Any weight loss 'tricks' that actually work?
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Based on my personal actiivty level I could likely still lose 1lb/week at 140lbs eating 1700 calories a day. It's all personal based on personal activity levels. If she works out an average of 10 minutes a day, she could lose on 1700 just fine. Chances are it's just poor logging or miscalculating burns or something similar.I was 140 at my heaviest and got down to 105. I ate a lot less than 1700 calories a day most days when I was losing weight.
she's also younger than me. I added that to my post. That might make a difference.
Possibly, although I've seen some older women posting numbers similar to mine when they are at my goal stats. I don't think age itself has a HUGE effect on TDEE unless the person has simply lost a lot of muscle mass, but do not quote me on that.
I am older and have a higher TDEE than many people at my weight. The impact is about 100 calories for every 10 years (on BMR). The biggest impact is the fact that we get more sedentary/less active as we age - which is variable.
True, and plenty of older adults are also not very heavy, further lowering TDEE. I've also creeped your profile pics a few times and I'm super jealous of your physique and lifting numbers!0 -
OP: there are very few pills/tricks that have more than a negligible impact on fat loss.
Eat at a reasonable caloric deficit
Try to hit your macros
Try to eat mainly nutrient dense foods but you can have treats if you want (assuming they are not trigger foods) - basically eat in a way that will allow better adherence
Try to be active and try to include resistance training in your exercise routine
Be consistent
Be patient
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Also, when did you start exercising (or increase the amount/intensity)?0
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Here is a trick that I use. I use MFP to count my calories in (food) and out (exercise).
It works!! Also, I set my activity level to Sedentary and only count intentional exercise. I eat back some of my exercise calories, but not always all.
I'm not sure how you got 1,700 cals. as a recommended intake when your BMR is more like 1,250. You may be very active, but perhaps you may also be overestimating calories burned by exercise?? To change goals on MFP, click Goals > Change Goals > Guided, Continue, enter in your accurate information and realistic goal weight, and click Update Profile. Try adjusting your levels, tracking that for a couple weeks, and see if you lose at the new level.
Direct Link: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/account/my_goals
BMI Calculator: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmi-calculator
BMR Calculator: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator
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at 5'2 I can only have 1,200 - 1,400 cals to loose weight maybe 1,700 cals you're eating at maintenance level0
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I am 5ft 2 I started at 148 pounds have always been active with my horses, I work with horses too when I Wanted to lose weight I Started hiking / hill walking with my other half and I joined a gym.. I was eating less than 1700 to lose.. you will be pleased to know now I am maintaining I am having to eat far more than 1700!! actually fighting a drop 104 pounds this morning would like to be no lower than 105 really my personal cut off low weight!! I still weigh food veges and cereal! to maintain under a very active setting I get 2010 calories with excersize am generally going over 2500 not only do I have an active lifestyle job wise which burns calories I go to the gym 5 times a week.. good luck just thought I would let you know not all of us shorties have to maintain on very few calories
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Thanks for all the advice! So I should have mentioned that I tried 1200-1400 cals about 2 years ago and did get down to 120 lbs but all my hair started to fall out. It's finally growing back so I am super weary of eating less than 1500 a day consistently.
I did take the advice to try a tape measure so I'll keep on that and see if there are any changes there.
I appreciate all the tips and tricks as well but most of them I was already doing. I think I may just need to be patient. Weight loss is not an overnight phenomenon.
Thanks for the help!0 -
So good discovery, well, sad actually, sorry about that.
But since total TDEE isn't really that high anyway, and you genetically may get a stressed body with too big a deficit - you have a narrow margin to play in for a deficit there.
When you were eating 1200-1400 back then, how much of a deficit do you think you were taking from what you burned in total? And did you attempt to hold that much deficit all the way to the end, or lessen it as you got closer to goal?0 -
"Real results" as in those gimmicks did something more than transfer money from the mark to the company?rachf2013 wrote:I'm wondering if anyone has tried any of the diet pills, weight loss patches, detoxes, clay wraps, etc and had real results?
No. They don't work for weight loss.
The only one of those you listed which has any possibility of working (and they don't work for everyone) is a prescription appetite suppressant. At your weight & height, you're not even remotely a candidate to use them, so forget about that.
