in honor of Banks.....

melanie92

In honor of Banks, and many other well-spoken MFP members who have all written about the importance of eating the right calories, watching the BMR, et al, I have changed my goals from 2-lb a week to 1-lb a week. And, big shock here, my 1200/day/cals only bumped up to 1280. Well, that made me say wow. I have been using MFP since April and had sucessfully been averaging 2 lb a week until about 4 weeks ago. I started to plateau, then lose 1 lb, then lose 3 lbs, then gain 2 lbs - ugh! I didn't know what was wrong! I was still eating the same, exercising the same, etc.

Well, it didn't click until tonight when I read an old post by Banks (Your Body's Thoughts On Calories, located on the General Diet and Weight Loss Help page at the top), #2 and #4 really apply to me right now. And yes, when I looked back at the beginning of my current crazy weight swings, guess what - it all started after my BMI went under 30. Hmm.

So now, In honor of Banks, and many other well-spoken MFP members, I am going to eat Every-Stinkin' calorie for at least a week or two, including the exercise calories, and establish a new personal baseline. I am a little disappointed that I don't think I can continue to lose 2-lb a week. But - the upside is I've lost almost 60 pounds and I feel great!! I do Zumba twice a week, walk my dogs every day, take the stairs at work every day and I'm finally playing tennis again! :happy:

I still need to lose about 20 more pounds, or so, and I didn't want it to take 5 more months. But if it does, then that's okay. I'll still be a smokin' hot (somewhat-slightly-older) babe just in time for summer! :glasses:

So rock on Banks, and viviakay, and all the rest who speak from research and experience! Let's give this a go and see what happens! Anybody else want to jump off into this with me?

binary_jester

*like*

PLUMSGRL

oh heck- you made me do it!

Just changed my goals to one pound a week (loss) , it changed my cals from 1200 to 1290.

Time to go eat something:laugh:

elmct57

they say that last loss goal is the toughest to achieve...i wish you every success and thanks for sharing!:drinker:

flynabster

Maybe I should change my goal to 1 pound a week too.....I've only been here about two weeks, but I've gained, although a slight amount, but it's so discouraging.....I'm gonna keep moving forward though...
Hope it gets you past this phase....

melanie92

Maybe I should change my goal to 1 pound a week too.....I've only been here about two weeks, but I've gained, although a slight amount, but it's so discouraging.....I'm gonna keep moving forward though...
Hope it gets you past this phase....

maybe you have gained muscle?

JoyousRen

:drinker:

navs52

banks is under a new name now....

SHBoss1673

well, I'm flattered! Although I'll say this, 1 or 2 weeks won't do much good, and if the calorie bump is more than 100 or so, I'd expect you to gain a couple of pounds (maybe, maybe not, depends on how big of a change you make) before your body adjusts to the new calorie levels. Either go up slowly, or expect to gain 3 or 4 pounds before you begin losing again because it takes a while for your body to adjust.

And yeah, for anyone wondering why this SHBoss guy is replying on a thread about that Banks character, it's because I'm him (I had to create a new user a long time ago, but it's me.)

Jennplus2

well, I'm flattered! Although I'll say this, 1 or 2 weeks won't do much good, and if the calorie bump is more than 100 or so, I'd expect you to gain a couple of pounds (maybe, maybe not, depends on how big of a change you make) before your body adjusts to the new calorie levels. Either go up slowly, or expect to gain 3 or 4 pounds before you begin losing again because it takes a while for your body to adjust.

And yeah, for anyone wondering why this SHBoss guy is replying on a thread about that Banks character, it's because I'm him (I had to create a new user a long time ago, but it's me.)

I have been wondering why you changed names...
Being a MFP celebrity doesn’t agree with you? :laugh:

melanie92

well, I'm flattered! Although I'll say this, 1 or 2 weeks won't do much good, and if the calorie bump is more than 100 or so, I'd expect you to gain a couple of pounds (maybe, maybe not, depends on how big of a change you make) before your body adjusts to the new calorie levels. Either go up slowly, or expect to gain 3 or 4 pounds before you begin losing again because it takes a while for your body to adjust.

And yeah, for anyone wondering why this SHBoss guy is replying on a thread about that Banks character, it's because I'm him (I had to create a new user a long time ago, but it's me.)

