How do they lose so much weight

I see people on MFP who have lost 45-65 pound in just around 3 to 3 and half months. I have been on here for 40 days and I am only down 12 pounds. I have been doing very well counting every calorie that goes into my mouth and trying to walk every day. Should I be doing more I want my weight to come off that fast. The only time I ever lost weight that fast I was doing a diet pill.

Many health experts have said that overweight/obese people tend to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time when they first start a diet and exercise regime. It is because they going from not exercising and eating a lot of food to cutting back on food and increasing the fitness. Their metabolism starts to increase and they burn energy faster than before. Also they have more fat than muscle and fat is slightly easier to burn than muscle.

However, like any other person trying to lose weight, they do plateau and have to change up their routine to lose more weight.

I weighed 327.6 pounds when I joined MFP and I lost 22 pounds in the first 4 weeks. I went from gorging on Pizza Hut and Blue Bell ice cream and doing nothing but watch television to eating fruits, vegetables, and lean meats and exercising 1-2 hours every day. It's like putting your body in shock and one of the results is losing a lot of weight, especially in the beginning.

I did an experiment about five years ago. I decided to see how fast my weight was coming on. Come to find out I gain 8lbs in 5 months, and i think holy crap.

Now, I was 243 before rejoining MFP, and I was pregnant at the time. The weight started coming off between all the walking I was doing between school and working. and after my son was born i was down to 204 in Jan (mind you, I had found out I was pregnant at the end of may going into june 2011). I gained a pound back in Jan (I was breastfeeding) and then after a month, I couldn't breastfeed anymore (my nipples were inverted, he couldn't latch on, my boobs are too big, and my body wasn't producing enough as in at one time i was producing 5 oz bottles and then it went down to 5ml in about a week).

Anyways, since Feb of 2012, I am down 28 more pounds without gimmicks or fads or anything (I can't say the same for a family member of mine who is doing body by vi) and basically have been doing JM videos, along with Dance videos, Zumba, and running and walking. As soon I was cleared in March, i started c25K.

Since joining, i have ran five 5ks (not the best time mind you but i still got out to do it) and right now, my weight isn't linear, some weeks i go without losing a pound, other weeks like fairly recently my weight drops down by 3 or 2 or 1. Important thing is that I don't eat out anymore (or if i do, its once in a blue moon), i don't eat bags of chocolate bars or bags of chips (I can actually have one serving and thats it....which i am proud of), I have been getting to a point where i refuse to eat process foods (kinda fight with the husband on that because he wants fast food and processed all the time) and I have been working out at home (I have a 9 month old and a lot of places around here don't have daycare gyms) and that is normally 45-60 minutes a day. I am very proud of how far I have come, and yeah I am not losing 60lbs a month but as many here can say, we all have wished to lose a lot at once but are glad that we don't and honestly learning the recipes for this lifestyle change is a lot more important then the scale.

I think it's probably all been said, but people who weigh a lot more tend to lose faster. Someone who is 350lbs will drop weight quite quickly initially, whereas someone who is 190lbs will do it a bit more slowly.

Also, it depends on what your diet/exercise was like prior to starting on MFP. If someone has gone from eating 3000 calories of crap a day and sitting on their ar*e to eating 1800 calories of healthy food and exercising several times a week, that will have a bigger impact than someone just altering their eating and exercise habits slightly for the better.

It's taken me 16 months to lose 50lbs, but I have toned up loads and lost a lot of inches and built muscle. I put weight on in my 2nd pregnancy, but have always been an active and healthy person, so there hasn't been much i can change in my diet, apart from actually eating a little more (not just salad) and doing more intensive workouts.

The more slowly you lose weight, the more likely you are to keep it off.

The faster you lose weight the looser your skin gets...I'm taking my time!

QFT


I'm taking my time too. I keep my deficit smaller. A one thousand calorie deficit would mean only eating 1100 calories. NO WAY! My TDEE is 2150, so I keep my net calories to 1800. Averaged out, my loss is about 10 pounds a month, but that includes my big "whoosh" at the beginning when I lost 24 pounds in less than 3 weeks.

I've seen a few diaries around where intake is down around 600-800 calories.

That's scary. I was reading someone's concern earlier about how easy it is to develop an ED in the dieting industry. 12 pounds in 40 days is very healthy. A person who is dieting and exercising properly should be losing between 1-2 pounds a week. Don't stress too much, you'll get there!

Holy crap you lost 12 pounds?? AWESOME.

Man, don't sell yourself short. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it right! Don't get impatient, this stuff takes time. Keep at it and you'll reach your goals in time.

Also keep in mind that a lot of people have lost weight before using MFP. In your ticker you can put total pounds lost (even before MFP).

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I've only lost about six or eight pounds since coming around here.

12lbs is great, keep up the good work

I see people on MFP who have lost 45-65 pound in just around 3 to 3 and half months. I have been on here for 40 days and I am only down 12 pounds. I have been doing very well counting every calorie that goes into my mouth and trying to walk every day. Should I be doing more I want my weight to come off that fast. The only time I ever lost weight that fast I was doing a diet pill.

You should look into Intermittent Fasting. In a nutshell, you are eating all of your calories in an 8 hour window instead of eating throughout the day. I'm doing IF and also on a 500 kcal deficit and within 3 weeks I could see the results without using a scale.

I've lost 46 lbs over 2 years (16lbs since starting MFP in May of this year)....NOT FAST AT ALL! And I am kind of ok with that. Sure I would love to loose faster, but then I know I would have to give up foods that I love, eat so few calories and work out constantly. I can't sustain that long term. What I'm doing now...I can! And honestly most of the time I don't feel like i'm even trying. I'm glad for people who can and do loose quickly, but I just know that would never work for me.

I completely agree. We gain weight slower than we gain in a normal routine. So the point from my perspective is not to create so many expectations about a quick loss.... Just think it is a change in lifestyle and that this road will be long.

So, if it's going to be long, why not enjoy it?

Learn to it so you are always full and sit back noticing that you are losing weight without starving or suffering. Or dieting!
I hate dieting!

The real question- since everyone is different, how long did it take you to gain that weight? I have never gained 60lbs in 30 months, I can't imagine taking it off that quickly.

We are so quick to pay attention to the loss and ignore the realistic issues of the gain- focus on that, because your body is like no other here.

For me, an extra 150 lbs took about 5 years to put on- and kept on an additional 3 years, up and down within a few pounds, telling myself I weighed less than I did- and refusing to get on a scale- then, dr visit (which also avoided) showed I was 330 lbs! At 5'9 I was able to hide it from myself I think, but how I fooled myself. So, that process took much longer, focus on how you gained, why you gained, and how long of time did you gain, then you'll know what your body gains at. I also did a average diet entry on MFP a couple months ago- (since when I started the weight loss I wasn't using this tool), my diet would range from 3000-4000 calories a day!!! And I was a carb addict- big time!