Losing weight too fast?

MasterZeddicus

Hello All!

I've been following MFP's suggested calorie deficit for the past 17 days pretty religiously, save for sunday and yesterday where I couldn't accurately track my food as I wanted to reward myself for my first 10lbs lost by ordering Pizza, and couldn't accurately get the nutrition for the pizza I ordered.

Anyways beside the point. In the past 17 days I've lost 13lbs...I went from 229, down to 216 (the weight I JUST weighed in at.), given that people have said losing more than 2.5lbs a week is unhealthy, and I'm obviously losing far more than that I'm a bit worried. Currentlly I'm losing close to 5.5lbs a week.

What should I do to offset this? Do I need to eat more? Or do I just have an extremely fast metabolism? I know my metabolism is faster than most peoples, as I used to work out a lot and was eating close to 4500 calories a day with no weight gain, the only reason I gained to begin with was because of an injury which forced me to stop working out, yet I maintained the same diet.

I know I'm not losing much muscle mass, I can see from my measurements that it's definitely a lot of fat that's being lost. Yet I am getting worried more than a little bit. I don't want to become unhealthy in the opposite direction, and wind up forming an eating disorder, or harming my body with lack of nutrition. That being said I'm not anymore tired than I was before, I don't get any headaches, in essence I feel pretty normal. When I wake up I'm pretty hungry, but after I eat I'm pretty full. And I snack on fruits and the like.

Any suggestions/comments?

joejccva71

Losing weight fast for the long term isn't healthy and you can run into trouble with putting it back on and/or other health problems perhaps. Also you run in the problem of stalling in your weight loss. However, for the very short term (8-14 days) it's not a problem if it's done correctly. Rapid Fat Loss by Lyle Mcdonald is probably the ONLY diet plan I would do to where it's very short term, works very well, loses the fat and retains MOST of your LBM.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com is his site.

MasterZeddicus

You misunderstand I'm actually not trying to lose the fat quickly, It just seems to be happening that way. Also can you explain why you say it isn't healthy and what kind of problems I could run into? I already have heard it isn't healthy which is why I posted this topic, the question here is why, and what is it going to do to me.

Putting the weight back on also isn't really a problem for me, regaining weight really just comes down to over eating once you're done a diet instead of eating a proper maintenance calorie intake. I'm not much of a binger, I keep take out food, or going out for chinese or the like to once a month, max twice, otherwise I maintain a pretty balanced diet. My injury is gone, and once I'm down to 210, I can head back to the gym and start running again.

EDIT: On a side note I seem to be following his rapid loss technique without having even read it. Large amount of protein, and little amount of carbs.

joejccva71

You misunderstand I'm actually not trying to lose the fat quickly, It just seems to be happening that way. Also can you explain why you say it isn't healthy and what kind of problems I could run into? I already have heard it isn't healthy which is why I posted this topic, the question here is why, and what is it going to do to me.

Putting the weight back on also isn't really a problem for me, regaining weight really just comes down to over eating once you're done a diet instead of eating a proper maintenance calorie intake. I'm not much of a binger, I keep take out food, or going out for chinese or the like to once a month, max twice, otherwise I maintain a pretty balanced diet. My injury is gone, and once I'm down to 210, I can head back to the gym and start running again.

When I said not healthy, I mean that you can lose both fat and LBM together to the point of where you may run into health problems down the road. This is an extreme thought but if you lose too much LBM to the point of where you are skin and bones, then your body starts pulling proteins from your organs, and you can guess what happens then. (of course this is the most extreme).

The worst it will do to a normal person is that you'll just lose LBM as well, and not only will your body composition look terrible but your immune system might suffer as well. Also you say that you don't have a problem with putting the weight back on. Not everyone can say this of course.

One of two things happen when people try to crash diet:

1. They eat low calories (500-1000) per day, lose some weight, then stall for weeks and get fed up. Start binging and they gain all the weight back.

2. They start out the same way as #1. Then they underestimate how much they eat once the crash diet is done, and put the weight back on.

Most people track their foods incorrectly even though they think it's right. Most people don't use food scales and actually weigh their foods and they just eyeball it thinking it's right..when it's not. Now some people CAN eyeball it with enough experience and get it right but those are far and few between.

Good luck on your recovery. I recently had a two disc edoscopic discetomy done and I'm back in the gym.

MasterZeddicus

Actually I have to thank you for the site, I edited my previous post but had done so at the same time as your reply. It seems I've been following his diet pretty closely just from my general nutrition knowledge. Very few carbs, high protein, and snack on measured fruits and veggies.

I always weigh my food, ALWAYS. Most people don't realize that a cup of something is ridiculously inaccurate. So I have a kitchen scale accurate to .1 of a gram. That's how I know I won't crash and start back into bad habits, when you weigh your food you know exactly how much you're eating, and it's pretty easy to see where the weights coming from.

I find it interesting that he says that with a high intake of protein you see little loss in LBM, this goes contrary to everything I've ever heard from any lifters, but does seem to agree with what's currently happening. I'll maintain it for another 2 weeks, as he suggests no more than 4, and see what kind of Body fat percentage I'm down to. Not to mention I'll be down to 210 by then and I have to rework my MFP diet when that happens anyways to accommodate my increase in weight training and activity.

EDIT: Also the reason I'm surprised by the huge amount of weight loss is I'm eating 1700 calories a day, it's not really what I would consider a crash diet. I mean I'm a big guy, at 6'4, but still 1700 is a significant amount.

llkilgore

Loss of water weight, probably. A larger than predicted weight loss in the first week or two of a diet is very common for that reason, but it won't last and isn't something that needs to be fixed by tweaks to your diet. Just stay the course.