Any advice to help my wife lose her last 10 to 15 pounds?

hiddensecant

P90x is AMAZING! Now if only I could stick to it for more than a week...:grumble: :laugh:

Ooh, I'm on P90X! I must have been the least likely candidate for such a program but if I can do it ... hehe.

Plan to up her calories to 1800 for that one and get a tape measure! I'm not even done with my 3rd week but I'm so glad I stuck with it and am really happy with my results so far.

Also, you can do it with her! It's a great bonding activity.

hiddensecant

I'm down 4 pounds in 10 days after 8 months of plateau.

Becky

Wow, kudos for sticking with it!

sean23

Thanks to everyone that took their time to give advice. I appreciate it. She is a member here already. She has always been scared of adding more calories to her diet afraid she will gain more weight that she won't be able to lose. All the evidence points that she needs to eat more and maybe intensify her workouts. She bought weights and is doing Jillian Michaels workouts and meal plan starting this week. We will give it some time realizing that initially she may gain weight before she gets everything on track by changing around her metabolism.
Thanks again!

StiringWendel

Okay, here's kind of a long reply from somebody who is also 5'2".

I don't know what your wife's age is, so I guess that she was in her early 30s based on your age. Why I bring this up was so that I could calculate her BMR.

Here's the problem with us shorter people....we don't need as much food as taller people. So while the standard response is 'eat more!', that doesn't always work for somebody who is 5'2".

Using your age, I calculated your wife's BMR (using the tools section on this site) to be about 1350 calories a day. This is how many calories she needs just to make her body function. Since you said she has a desk job, I'm going to assume that her daily activities outside of exercise is sedentary. Using Jillian Michael's calculations (referenced above), this means that her maintenance calories (in other words, the number of calories she would need to maintain her current weight without exercise) are 1485.

You did not indicate what kind of exercise she was doing in the morning, but one common rule of thumb I've read (again, from Jillian Michaels) is that for every 25 pounds you have, you burn about 50 calories an hour. This is an estimate for circuit workouts, btw. Anyhow, your wife is working out .66 hours a day. If she were working out for one hour, she would be burning approximately 300 calories (25 x 6 = 150 pounds and 6 x 50 = 300). Given that she is working out .66 hours a day, she is probably burning closer to 200 calories (or a little less).

Therefore, if she wanted to maintain her current weight, she would only need to eat about 1685 calories (and, again, that is estimating based on a somewhat intense workout regime, so it might be a bit high).

In order to create a 500 calorie-a-day deficit from that, she would need to eat only 1185 calories a day. And, yes, it is recommended that people don't go below the 1200 mark, regardless of their height. But it is totally safe for your wife to eat just 1200 calories because of her current weight/activity level (as I've estimated it based on the information provided).

But a 1200 calorie-a-day diet isn't going to get her to lose one pound a week given what I've estimated her activity to be. It's close, though!

My recommendation (and the way I've had to lose weight since I'm older than your wife!) is to try to up the intensity and length of her workouts. I know that is hard given her work and being a mother and wife and all, but it really is going to be the absolute best way of creating a better calorie deficit than what she currently has and yet keep her at or above that 1200 mark (which is really tough to maintain for a long period of time). If she does up the intensity of her exercises and starts burning off more calories, she might even be able to eat back some of those exercise calories! But, right now, she is not in a position to do that and still create a 500-calorie-a-day deficit for a 1 pound-a-week weight loss.

If she can't up the intensity or length of her workouts, then she really needs to be militant about the calories. I noticed you said she eats between 1000-1300 'most' days, and I hope I've illustrated how just one day a week at even something like 2200 calories (as just an example) can have a tremendous impact on whatever deficit she created for a week.

It sounds like you are eating clean, so kudos to you on that! The best advice is really just to make sure those 1200 calories a day are balanced (and I know that's what Jillian recommends) and healthy. And I'm happy to hear that she's talked to a doctor about her thyroid and such.

I think it's great that you are trying to support her! Wish her best of luck!