How long did it take you to lose a stone /14lbs?

annabellemayh

I'm just interested to see how long it took people to lose that first stone and what you did to get there? E.g. just diet / just exercise / a combination of both ?

I'm really keen to see this first stone go, to get me to the weight I thought I was before I stepped on the scales for the first time in months! I'm eating with a calorie deficit of 500 a day and trying to exercise for an hour every day? I'm only doing cross trainer however and feel like I should be pushing myself harder.

What are your success stories I'd love to hear

MissLCWolff

I just hit 14 pounds down this morning (I think--I didn't weigh myself for most of the first week I was on here so I don't know my starting weight), and this is the end of my first month on MFP. However, I've got a LOT to lose, and the first few pounds always come off the easiest.

ETA: I've been eating around 1300 calories a day of pretty much whatever I want (though I've been naturally gravitating towards water and vegetables over soda and fries) and eating back a portion of my exercise calories, but my loss has slowed a LOT recently so I'm going to try zig-zagging my intake and changing up my workouts and seeing if that has any effect.

annabellemayh

I just hit 14 pounds down this morning (I think--I didn't weigh myself for most of the first week I was on here so I don't know my starting weight), and this is the end of my first month on MFP. However, I've got a LOT to lose, and the first few pounds always come off the easiest.

ETA: I've been eating around 1300 calories a day of pretty much whatever I want (though I've been naturally gravitating towards water and vegetables over soda and fries) and eating back a portion of my exercise calories, but my loss has slowed a LOT recently so I'm going to try zig-zagging my intake and changing up my workouts and seeing if that has any effect.

Wow, well done! That's great news, a month sounds pretty healthy to me. I haven't weighed myself and this is my first week, I don't want to de-motivate myself if I haven't lost anything! Good plan, I've heard sticking to the same routine can create a plateu, and at the moment I'm becoming a bit too comfortable with my workout routine!

Well done again!!

katieintheattic

It took me 3.5 months, so don't get too excited!

I've had pretty consistent losses with a fixed exercise routine, too. The only thing I've changed over the last six months is how much and what I eat. I've made small changes and although it was frustrating at the start (I started with a bit of a plateau, so that wasn't fun!) it soon built up to a pretty cool number.

annabellemayh

It took me 3.5 months, so don't get too excited!

I've had pretty consistent losses with a fixed exercise routine, too. The only thing I've changed over the last six months is how much and what I eat. I've made small changes and although it was frustrating at the start (I started with a bit of a plateau, so that wasn't fun!) it soon built up to a pretty cool number.

That's great well done 3.5 months does sound longer to me, but all bodies are different. I'm guessing it'll takeme maybe somewhere in between, 2 months maybe? As long as the weights coming off healthily that's good for me Well done for breaking through those first months though must've been tough!

I've heard you lose weight quicker the more you have to lose? Would you agree? I'm not so sure. The NHS website says I should lose 2 stone to be in a healthy weight range so if that's true it'll probably take me a while.

kb2699

Hi, I lost a stone in about 6/7 weeks. I'm 5 ft 6 in and weighed 13st 9lb when I started in mid-Jan. I was doing 1200 calories for the first 10-12lbs then bumped up to 1420 which is much easier to live with

Feel free to add me if you'd like some support along the way x

katieintheattic

Yeah, you can safely lose a lot more a lot faster when you're heavier.

I'm basically where you are now, with a bit more than two stone to lose. So far it hasn't slowed down but I'm prepared for the next stage to take longer.

1.75lb a week would be a lot if you don't have far to go, though not impossible. The main thing would be to make it enjoyable so you don't get discouraged if it ends up taking longer than you want. Log everything, and just a thought: if you lost 1lb a week you'd be a stone lighter by July

Suzynana72

Hi all I'm new to this, I started a few days ago but so far have lost nothing My calorie allowance is 1200 a day and I have been walking 5km every day which burns 220 calories so does this mean that I then have 1420 calories at my disposal to lose weight or will this maintain my weight? In order to lose should I consume only the 1200 calories. I'm going on holiday at the end of the month and would love to lose 10 pounds by then. Please help

keefmac

It took me 2 months (5'9" starting at 90kg), the next stone is taking a lot longer though!.

