I have 15 pounds to loose

ladybug4233

I lost 30 pounds a few years ago and gained some back due to some illnesses. I want to loose 15. I really want to aim for a pound a week but the recommendation is .5 a week. Should I aim for that?

Thanks for the help,
Candie

Retroguy2000

There is no science afaik.

My 2c would be aim to lose 1 pound weekly for 5 pounds, then 0.75 for 5 pounds, then 0.5, something like that.

kshama2001

ladybug4233 wrote: »

I lost 30 pounds a few years ago and gained some back due to some illnesses. I want to loose 15. I really want to aim for a pound a week but the recommendation is .5 a week. Should I aim for that?

Thanks for the help,
Candie

How tall are you? On average, how many calories do you plan to earn from exercise daily?

ladybug4233

kshama2001 wrote: »

ladybug4233 wrote: »

I lost 30 pounds a few years ago and gained some back due to some illnesses. I want to loose 15. I really want to aim for a pound a week but the recommendation is .5 a week. Should I aim for that?

Thanks for the help,
Candie

How tall are you? On average, how many calories do you plan to earn from exercise daily?

I am 5"3 and I usually get about 200-250 calories a day for exercise

AnnPT77

A calorie deficit is a physical stress. Depending on how you approach it, it can also be a psychological stress. Other common stressors: Stressful job, demanding home life, pre-existing health conditions, intense exercise . . . and more.

Physical and psychological stresses are cumulative: They add up at any give moment from all sources, and the long-term ones pile up more stress consequences than brief ones. Resilience also matters: How stress-tolerant you are. Most of us are less resilient with increasing age, and this is another point where health conditions may matter.

If you have a low-stress life, are generally healthy, and you get good nutrition and moderate exercise, you can probably afford to lose a little faster for a short time. Pay attention to how you feel. If there's any slightest sign of fatigue, weakness, etc., eat more. If a pound a week is more than 0.5 percent of your current weight, it's more of a worry. If it's more than 1%, I'd say "don't".

Personally, when I decided to re-lose 10-12 or so pounds that had crept on over my first few years of maintenance, I went with a very slow loss rate . . . slower than 0.5 pounds a week, even. Yes, it took a long time. It was also almost completely painless, unchallenging. It's an option.

Best wishes!

neanderthin

Split the difference and the world is in equilibrium and the bonus is, less people will be tell you your doing it wrong. Cheers

ladybug4233

Thanks everyone. I will try a pound a week. Sadly I have an old injury that has flared up so I am not as active as Id like to be. The positive is it has made me focus on my eating.lol

kshama2001

ladybug4233 wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

ladybug4233 wrote: »

I lost 30 pounds a few years ago and gained some back due to some illnesses. I want to loose 15. I really want to aim for a pound a week but the recommendation is .5 a week. Should I aim for that?

Thanks for the help,
Candie

How tall are you? On average, how many calories do you plan to earn from exercise daily?

I am 5"3 and I usually get about 200-250 calories a day for exercise

ladybug4233 wrote: »

Thanks everyone. I will try a pound a week. Sadly I have an old injury that has flared up so I am not as active as Id like to be. The positive is it has made me focus on my eating.lol

Well, it would likely be easier if you were taller and had more exercise calories to play with. But sure, try it. If you find yourself doing this, do eat more:



https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/

dwooten4255

Should I back out exercise calories burned from my total calories in MyFitness Pal calculations?

AnnPT77

dwooten4255 wrote: »

Should I back out exercise calories burned from my total calories in MyFitness Pal calculations?

If your logging is accurate, you followed the MFP setup instructions (activity level based on what you do excluding intentional exercise), and you make an effort to estimate your exercise calories sensibly . . . eating your exercise calories will be your best bet to keep the weight loss rate you asked MFP to create for you.

But - as I'd tell anyone - do that for 4-6 weeks (whole menstrual cycles if you have them), look at average weekly weight change over the whole period and adjust your calorie goal if necessary, using the assumption that 500 calories daily is a pound a week (loss or gain).

collinsje1

I tend to not eat back any of my exercise calories because I don't trust any of the calorie burn estimations weather its MFP or my tracker estimation. Also, I feel that it gives me a little wiggle room if my tracking were to not be quite on point.

I do however pay attention to how I feel more than anything, If I have a particularly hard work out or high movement day I tend to eat slightly (150-300) over my calorie goal either that day or the next day and it helps me feel less tired/wore out.

foliographerdoha

ladybug4233 wrote: »

I lost 30 pounds a few years ago and gained some back due to some illnesses. I want to loose 15. I really want to aim for a pound a week but the recommendation is .5 a week. Should I aim for that?

Thanks for the help,
Candie

Definitely the healthiest way is to lose 0.5 pounds per week. So that the change will be predominant also increase your protein in take avoid sugar and processed food avoid alcohol and fried foods completely.
Also keep increasing your cardiovascular activities weekly by 10-15 minutes or make it more intense so that our body will not be adapted towards low calorie intake and regular cardio. Moreover sleep well at least 8 hours a day ! Good luck 👍🏽

ninerbuff

The less you lose a week, the easier it gets when you go to maintenance since you don't have to make drastic changes to your diet.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

AnnPT77

foliographerdoha wrote: »

ladybug4233 wrote: »

I lost 30 pounds a few years ago and gained some back due to some illnesses. I want to loose 15. I really want to aim for a pound a week but the recommendation is .5 a week. Should I aim for that?

