Is it "easier" when you have more weight to lose?

Hah.
Huh.
Let her live in her delusion.
I've experienced many stalls in this weight loss enterprise. It's taken persistence, endurance. She on the other hand will "diet" and lose and gain those vanity pounds over and over again.

I will give her this. When it's the "last" ten pounds to lose, I do think the body fights harder. Personally, I'll wave the white flag and plead surrender when I get close.

Being larger to start with (all else being equal) means you burn more calories, so creating a moderate calorie deficit MIGHT be easier. I mean if your TDEE is 2500, eating at 2000 vs TDEE 1800 eating at 1300 might be 'easier' to balance.

But ultimately its about motivation which comes from within. Not sure that can be measured in terms of easiness.

She is telling you you are lucky to start at a bigger weight? Seriously? No. And she sounds jealous. Easy to lose 60 lbs over only 5 months???

Maybe it's 'easier' in the sense that you can lose a very encouraging 6lbs in the first week if you're very obese, whereas if you only have a little bit of vanity weight to go it could take 1-2 months to lose a pound. I would imagine that being very large there would be a number of daily 'moments' which might spur people on to lose weight e.g. not fitting in seats, rude comments from unpleasant members of the public, health concerns from doctors. Whereas if you're more a BMI 25-26, reasonably active, and you just don't like the way you look in a bikini, it'd be easier to forget when you're lounging in your trackies watching TV and the Ben & Jerry's appears.

But I can imagine if you're 150-200lbs from goal, that seems a very, very long, hard and unknown road away, if achievable at all. You might have emotional issues to work through that have led to overeating, or physical problems contributing to inactivity. You could be involved in the weight-loss process for a good few years, so mentally it's a big thing to take on, compared to someone who wants to lose 20lbs before a honeymoon 6 months away or something.

People will say anything to make themselves feel better about lack of success, we're probably all guilty of it from time to time. It sounds like she didn't intentionally insult you, she was just trying to console herself for failing to meet her goals.
As for me, weight loss was never easy, there was no "honeymoon period." It was hard from day 1. I just wanted it badly enough not to give up this time.

I'm around 265 right now and, yes, it's easier for me to lose 10 lbs than it is for her. I can eat 1850 calories a day and exercise for 30 minutes 3 times a week and STILL lose 1-2 lbs a week. She'll have to eat much less or exercise much more. But, ultimately, it's much harder for me to get to goal weight than for her. Mine requires major dedication in terms of months, during which I'll reach plateaus and have injuries related to exercising with this much weight, etc. She has a tiny valid point and a much larger invalid one

The first 100#s I lost were easier than the last 20 I am working on, but it wasn't easy either way. Being motivated to eat less is harder now that the scale doesn't move as much for me.

If you look at it in percentage of body weight rather than pounds you can see why it is easier for a heavier person to lose weight.

For a 300 pound person to lose five pounds it represents only .017% of total weight

For a 150 pound person that five pounds represents .03% of total weight

Is it easier for a 300 pound person to lose 50 lbs, than it is for a 150 pound person to lose 50 lbs? Yes, of course it is.
Is it easier for either of them to lose the last 10 lbs to reach their goal weight? nope. The struggle is difficult for both.
Heavier people have more motivation and support opportunities (generally speaking) to get the first weight off. But they generally have worse eating habits to overcome. When the newness of losing the first chunk of weight wears off, and they get tired of salads, then it is very easy to fall back into old habits and gain the weight back.

People who want to lose the last 10 vanity pounds have to not only motivate themselves, when they aren't THAT overweight, but they also have to ignore all the people telling them that they are skinny already and they don't need to lose anymore.

I have been 10 pounds overweight, and I have been 100 lbs overweight. Both are a struggle.

As I've watched my weight fluctuate five pounds a week just on water weight, I wonder how in the heck will I know when I am close to goal if I am really gaining? If I lost five pounds, would I believe that either? It seems to me I would not believe the scale or even bother after goal unless I went twenty pounds over.

When close to goal, it's harder to see loss, as there's less to lose so you could not see it for water retention/what have you. But for sure, it's never "easy." Simple, but not easy.

The first 10 lbs are a lot easier to lose than the last. Creating a deficit when you you have a lot to lose means losing a smaller % of total maintenance calories.