As has been said if you're not far off your goal to start with it will take longer unfortunately..

romyhorse

I started off doing Insanity, I lost 18lb over the 6 weeks. I was eating healthily but not logging or counting calories. Unfortunately it hasn't come off as quickly since!

2013sk

I think you should try and aim for a healthy 2lbs loss a week - The slower the better to be honest.

If you lose a lot quickly, it could come back on quickly - You don't want this!!!

With a healthy diet & a good exercise plan, your be able to do it.

Try and get lots of veggies, fruit, protein & good fats in your diet.

You also want to be full & not starving over this weight loss period. Its all about doing what is right & best for YOU.

Good luck!!!! x

cw106

Hi all I'm new to this, I started a few days ago but so far have lost nothing My calorie allowance is 1200 a day and I have been walking 5km every day which burns 220 calories so does this mean that I then have 1420 calories at my disposal to lose weight or will this maintain my weight? In order to lose should I consume only the 1200 calories. I'm going on holiday at the end of the month and would love to lose 10 pounds by then. Please help

hi. welcome to the forum.

at the top of this page to the left of the. green reply button is the. search function.

input. " eating back exercise calories". and you will get loads of info.
the answer is individual to your height weight age goals etc.

i didnt eat back exrcise cals in month 1. lost 1 stone.
i ate back 25% of exercise cals in month 2. and lost another 1 stone. ie 14 llbs.
on target to do same in month 3.
hope this helps.

suzana006

Hi there

It took me about 7 weeks. I didn't exercise. It was strictly my diet. I limit my calories to 1300-1350. I eat anything as long as it's within my calories. I don't eat the low fat version of anything, I believe the full fat foods keep you satisfied and fuller for longer. I don't snack. I eat 3 meals...breakfast lunch and dinner. When you don't snack I find my hunger decreases.

Good Luck with it all!!

greenfirearm

I think you should try and aim for a healthy 2lbs loss a week - The slower the better to be honest.

If you lose a lot quickly, it could come back on quickly - You don't want this!!!

With a healthy diet & a good exercise plan, your be able to do it.

Try and get lots of veggies, fruit, protein & good fats in your diet.

You also want to be full & not starving over this weight loss period. Its all about doing what is right & best for YOU.

Good luck!!!! x

See that really scared me. But from personal experience, the weight really hasn't piled back on.

mymodernbabylon

I'm doing it the slow way as I don't have a large amount of weight to lose (under 2 stone). I lost a stone in about 26 weeks - almost 1/2 lb a week. I'm still eating the same foods I used to, though more protein and whole foods, but smaller portions. I'm now moving up in my calories and slowing down my weight loss, but that's okay as I want this for life - a long slow journey versus a quick shot. I've tried the fast route and gained it back quickly as well. I've now held my weight off, easily, including going on holiday and not worrying about calories.

mymodernbabylon

Hi all I'm new to this, I started a few days ago but so far have lost nothing My calorie allowance is 1200 a day and I have been walking 5km every day which burns 220 calories so does this mean that I then have 1420 calories at my disposal to lose weight or will this maintain my weight? In order to lose should I consume only the 1200 calories. I'm going on holiday at the end of the month and would love to lose 10 pounds by then. Please help

MFP gives you a deficit w/o the exercise calories. And please do check to see if that is enough - did you put yourself as sedentary? Unless you NEVER do anything like cleaning or cooking or walking around, you should put yourself at at least lightly active & not sedentary. And then eat back 1/2 the exercise calories.

hmaddpear

7 weeks to lose the first stone. 10 weeks a piece to lose the next 3 and 18 to lose the last full stone. It's going a lot, lot slower now. *sigh*

natmarie114

kb2699 wrote: »

Hi, I lost a stone in about 6/7 weeks. I'm 5 ft 6 in and weighed 13st 9lb when I started in mid-Jan. I was doing 1200 calories for the first 10-12lbs then bumped up to 1420 which is much easier to live with

Feel free to add me if you'd like some support along the way x

natmarie114

Thats great!

wunderkindking

Depends on starting weight. From jus over the lone to obese? Just shy of 2 months. The last 14? 4-4.5 months.

