In 5 weeks you'll lose 10lbs... why is it not working?

Good post.

Here's an interesting new study for people who are afraid to lose weight quickly.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/07/us-diet-weightloss-idUSTRE6464BQ20100507

Note that that study only included obese women. It cannot be applied to everyone who would like to lose weight.

I noticed that too. If a woman is obese, she is likely to be starting out with a fairly high tdee... Which means she can accomplish a bit of a bigger deficit. But it says nothing in terms of psychology, support systems they had in place, or what their quality of life was like before, during, and after.

The study is small (260ish people), and very subjective.
It didn't sell me on anything.

But thank you for sharing.

Eta... I read it again... All it really seemed to conclude was that the ones who lost faster, lost more over the 18 month period... But it says nothing about how they fared over the long run. It also didn't state if all the women had the same amount of weight to lose.

This was an awesome post!! Thanks so much for taking the time to post this! I also would like to know when you eat under your calorie goal, you get this message that if you keep eating like this, you will weigh ...so much in 5 weeks.........well guess what i've been told that for a year and I still haven't got to that weight that they told me I'd be at.......lol

Once again thanks so much for the post!!!

That message is probably more often wrong than it is right. We all know that life does not exist in a vaccuum. And as women, that 5 weeks invariably spans a cycle too - where we retain water. Weight is a combination of factors too - water retention, dehydration, time of the month, whether you've recently used the washroom... all of those combined can EASILY make up multiple pounds.

I tend to weigh daily... but I try not to worry too much about that daily value and rather watch the overall trend.
I have seen my weight spike by up to 8 pounds over a few days, and then drop back to normal. So to watch your weight on the order of a 5 week rolling time scale seems somewhat counter intuitive.

That statement is more like a carrot that they use to dangle in front of you - prompting you to keep going. And rather than focus on that "promise" I'd encourage you to focus on trends... are you trending downward, upward, or relatively stagnant.

If you are stagnant, then you need to change up one of the variables a bit. Maybe swap out an old exercise and in a new one. Add a little bit more exercise to your day. Take one of the regular items on your menu and swap it for something that is a little more healthy for you... that sort of thing.

I am over my calories most of the time and still losing weight. My diet clinic doctor said that I am still losing weight because the quality of the food I eat is good.(Lots of fruit and vegetables, nuts, not much processed food.)

You lose weight because you are consuming less calories than you are burning.

If you estimate that you burn 2000 cals a day, and decide to eat 1750... to lose 0.5 pounds a week... and then end up eating 1900... you are still at a 100 cal deficit and would still lose weight.

But come now... we all know that there is no way we can be accurate to the calorie. We ESTIMATE our daily burn, we estimate our food calories, we estimate our exercise calories. And unless you are bang on with your estimates, it's way easy for you to be up or down a couple hundred calories here and there.

Maybe you're moving a bit more than normal, or you had a crazy active day, but didn't really log it. Maybe IN REALITY you tend toward burning 2300 cals a day instead of 2000.

It's not an exact science... which is why worrying about being 5 cals over is such a waste of brain power.



Oh... and for the record... if you're eating a pile of veggies and estimate 1/2 cup of cucumber instead of 1 cup of cucumber... the impact is about 15 calories. If you estimate 1/2 a cup of ice cream, instead of 1 cup of ice cream... the impact is about 170 calories.

So - be smart about what and how you estimate. (And still eat the ice cream - just be honest with yourself... a bowlful is typically NOT a single serving.:laugh:)