Thanks for the help,
Candie

Definitely the healthiest way is to lose 0.5 pounds per week. So that the change will be predominant also increase your protein in take avoid sugar and processed food avoid alcohol and fried foods completely.
Also keep increasing your cardiovascular activities weekly by 10-15 minutes or make it more intense so that our body will not be adapted towards low calorie intake and regular cardio. Moreover sleep well at least 8 hours a day ! Good luck 👍🏽

I don't think it works that way. I've been doing pretty much the same cardio for almost 21 years now, something well over 1000 weeks. I assume there's a limit to the required increase, in that theory?

Based on calorie counting for about 8 of those years so far, the same ol' cardio is still burning a decent number of calories, at about the same burn rate for the same intensity, with a moderate adjustment over that time period because I'm moving about 1/3 less body through space nowadays when I do it. IOW, there's less work in physics terms, because I'm smaller.

Of course a person has to keep increasing the challenge of any exercise to keep improving fitness. Other than the body weight issue, the same cardio exercise doesn't burn materially fewer calories as we get fitter . . . it just feels easier. A fitness tracker/heart rate monitor may estimate fewer calories for a fitter person, but that's a limitation of the device: As the heart gets stronger, it pumps more blood volume (and oxygen) per beat, so it takes less frequent heartbeats to get the same oxygen-delivery work done.

OP, any amount of relatively fun (or at least tolerable/practical) exercise that you do, or added daily life activities, will burn some extra calories. Keep a challenge in the picture, if you want to keep improving fitness.

I'd recommend keeping the combined frequency/duration/intensity at a level that keeps you feeling energized most of the time (rather than exhausted, except for a brief few minutes "whew" right after the workout); and lets you maintain good coverall life balance (enough time/energy for family, job, home chores, and any other non-exercise things important to you).

Twenty-plus years in, 10 minutes increase a week, I'd be at something like 180 hours of exercise per day, which I'm sure the PP didn't intend to advocate. My calorie burn and fitness are OK enough, for my tastes, at much less than that.

ddsb1111

I read this “ keep increasing your cardiovascular activities weekly by 10-15 minutes or make it more intense so that our body will not be adapted towards low calorie intake and regular cardio” to mean increase your activity to raise your metabolism. Am I way off here, cause that makes sense to me?

AnnPT77

ddsb1111 wrote: »

I read this “ keep increasing your cardiovascular activities weekly by 10-15 minutes or make it more intense so that our body will not be adapted towards low calorie intake and regular cardio” to mean increase your activity to raise your metabolism. Am I way off here, cause that makes sense to me?

Honestly, part of this is just how you think of it.

To me, when people talk about "metabolic damage", they're often thinking that their basal metabolic rate (BMR) and resting metabolic rate (RMR) have slowed down - things that are somehow out of their direct or immediate control, things that "just happen" no matter how they behave, at least in the short run.

Of course, the more exercise a person does, or the more daily non-exercise activity (NEAT) a person does, the more calories they burn. That is in our control, and the effects of increasing either can be quite quick.

It depends on what we think "metabolism" means, as a practical working definition.

If we increase our activity (exercise or daily life), of course we increase our calorie burn. There isn't IMU something that happens at the cellular level to make the basic BMR/RMR stuff burn bunches more calories just because we do more exercise. Having more muscle mass burns a very few more calories at rest - that's part of BMR/RMR, sure.

I think it's more important (in caloric terms) that more muscle mass or more cardiovascular fitness usually mean that it's easier, more fun, more automatic for us to move in daily life - even fidget - so we burn more calories through movement. (Spontaneous movement, which includes fidgeting, makes a surprising contribution to TDEE, IMU.)

Of course, there's EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), which is numerically pretty small in the big picture. There's some metabolic "cost" (added calorie burn) from the building of increased muscle mass (an example of anabolism, loosely), but again any estimates I've run across (while not deep-diving) suggest that's numerically pretty small in the TDEE big picture.

Your body doesn't "adapt to your cardio" in the sense that a fit person burns lots fewer calories doing the same activity at the same intensity as a similar-sized less-fit person. Depending on the activity, there can be some efficiencies via skill improvement, but it's the "work" (in the physics sense of the term) that requires energy. Most of that, for most activities, is relatively constant at constant body size, duration, and intensity/pace.

I'm better ("more efficient") at my sport, and fitter, than I used to be. Mostly, that means more of my energy turns into productive work, and I produce more power with less perceived effort. It doesn't mean I burn more or fewer calories doing that work - that's a little more nuanced. (I'm still reserving the idea that for a lot of activities, a lighter body weight doing the same exercise means less work in the physics sense - running, dancing, whatever, i.e., anything where a material part of the work is moving X size body through space. That matters.)

I could be out in left field here, I freely admit. I'm not a physiology or kinesiology Ph.D. or remotely close.