It's Been a Month

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MaiLinna
MaiLinna Posts: 580 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I heard your body doesn't even start eating its own fat until a month after you start dieting. Of course my dieting hasn't been 100% perfect, buuuuut...will I start seeing results now?

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  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
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    I heard your body doesn't even start eating its own fat until a month after you start dieting. Of course my dieting hasn't been 100% perfect, buuuuut...will I start seeing results now?

    I don't think that's true that your body won't utilize fat at the start of a diet. I think your body will utilize what it needs to utilize to function, it doesn't refuse to do so because it hasn't been long enough. Results do take time but there isn't some magic time period in which they just start I'm afraid, there is only the amount of time it takes to notice changes and that is very dependent on your diet and your commitment.
  • MaiLinna
    MaiLinna Posts: 580 Member
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    1400 calorie average. Working on upping the exercise. My goal is 180 minutes a week. You can check my diary. I've been doing decently. I've had 3 or 4 bad days. Not terrible.
  • krawhitham
    krawhitham Posts: 831 Member
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    In my opinion, your food diary looks great. How tall are you and how much do you weigh, and what is your goal weight?

    These are important things to determine how quickly you'll lose weight, and to ensure you're eating above your BMR.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
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    I hope you didn't find my post discouraging I didn't mean it that way, I just mean that it takes time to lose enough fat to notice differences in your body and weight loss due to fat loss can be obscured by changes in water weight during the course of one month.
  • MaiLinna
    MaiLinna Posts: 580 Member
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    I am 5'6", 160 lbs. I'm aiming for 1 lb. a week for the first 10 lbs, then .5 lb a week for the rest. I'm more concerned with my size than what the scale says. I want to be back into a 6.

    You weren't discouraging at all Aaron, I just wanted to show you my diary. I've read about things like that, but the most common thing I'd read was that you don't see too many weight differences until your first month is over.

    Oh and my BMR was 1386, so I set my goal for 1425 since I tend to try and stay below the goal. I don't normally eat back all of my exercise calories but sometimes I'm in the mood for chocolate.
  • meritage4
    meritage4 Posts: 1,441 Member
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    Eat less chocolate and more fruit and veggies.
  • MaiLinna
    MaiLinna Posts: 580 Member
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    I can eat a piece or two of chocolate every day if I want. :P IIFYM. Though I have occasionally replaced the little chocolate squares with banana ice cream with a tbs. of unsweetened cocoa powder. Mmm...chocolate soft serve...
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Usually you'll see a fast water weight loss as your body stops storing so many carbs - which attaches with water.

    Just a fact of eating less than maintenance.

    And then immediately that day you start eating less, you start burning more fat than normal.

    As to where and how fast you'll see that in inches just depends, can't spot reduce, can't spot measure either.
    But weight should drop.

    Unless, you started up exercise too. In which case if cardio, the body is going to store more carbs, but still less than it would like to. It'll also retain water for muscle repair if your exercise was that beneficial.
    But there's an upper limit to that, so it's not like you can completely mask fat loss besides inches dropping somewhere.

    Great goals BTW.

    It's merely going to be a matter of waiting long enough to get a real sense of what is going on, and then adjusting from there.

    As a woman, your BMR literally does change through the month - so you need a month to really see the effects.
  • Sonicz90x
    Sonicz90x Posts: 40 Member
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    Eat less food. Make sure you're in a caloric deficit
    FIFY
    Absolutely this. If you're not losing, then you're not in a deficit.

    Fat is also being stored and burned at a near constant rate in your body. The net changes over time (dictated by your calories) will determine what happens to your body composition.
  • MaiLinna
    MaiLinna Posts: 580 Member
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    So that's why everyone seems to use that first month as the timetable so to speak.

    My regular calorie burn for a day is 1836. My calorie goal is 1425. For me, my goal is to hit 1400 every day, because if it's a day where I eat normal foods and not something I got shoved down my throat, I have trouble hitting even 1200. I've recently upped my water intake to 4-5 bottles a day.

    Also, forgot to mention that I think there's something wrong with my scale. Instead of starting at 0 it starts at 2 lbs, then I step on it and it's so hard to read that I just guesstimate where it is, AND THEN when I hop off it's on 4lbs. Who knows, I may have lost weight, gained weight... XD I really need a new scale.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    So that's why everyone seems to use that first month as the timetable so to speak.

    My regular calorie burn for a day is 1836. My calorie goal is 1425. For me, my goal is to hit 1400 every day, because if it's a day where I eat normal foods and not something I got shoved down my throat, I have trouble hitting even 1200. I've recently upped my water intake to 4-5 bottles a day.

    Also, forgot to mention that I think there's something wrong with my scale. Instead of starting at 0 it starts at 2 lbs, then I step on it and it's so hard to read that I just guesstimate where it is, AND THEN when I hop off it's on 4lbs. Who knows, I may have lost weight, gained weight... XD I really need a new scale.

