I’m trying to lose 10 lbs while maintaining muscle

sallymac258

I just turned 67 yrs old and I’m finding it extremely hard to lose weight. I’m putting 1400-1500 calories a day but I’m lifting and have gained muscle mass- 140 g of protein every day. I tend to go off sometimes with alcohol and dessert and have found when I do that I immediately put on all I have lost even though I’m not eating more calories. Any suggestions? I’m 5’9” and weigh 145

AnnPT77

Hello!

As context, I'm close in age (69 F), lost weight using MFP, and am now in long-term maintenance.

You say "I tend to go off sometimes with alcohol and dessert and have found when I do that I immediately put on all I have lost even though I’m not eating more calories." I wonder if you may be reacting to the next-day, or next-few-days number on the scale? Eating out of our usual pattern can add a surprising amount of water weight, and possibly some extra weight from waste in the digestive tract, neither of which are fat gain. However, they do show up on the scale, and can look like Big Drama temporarily.

For me, if I eat in unusual ways, the scale can jump up several pounds immediately, and - depending on details - it can take anything from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to drop back down again. But drop it does, as long as the calorie intake was reasonable.

I'm also wondering how much weight you're trying to lose, and how fast you're trying to lose it. It's not a perfect metric, and we're all unique individuals, but at the height/weight you mention you're already in the lower half of the normal BMI range. I can understand maybe having a body type where you might still like to lose a bit, but losing it slowly if so would be a health-promoting and easier plan, IMO. (FWIW, I'm 5'5" and 133 pounds, fairly muscular for our demographic, but a higher BMI than you are. I'd prefer to be very slightly lighter myself, but am sticking around this weight for a bit in part because I'm still healing bone from a - yikes - skull fracture.)

With your demographic data, it would be reasonable to expect an accurate 1400-1500 calories to yield gradual weight loss if you're more active than sedentary. You don't say much about how active you are other than the lifting, from other exercise or possibly an active daily life routine. Weight lifting is more than worth doing, but realistically doesn't burn a lot of calories . . . and some fitness trackers will over-estimate the calorie burn from lifting, besides. Bottom line, 1400-1500 could be quite slow loss or even maintenance calories, but that depends on actual activity level.

In all cases, it's important to evaluate weight loss from a new eating/activity regimen as an average trend over 4-6 weeks, and if the loss rate is in the slower range (like half a pound a week, say, which would be sensible with so little to lose) it could even take twice that long, IME. If eating unusual meals now and then is roller-coastering scale weight for a few days or so semi-regularly, that can make it even more challenging to see the fat-loss trend through those water/waste fluctuations.

One thing to consider, if you're not doing it already, would be to use a weight-trending app such as Happy Scale for Apple/iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight (requires a free Fitbit account but not a device, I believe), Weightgrapher on the web, or others. Those aren't a magical crystal ball, but they use statistical techniques to try to figure out the weight loss trend amongst water/waste fluctuations that make scale weight confusing on its own. (Usually it's doing some kind of weighted moving-average calculation, some of them fairly sophisticated . . . but not perfect. 😆)

Hang in there: I'm confident you can figure things out and make progress. Sticking with it, problem solving and tweaking the plan based on trends over time, can work.

Best wishes!