Harleygram55

Took me about a month a & a half. I swim an hour,(not hard swimming, but go out in the deep end and tread water), 3-5 days a week. I have knee surgery coming up, but they won't schedule it until my BMI is below 40. I've reached that, but I plan on continuing my healthy eating. I keep it under 1200 calories a day, eating mostly keto. Also, I do not eat my exercise calories...

tpnmit

Took me about 46 days. That's because I did it properly whereas before I could drop a stone in 3 weeks but then just give up and put it back on. As well as deficit of around 200/day, just walking for 3 miles daily has been amazing

WailingDusk

Keep in mind, losing a stone depends on where you started. At 372 pounds, I dropped 14 pounds in almost a week. You'd be surprised at how much water your body holds onto, plus going into a much larger calorie deficit at morbid obesity is much more dramatic than someone at say, in the overweight category. Now, it takes me almost 2 months to lose 14 pounds, and that's with regular intense exercise and a 500 calorie a day deficit.

The body just doesn't want to give up those last extra pounds lol Plus, you could be gaining muscle in that time as well.

BendableButMendable

WailingDusk wrote: »

Keep in mind, losing a stone depends on where you started. At 372 pounds, I dropped 14 pounds in almost a week. You'd be surprised at how much water your body holds onto, plus going into a much larger calorie deficit at morbid obesity is much more dramatic than someone at say, in the overweight category. Now, it takes me almost 2 months to lose 14 pounds, and that's with regular intense exercise and a 500 calorie a day deficit.

The body just doesn't want to give up those last extra pounds lol Plus, you could be gaining muscle in that time as well.

I read the thread about your progress (amazing job by the way) and you discuss being on your journey for 15 months. If you are not losing weight as quickly as you might reasonably expect after having maintained a long term deficit you might want to consider taking a break from the deficit and eating at maintenance for a month or so to help reboot your metabolism. After long term deficits the body adapts and slows your metabolism so you don't run out of your energy reserves (fat), it's properly termed "adaptive thermogenesis" but a lot of people call it "starvation mode". After maintaining a large deficit for a year and losing 80lbs I was maintaining 170lbs at 1400 - 1500 calories a day because my metabolism had significantly slowed down. After slowly adding calories back into my diet I now maintain 170lbs at ~2200 calories a day. I gained about 4lbs at first but those came off very quickly when my body got used to the extra calories.

I apologize if this is information you already had, but I didn't see anything about it in your thread so I though it might be useful to you. If you want to read more about it and see some helpful graphs to illustrate it look up "adaptive thermogenesis" and "re-feed strategies".

One last thing to keep in mind; losing 14lbs over two months is roughly 1.5lbs per week which many consider to be in the ideal range. I don't want you to think that I'm saying you're not losing fast enough, I just don't have the specifics on your calorie intake and if you are accounting for the calories burned during exercise.

moonbeams896

I just hit the 100 day mark on here and I'm almost 15 pounds down, but not quite. I eat around 1500 calories a day and exercise daily, but my exercise would be considered very light to most people. There is a YouTube instructor that I really like, she does 20-25 min low impact workouts. I have found that it's something I can do just about every day, gets me sweaty, and I'm getting results. My balance has gotten so much better! If interested, she's Pahla B. I have about 100 more lbs to lose, but I set my diary to a pound a week and that has been pretty consistent. Feeling good and like it's something I can do for the rest of my life, which is the most important thing!

WailingDusk

BendableButMendable wrote: »

WailingDusk wrote: »

Keep in mind, losing a stone depends on where you started. At 372 pounds, I dropped 14 pounds in almost a week. You'd be surprised at how much water your body holds onto, plus going into a much larger calorie deficit at morbid obesity is much more dramatic than someone at say, in the overweight category. Now, it takes me almost 2 months to lose 14 pounds, and that's with regular intense exercise and a 500 calorie a day deficit.

The body just doesn't want to give up those last extra pounds lol Plus, you could be gaining muscle in that time as well.