I'm 5'9"-ish (5'10" on a good day) and when I weighed 275 lb my doctor told me to eat 1700 cal/day. Now that I'm down in the 200-teens, I'm aiming for 1400 & my doctor told me I could go to 1300.... [I eat] less than 1700 cal per day ... (I am 5'2" and 140 lbs)
That's _total_ calories, not net. Ignore net, ignore exercise. Just eat at your calorie goal.
At your height, you should be 105-130 lb to be in a healthy BMI range. So you're not far off, which means weight loss is going to be very slow. 0.5 lb per week would be a big success.
Here's a BMI chart. http://www.shapeup.org/bmi/bmi6.pdf
My doctor & dietician told me to eat 10x my healthy goal weight in order to lose weight to get there. So you should be eating 1050-1300 cal.
Once you get there, Harvard Medical School http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/HB_web/calorie-counting-made-easy.htm says you'll need about 15 cal/lb to maintain, if you're active at least 30 min/day.
So it's no wonder that you're not losing when you're eating so much more than you need.
Never heard of that as a side effect of a lower-calorie diet.I tried 1200-1400 cals about 2 years ago and did get down to 120 lbs but all my hair started to fall out.
For poor nutrition, yes, but at your height you should be able to get everything you need with 1200 cal.
Some classic posts:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10012907/logging-accuracy-consistency-and-youre-probably-eating-more-than-you-think
Other than the usual "eat less, move more" (the ELMM diet), here are some things you might not have thought of which can affect weight loss.
Blog posts have links to the research.
Sleep enough
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/MKEgal/view/2014-08-27-sleep-weight-control-690492
Eating higher protein & lower carbs leads to more weight loss
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/MKEgal/view/2014-08-09-high-protein-diet-685553
Try 45% carbs, 20% fat, 35% protein
Eat about half your calories for breakfast
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/MKEgal/view/2014-06-10-some-studies-about-weight-loss-667818
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"Most weight loss occurs because of decreased caloric intake.
However, evidence shows the only way to maintain weight loss is to be engaged in regular physical activity."
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/physical_activity/index.html
See the second half of http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/MKEgal/view/2014-06-08-exercise-667080 for advice about weightlifting which comes from a reputable source (the American Society for Sports Medicine).
You need to know the maximum amount you can lift, called the one-repetition maximum or 1RM.
For building muscle, you want to do 1 or 2 sets of 8-12 repetitions of a weight that's 70-85% of your 1RM.
For building endurance, do 1 or 2 sets of 15-20 repetitions of a weight that's 50-65% of your 1RM.
Either way, start low on both weight & reps and work up.
You should just be able to do the last 2-3 reps.
When it gets easy to do the maximum # of reps, add 5 pounds and go back to the minimum # of reps.
(From the American College of Sports Medicine's book "Resources for the Personal Trainer, 4th edition".)0 -
please for the love of god, stop telling people to eat 10x their weight in calories.
OP, use an actual calculator to estimate your maintenance needs, eat at maintenance if you want to really test the number, and then after a month reduce that by 20% max. You'll find that you're likely not eating 10x your body weight.
I wonder why you keep promoting 10x goal weight for loss when you yourself do not appear to be following this, according to your ticker at least. 165lbs = 1650 calories, not 1300. I exercise an average of 20 minutes a day, but really it's 45-50 minutes 3x a week, strength training. And if I ate my current weight OR my goal weight in calories, I'd seriously be stabbing people due to severe hanger. This is why calculating TDEE based on activity level and not arbitrary weight x a number is going to provide more customized results.0 -
please for the love of god, stop telling people to eat 10x their weight in calories.
OP, use an actual calculator to estimate your maintenance needs, eat at maintenance if you want to really test the number, and then after a month reduce that by 20% max. You'll find that you're likely not eating 10x your body weight.
I wonder why you keep promoting 10x goal weight for loss when you yourself do not appear to be following this, according to your ticker at least. 165lbs = 1650 calories, not 1300. I exercise an average of 20 minutes a day, but really it's 45-50 minutes 3x a week, strength training. And if I ate my current weight OR my goal weight in calories, I'd seriously be stabbing people due to severe hanger. This is why calculating TDEE based on activity level and not arbitrary weight x a number is going to provide more customized results.
