortunate that we are empty nesters and are financially able to travel quite a bit. It just plays havoc on my weight.

I assume you're aware that flying and long ground vehicle rides lead to water retention increases? If I eat extra on a trip, it takes at least one, sometimes two weeks to see what the actual results are, because of the water weight weirdness.

That said, if you're a frequent traveler, and actually do gain fat (not just water) on every trip, it may be a key success factor for you to figure out how better to manage food and activity on trips, for better life balance.

Rare events tend not to matter much, in the big picture. Things that recur frequently or regularly . . . those have more impact.

Different strategies work for different people. Just as an example, not intended as a directive about what you should do: I like to eat a little under maintenance most days, in order to eat quite a bit over maintenance occasionally. If you read threads here about travel, you'll find travel-specific strategies others use.