    I'm guessing not digital scale then.

    There is an adjustment dial on the bottom to Zero out analog scales. Don't move it to adjust it.
    Push , release, settle, Zero.
    Test again, if it does not come back to 0, then yes, bad scale.

    Is that regular calorie burn from an activity tracker like Fitbit, or TDEE estimate, or MFP's non-exercise maintenance figure?

    You are including enough fat in the diet, and protein? Protein should be double the grams that MFP defaulted to.
  • Kevalicious99
    Kevalicious99 Posts: 1,131 Member
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    That's not true .. I lost 4 inches of abdominal fat in my first month. I wish I knew how I did it, but I have nothing. Still hoping for those last 2 inches to go on vacation.

    Good luck in your journey.
  • MaiLinna
    MaiLinna Posts: 580 Member
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    So that's why everyone seems to use that first month as the timetable so to speak.

    My regular calorie burn for a day is 1836. My calorie goal is 1425. For me, my goal is to hit 1400 every day, because if it's a day where I eat normal foods and not something I got shoved down my throat, I have trouble hitting even 1200. I've recently upped my water intake to 4-5 bottles a day.

    Also, forgot to mention that I think there's something wrong with my scale. Instead of starting at 0 it starts at 2 lbs, then I step on it and it's so hard to read that I just guesstimate where it is, AND THEN when I hop off it's on 4lbs. Who knows, I may have lost weight, gained weight... XD I really need a new scale.

    I'm guessing not digital scale then.

    There is an adjustment dial on the bottom to Zero out analog scales. Don't move it to adjust it.
    Push , release, settle, Zero.
    Test again, if it does not come back to 0, then yes, bad scale.

    Is that regular calorie burn from an activity tracker like Fitbit, or TDEE estimate, or MFP's non-exercise maintenance figure?

    You are including enough fat in the diet, and protein? Protein should be double the grams that MFP defaulted to.

    I looked for one but couldn't find it.

    The calorie burn is calculated by my height, weight, and age on a fitness video game. It's way lower than what everyone else logs so I can safely guess it's much closer to correct than their over expenditures.

    As of a body building site is said that I should aim for my lowest healthy weight I could possibly have for protein. It's hard to hit the 125g, so I downed it to 112. Still hard to hit most days. I just found cheap meat though so hopefully I'll be able to get closer.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    I'm guessing not digital scale then.

    There is an adjustment dial on the bottom to Zero out analog scales. Don't move it to adjust it.
    Push , release, settle, Zero.
    Test again, if it does not come back to 0, then yes, bad scale.

    Is that regular calorie burn from an activity tracker like Fitbit, or TDEE estimate, or MFP's non-exercise maintenance figure?

    You are including enough fat in the diet, and protein? Protein should be double the grams that MFP defaulted to.

    I looked for one but couldn't find it.

    The calorie burn is calculated by my height, weight, and age on a fitness video game. It's way lower than what everyone else logs so I can safely guess it's much closer to correct than their over expenditures.

    As of a body building site is said that I should aim for my lowest healthy weight I could possibly have for protein. It's hard to hit the 125g, so I downed it to 112. Still hard to hit most days. I just found cheap meat though so hopefully I'll be able to get closer.

    Wow, that is cheap scale then, no wonder inconsistent and can't even return to number it was at prior.
    Use it loosely, trust the inches and look more.

    That is very faulty logic on daily calorie burn - it's different and lower therefore it must be more accurate. Don't fall into that trap.

    That sounds like a BMR figure, which is NOT daily activity burn, that's what you'd burn sleeping 24 hrs for basic metabolism.
    You mentioned nothing about it asking about your daily routine and exercise, so how could it possibly know your daily burn, or TDEE?
    That explains exactly why it's lower - by a huge amount if it is indeed the BMR it sounds like.

    That is one quick and dirty method for figuring protein, and studies on body builders in a cut have shown the highest that showed any benefit was 0.85 grams per lb of current weight. And that was even including slight overkill to cover the outliers on the study.
    If the protein goal is hard to reach and stressful, go for the more realistic one.

    Usually the better goal is based on LBM, which means you know your bodyfat %. 1 gram per lb of LBM. But without having a BF% estimate, just go for 0.85 g.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
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    You want a cheap high protein snack try a 12 oz can of tuna....66g of protein right there that is half your total allotment in one can. Although have to watch the sodium if you start eating a lot of canned goods. Another option is something like whey protein for shakes. Protein shakes are pretty cheap when compared to say meat for amount of protein you get. Better of course to eat whole foods but in a bind and for convenience hard to beat a protein shake.
  • MaiLinna
    MaiLinna Posts: 580 Member
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    I'm blind...I found the switch on the scale and I fixed it. I weighed myself 3 times to make sure it came out the same each time. 155 lbs.

    .
    .
    .

    I'd lost 5 lbs and this whole time I had no clue.

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