I read the thread about your progress (amazing job by the way) and you discuss being on your journey for 15 months. If you are not losing weight as quickly as you might reasonably expect after having maintained a long term deficit you might want to consider taking a break from the deficit and eating at maintenance for a month or so to help reboot your metabolism. After long term deficits the body adapts and slows your metabolism so you don't run out of your energy reserves (fat), it's properly termed "adaptive thermogenesis" but a lot of people call it "starvation mode". After maintaining a large deficit for a year and losing 80lbs I was maintaining 170lbs at 1400 - 1500 calories a day because my metabolism had significantly slowed down. After slowly adding calories back into my diet I now maintain 170lbs at ~2200 calories a day. I gained about 4lbs at first but those came off very quickly when my body got used to the extra calories.

I apologize if this is information you already had, but I didn't see anything about it in your thread so I though it might be useful to you. If you want to read more about it and see some helpful graphs to illustrate it look up "adaptive thermogenesis" and "re-feed strategies".

One last thing to keep in mind; losing 14lbs over two months is roughly 1.5lbs per week which many consider to be in the ideal range. I don't want you to think that I'm saying you're not losing fast enough, I just don't have the specifics on your calorie intake and if you are accounting for the calories burned during exercise.

Oh yeah, I've been through this with my personal trainer. I look at it this way: as long as I have a lot of energy, I'm not sluggish or feeling hungry all the time, and I'm still losing weight (even if it's not 2 pounds a week anymore), I'm good. There have been times I've hit a plateau and the body does adapt and I had to change things up. I don't eat a strict set amount of calories a day. I like to zigzag, sometimes eating more, sometimes eating less. As long as I'm still in a weekly deficit, it's fine. The zigzag method helps prevent you from hitting adaptive thermogenesis, or so I've been told. It's seemed to work for me so far.

BendableButMendable

WailingDusk wrote: »

Oh yeah, I've been through this with my personal trainer. I look at it this way: as long as I have a lot of energy, I'm not sluggish or feeling hungry all the time, and I'm still losing weight (even if it's not 2 pounds a week anymore), I'm good. There have been times I've hit a plateau and the body does adapt and I had to change things up. I don't eat a strict set amount of calories a day. I like to zigzag, sometimes eating more, sometimes eating less. As long as I'm still in a weekly deficit, it's fine. The zigzag method helps prevent you from hitting adaptive thermogenesis, or so I've been told. It's seemed to work for me so far.

It sounds like you're doing all the right things then, and you've obviously had great results with it. The zigzag method is definitely one of the more common recommendations for re-feed strategies that I saw when looking into it. I can't speak to any of the methods personally since my plateau came after I was already below my goal weight, I'm working on re-composition now. Great job again and sorry for chewing your ear off with information you already had.

BendableButMendable

tpnmit wrote: »

Took me about 46 days. That's because I did it properly whereas before I could drop a stone in 3 weeks but then just give up and put it back on. As well as deficit of around 200/day, just walking for 3 miles daily has been amazing

moonbeams896 wrote: »

I just hit the 100 day mark on here and I'm almost 15 pounds down, but not quite. I eat around 1500 calories a day and exercise daily, but my exercise would be considered very light to most people. There is a YouTube instructor that I really like, she does 20-25 min low impact workouts. I have found that it's something I can do just about every day, gets me sweaty, and I'm getting results. My balance has gotten so much better! If interested, she's Pahla B. I have about 100 more lbs to lose, but I set my diary to a pound a week and that has been pretty consistent. Feeling good and like it's something I can do for the rest of my life, which is the most important thing!

Great job to both of you!

zebasschick

about 3 months - a combination of eating at a moderate deficit and regular exercise.

previously i have lost 14 pounds in as little as a month, but ended up feeling weak and bad all the time, and ended up gaining it back because i just couldn't sustain that much of a deficit healthily along with light exercise.

yweight2020

Took me 4 months to lose 14 lbs, because I was still struggling with my food using it for comfort not just nutrition and staying focused but as of this moment I'm down 50 lbs, I still have some of those same struggles but I've stayed the course. And it didn't help that I didn't get much exercise, except for very low impact slow walks.

drmwc

It took me about a month for me for the first 14 lbs, I went for an aggressive cut initially. (I went from 185 pounds to 142 pounds overall, a BMI of 28 to a BMI of 21. My Type II diabetes went into remission.)

I reached my goal weight over 2 years ago, and have been at the same weight since then (to within a few pounds).