Totally agree. MKEGal has been spreading this misinformation forever now and it gets tiresome. Her calculations are off by about 300 calories for me. TDEE calculators work best, try those first then adjust as necessary based on results! But I haven't had to adjust much, TDEE calculators based on activity seems to work scarily well for me. NOT 10x weight calculations....
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[quote="MKEgal;30421404
My doctor & dietician told me to eat 10x my healthy goal weight in order to lose weight to get there. So you should be eating 1050-1300 cal. [/quote]
No.
I believe I've seen you give this advice before and I've challenged it. In fact, I can't believe you're advising someone to eat 1050 calories a day, which is considered very low calorie.
This eating 10X your body weight is silly. While this applied this to your situation it does not mean it will apply to everyone else, or anyone else for that matter, especially to someone who is 120 pounds and wants to lose 5 pounds, or someone who is 300 pounds and needs to lose 100 pounds quickly under doctor supervision due to serious health risks.
I am 5 ft 4.5 tall and weigh 140 pounds. Say I want to lose five more pounds. If I lower my calories to 10X my body weight, which would be 1400, then I would lose way too fast, which is not healthy and would not be sustainable for me in the long run.
Granted I weight lift and run and exercise 5-6 days a week, I lose .5 pounds a week on about 1900 calories total. That's where I need to eat, not 10X my body weight.
The correct way is to find an estimate of your TDEE and cut from there.
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"Most weight loss occurs because of decreased caloric intake.
However, evidence shows the only way to maintain weight loss is to be engaged in regular physical activity."
http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/physical_activity/index.html
See the second half of http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/MKEgal/view/2014-06-08-exercise-667080 for advice about weightlifting which comes from a reputable source (the American Society for Sports Medicine).
You need to know the maximum amount you can lift, called the one-repetition maximum or 1RM.
For building muscle, you want to do 1 or 2 sets of 8-12 repetitions of a weight that's 70-85% of your 1RM.
For building endurance, do 1 or 2 sets of 15-20 repetitions of a weight that's 50-65% of your 1RM.
Either way, start low on both weight & reps and work up.
You should just be able to do the last 2-3 reps.
When it gets easy to do the maximum # of reps, add 5 pounds and go back to the minimum # of reps.
(From the American College of Sports Medicine's book "Resources for the Personal Trainer, 4th edition".)
No on this as well.
The only absolute in weight loss is to eat less calories than you burn, but exercise is at the discretion of the individual.
Lots of people maintain their weight without exercise. Think of all the handicapped people who can't exercise who have lose weight and maintain.
As for the shoulds regarding weight lifting-that's at the discretion of the individual as well, though I would say following a weight lifting program is helpful to some (but not to others) instead of inventing your own.0 -
Tracking is my secret.
I know its boring, but its true. When I "try to eat right" but don't track my calories, I don't lose. When I track consistently, I always lose.
My recommended step one for weight loss will always be tracking your intake as accurately as possible (meaning using a food scale and all that jazz).0 -
shibainugal wrote: »Are you measuring with a tape measure? You may be losing inches and gaining muscle. The scale isn't everything.
Not happening. Sorry.
OP, log everything you eat accurately and honestly. If you aren't losing, then you aren't in a calorie deficit. The only thing any of those "tricks" will make smaller is your bank account.
There's always one.0 -
Log accurately, drink 2-3 gallons of water daily, and walk 2-3 miles daily
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One "trick" that has helped me lose weight is using a food scale to weigh and pre-log my food. It also makes it possible to build in yummy things guilt-free.0
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herrspoons wrote: »please for the love of god, stop telling people to eat 10x their weight in calories.
OP, use an actual calculator to estimate your maintenance needs, eat at maintenance if you want to really test the number, and then after a month reduce that by 20% max. You'll find that you're likely not eating 10x your body weight.
I wonder why you keep promoting 10x goal weight for loss when you yourself do not appear to be following this, according to your ticker at least. 165lbs = 1650 calories, not 1300. I exercise an average of 20 minutes a day, but really it's 45-50 minutes 3x a week, strength training. And if I ate my current weight OR my goal weight in calories, I'd seriously be stabbing people due to severe hanger. This is why calculating TDEE based on activity level and not arbitrary weight x a number is going to provide more customized results.
Agree. We should have a flag for 'Ridiculous Broscience'.
YUP
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Nope, no tricks . .
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