That said, whenever someone complains about how hard it is for them to lose weight, they are making excuses.

astrose00 wrote: »

My coworkers constantly comment on my weight loss (about 60lbs in 5 and a half months). One of them wants to lose about 10-20lbs (babyweight / vanity pounds). She keeps starting and stopping. In one conversartion she told me that it's "easy" for me but "hard" for her. I want to lose a total of 80-100lbs when all is said and done. I don't think she was insulting me (I didn't take it that way, anyway). But my guess is that it's "harder" for her because she wasn't as overweight. I wanted to lose weight as much as I wanted to breathe so I guess, in that way, it has been an "easy" decision to do what I need to do. But THIS is not easy.

What do y'all think? Is it somehow easier to focus and stay on track when you have more to lose? What is your experience?

Personally, I think you accomplish whatever you are determined to do. 5lbs or 300lbs. Of course, 300lbs is extraordinary and takes years of dedication. But if you want to lose weight bad enough, you will do what you need to do.

Yes, it is easier in the sense that someone who is heavier is going to be able to; 1) eat substantially more and still lose weight, 2) have a much bigger margin for estimation errors, 3) simply have more body fat which allows them to sustain a larger deficit to lose faster and sustain that rate of loss for longer.

Someone who is relatively lean and just has a few vanity pounds to lose is going to find it slow going...the fat stores simply aren't there to sustain large deficits. When people lose fairly quickly with little in the way of fat stores, they are losing a lot of lean mass.

As an example, when I was heavier and needed to lose 40-50 Lbs and I ate 2000 - 2200 calories per day, the weight just fell off me. I'm currently in a small cut from a bulk I did in the fall and through the new year...at that same intake I lose about 0.5 to maybe 1 Lb per week tops.

It's not really that it's "harder"...it's that it takes more patience really, and most people are severely lacking in that.

jgnatca wrote: »

As I've watched my weight fluctuate five pounds a week just on water weight, I wonder how in the heck will I know when I am close to goal if I am really gaining? If I lost five pounds, would I believe that either? It seems to me I would not believe the scale or even bother after goal unless I went twenty pounds over.

^^^This is where trend analysis comes into play...the trend is far more important than the actual number. This is also why it's important to weight in at the same time of day and under roughly the same conditions each time...also, if you weigh daily you start to see your natural "cycle"...it's like a wave. For example, I'm lightest on a Wednesday or Thursday and my weight starts creeping up starting on Friday (yes, even though I've been perfectly awesome with my nutrition)...I'm heaviest on Sunday and Monday and I start the down curve usually Tuesday morning.

When you're maintaining you have a range, not an exact weight. Nobody weighs exactly XXX Lbs all of the time...body weight isn't static. When I did my initial maintenance and re-comp for about the last 1.5 years, I weighed anywhere from 178 - 184 with my average being about 182...I considered that to be "my weight".

I can understand where your co-worker is coming from. A friend of my mom's wanted to lose the last 10 pounds and went through desperate measures to do it (very low carb very low fat diet) and was averaging 800 calories a day, and then was not happy that she could "only lose" 4 pounds in a month. We worked out her maintenance and it was around 1400. I told her for smaller people who don't have much to lose it's hard to create a large enough deficit to lose the whole 10 pounds within a couple of weeks. She looked at me and said "you're lucky".

While losing the 100 pounds I did took a long time, I was eating normally without restrictions. Feeling she had to do much more to get remotely close to my results made her feel like it's unfair.

Your co-worker either does not know what to do thinking arbitrary diet foods will do it and then complain when it doesn't work, or knows what to do and lamenting the fact that she has so little wiggle room.

I definitely lost faster and easier when I was 300+ lb and it definitely feels like I'm putting in more effort and getting less out of it, but I already knew that so I'm not complaining. Other people may not know.

Personally it bugs me when people say that the weight 'melted' off of them at their highest weight, especially when I was that weight 40 pounds into my journey.

Like LAWoman above describes 220 as a very high weight. For her, it likely is because she used to be 115. For me, I'm still 5 pounds away from reaching her highest number after already losing 56 pounds. I would be severely underweight at 115. However, I'm 5'10" and have a large frame. Even at 225, I'm a loose size 12/tight 10.

It's all perspective.