Thanks for posting Banks, um, I mean SHBoss1673.....

my daily cals only went up by 80, but my problem was becoming not eating all off my cals every day. I think I got into a mindset that I wasn't anywhere near starvation mode, and if I cut down just a little bit more, then my weight loss would level out again.

The challenge for me is to actually eat-all-of-my-calories. which is really strange for me, because I love food! but I get full, and don't want to keep on stuffing the mouth, because I can feel my stomach stretching back out (or so it seems). I'm looking for some nutritious calorie dense foods to eat that aren't so bulky.

SHBoss1673

my rule of thumb is usually this. If you're a woman and an adult, and you're under 23% body fat, you have no business being under your BMR calories, ever, that means NET calories. I.E. at the end of the day, what you've eaten minus what you've exercised should be over your BMR as far as I'm concerned.

And the relationship between body fat % and calorie DEFICIT should be an inverse sliding scale. Basically it should be common sense based.

so if you're at 25% body fat (for women, say around 14% for men) and you're at your BMR (about 25% below maintenance calories) then at 24% Body Fat (BF) you should be at about 80% of maintenance calories, 23% BF should be around 83 to 85%, 22% BF should be around 85 to 87% ...etc. (to a degree you can take this in the other direction as well, although even for obese people, you really shouldn't be much below 10% under your BMR, it's dangerous in the long term, a few weeks to a month is probably as long as I would ever suggest)

Why? Because the less fat reserves you have, the less ability your body has to make up the difference. And the more your hormones will panic and send out the wrong instructions with a large deficit.

Contrary to many people's belief, you CAN lose body fat while at maintenance calories if you are above what is considered "normal" body fat % for someone your age, height, and sex (remember, high Body Fat % doesn't equal overweight necessarily). The same doesn't necessarily apply to people at or below a normal body fat %, but there are other tricks (I say tricks but they are just techniques) to reduce body fat. Things like calorie cycling, halving your exercise calorie eat back while at maintenance, timing your eating patterns and nutrition to maximize fat burn... etc. Most of these are advanced techniques that don't work very well for people who have extra body fat though.

Generally though, the one thing I tell people is that unless you are a competitive body builder or some other visual body model type person, there's no reason to go much below a healthy body fat percent (around 19 or 20% for women and around 9 or 10% for men) as it doesn't hinder functional performance at that level, will probably not be noticeable, and is difficult to maintain. Some professional fitness persons (trainers, athletes...etc.) naturally settle below what is considered a healthy body fat %, just because of how hard they work their bodies, and that's fine, as long as you stay above the safe levels (about 14% for women and about 6% for men as a minimum)

amycal

Congratulations - a 60 pound loss is awesome! Tennis is a great sport.

00trayn

This post makes such a great point. I've recently realized I've gotten off track with eating, basically eating way too little and not enough "real food". It was a bit of a realization yesterday and I decided to focus on eating my calories and some exercise calories like I used to. I was only at 1100 a day or so. I changed my weekly goal to 1 lb per week (since I'm 13 lbs above a healthy BMI with a BMI of 27.1) and I have 1270 calories now. And I'm going to make sure I actually eat them. Dropping down to 1100 calories made me lose 4-5 lbs in a few weeks at first, and then it stopped completely because I killed my metabolism. So now I'm getting it back on track. And the holidays aren't a bad time to decide to eat a bit more

JoyousRen

my daily cals only went up by 80, but my problem was becoming not eating all off my cals every day. I think I got into a mindset that I wasn't anywhere near starvation mode, and if I cut down just a little bit more, then my weight loss would level out again.

The challenge for me is to actually eat-all-of-my-calories. which is really strange for me, because I love food! but I get full, and don't want to keep on stuffing the mouth, because I can feel my stomach stretching back out (or so it seems). I'm looking for some nutritious calorie dense foods to eat that aren't so bulky.

I have the same issue especially during the week on days when I work out. I have a pretty high BMR (over 1500 calories) when you add exercise to that and some days I should eat about 2000 calories. I live on nuts to keep my calories up and I recently switched from skim milk to reduced fat. It really helps increse my calories while still eating healthy.

I'm still shocked that I have this issue when, for the longest time, I had a hard time keeping my calories low enough.

stroutman81

That guy is a real dummy. Don't listen to a word he says.



Just kidding... he's good people.