I made it! 166 lbs to 135 lbs (5'6" female) - with pics

im 5'6 also, i have a similar build as you. im hovering at around 187 right now but as soon as i start hovering the weight comes off fairly easily. my blockage is all mental and something i need to work on. its good to see that my goals are realistic, i would love to see myself at a size 6.i was hoping to be around 135 and that size.

Bretto wrote: »

Great job on your success. I am 5'7" and my starting weight this round (Sept 2014 was 174) with my highest weight ever being 180 (2013). These last 3 months have been hard,, but I am now down to 157. I too have a goal weight of 135. I do agree with you, I could be happy at 140 or 145, but at 135 I feel amazing. I am trying to do it the healthy way.

I have acouple questions for you. I will be ramping up my half-ironman train starting at the end of December. I am really concerned I will not be able to lose while doing endurance training. (15 hrs a week with one really long 4-6 hr workout). Did you notice anything when you were doing your longer trainings? Did you watch you carbs on your long workouts or not worry about it.

I'll suggest something that worked great during training for Aug half-ironman, and half-marathon couple months later, interrupted with 80 mile ride in middle.

You are very correct, it is hard to lose, because that frequent intense exercise is a big stress, and diet is a stress, and diet makes recovery take longer, so now even more stressful.
That will mess with weight loss and performance badly.

What I did was set MFP to maintain, logged my exercise with most accurate calorie burn possible (personal calorie burn formula from VO2max test) via Fitbit (to handle rest of the day's variable activity level).
Then the 2 rests days I ate at maintenance, the given goal. Usually rest days followed the hardest workout days, and I needed extra cals during recovery. 2500 cal or less usually.
2 easy workout days with maintenance up to 3000 I left 10% in the green, easy math for deficit. So usually 250-300 deficit.
2 medium workout days up to 4000 I left 15% in the green for deficit. 450-600 deficit.
1 long hard day naturally big fat burn cardio 4000 and over 5000 sometimes, left 20% in the green for that much deficit. 800-1000 deficit.

Worked great. Plenty of energy, got to eat when I really needed it to recovery for workout tomorrow (and made sure 30 min snack was 4:1 carb:prot ratio if workout tomorrow). I also had what might be considered an easy routine. 1 day swimming, 2 days bike ride, 2 days running. Slow jog after swim and after short bike ride, so almost 4 days with some running. Making up for fact I had only 4 weeks run training from nothing for 2 months.

Bump

You look amazing! Congrats!

Looking great! Grats on the success!!

Fantastic job!

Great job, you look amazing, and you did it the right way!