Weight Loss and Measurements -- Help, Support

howebrook

I understand that while on the journey, I will gain muscle and that even though I might not "lose" weight on the scale my body is leaner because I have more muscle. I'm tracking measurements too so I know I've gained muscle and lost some fat.

Here is my question though:

At some point I have to lose weight as well as just replace the fat with muscle right? According to BMI I need to lose 50lbs before I am not obese and at 5'3" 183 lbs of muscle would still look silly, so at what point do I get to see the scale go down as well as the measurements?

weird_me2

I've noticed this time and in the past that when I really up my exercise intensity and add weight training my scale tends to stall for about 4 weeks. This time it was only 3 weeks because I got strep and lost a ton quickly (don't recommend that AT ALL).

One thing to consider is that you have to still be very accurate in your logging of your food and make sure to record every bite as accurately as possible. I've learned that exercising more/harder and weight lifting means I'm hungrier and can easily eat up all of my calories for the day + my exercise calories without a problem.

You also have to be as accurate as possible in logging your exercise calorie burns, especially if you tend to want or need to eat the exercise calories. I've found that treadmill calculators seem to be pretty accurate based on my weight/time/intensity and also by checking their calcualtions through various other websites. My fat loss for the month (using a handheld calculator) was only 1/10th of a pound different from my MFP calculation based on how many calories I consumed for the month vs. how many MFP estimated I burned for the month. Notice I said fat loss calculation, though because my actual weight loss was off by much more (until I got sick, I had lost way less than I *should* have according to the scale but body fat % was spot on).

Your overall rate of weight loss may be slower throughout the process, but you should see movement in a downward direction on a monthly basis if you are accurate on your calories in / calories out tracking. You may also lose much less than you think you have to if you manage to maintain muscle mass or even make small gains.

Try the calculator at http://www.cordianet.com/calculator.htm . You can enter your current weight and body fat % and goal body fat % and it will give you your goal weight based on either a lossee or lossless method. The lossee method assumes you lose some LBM as you lose weight and the lossless method assumes no LBM loss. This can help you set an interim goal and see how far from your first goal you are. By my ticker, I have about 75 more lbs to lose, but going by this calculator, I only need to lose about 48 more lbs if I go by the lossless calculation, so that's where I'm aiming for now. I'm not aiming for a super low body fat (23%) so it may change as I lose and it will change depending on how much LBM I lose, but it's a good starting point.

LorinaLynn

First, you're not going to gain much, if any, muscle on a calorie deficit. You might not always see weight loss on a scale, but that doesn't mean you're gaining muscle. It's just that weight loss isn't linear and things like fluid retention and glycogen storage can mask weight loss.

One thing you can do is find out what you're body fat percentage is, and from that, you can determine what your lean mass is. Aim to keep your lean mass about the same. It will probably go down some as you lose weight. But from that number, you can get a better estimate of what you're goal weight should be than just going by BMI.

For instance, when I was a skinny kid, I was about 110 pounds. Before joining MFP, I was 160 pounds and about 32% body fat. That means my lean mass (my bones, organs, muscle... everything but the fat) was about 109 pounds (32% BF means 68% lean mass, so 160 body weight x .68 = 108.8 pounds). There's no frickin' way I could have my total body weight be 110 pounds again without losing a lot of lean mass. A more realistic goal was me was to aim for an athletic 20% body fat (109 divided by .8), which, if I maintained my lean mass, would equal 135 pounds. When I first lost weight, I did lose some of my lean mass, so my body fat was a little higher, but over the past year and a half and a LOT of heavy lifting, I'm pretty much exactly where those calculations put me.