100 pounds lost in just under 8 months

Awesome job, man! You are an inspiration!

Congratulations! That's an amazing accomplishment. You look so much happier and more confident now.

I'm going through my blog here on MFP and finding a few pieces I think are worth sharing on the main board. This piece specifically was a blurb from a conversation I was having with a relatively lean female who was "having problems" getting leaner.

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Where I'm going with this is... being a light female, you don't have a lot of room to wiggle, calorically speaking. 12 calories per pound is typically where I'll start my clients who are interested in fat loss. That's assuming a maintenance of around 14-15 calories per pound and frequent exercise.

So in your case, 12 x 122 = 1500ish calories per day.

You're most likely eating close to that after you eat your exercise calories back. Plus, keep in mind that mostly everyone under-reports actual calorie intake. Humans are just very poor at doing this accurately. I have papers showing dietitians significantly under-reporting their true intake, believe it or not.

So in this case, we're assuming your maintenance is 14 x 122 = 1700 leaving you with a 200 cal/day deficit.

Given that there are 3500 cals in one pound of fat, assuming all you lost was fat (which isn't the case), it would take you 17-18 days just to lose one pound.

And even with that, smaller women who are trying to diet invariably deal with all sorts of water balance issues. Part of it is glycogen, as mentioned above. Each gram of glycogen that is stored carries along 3 grams of water. But it also has loads to do with hormone balances that tend to get wonky in women in your position.

So your fat loss could be happening at this excruciatingly slow pace and even then, you won't realize it on the scale as it can be masked by 2-5 lbs of water weight.

I see it all the time... women in similar shoes heading in the "right" direction but they never stick with things long enough to realize it. They solely use the scale to measure progress so they never actually realize they're losing fat and this is coupled with short-term perceptions/expectations. They never stick to the plan b/c they allow water weight to dominate their emotional well-being. More often then not they cave, binge, and try again next week or month or whatever. It's a viscous cycle.

More often than not, managing expectation along with tracking weight/body comp over many weeks and plotting a trend is what's called for. Or to put it differently, it's a matter of patience, assuming you have your nutrition and exercise dialed in correctly.

I'm just finishing working with a woman who's a fitness competitor. Over the course of a 2 month cut she averaged under .5 lbs of fat loss per week. And her weight remained the same throughout much of that time. Think about that.

Also, keep in mind that your maintenance may very well be under 14 calories per pound. Say it's 13. That puts maintenance at 1600 and if you're consuming 1500 cals/day, that gives you an average daily deficit of only 100 cals. At that rate, again assuming you lose nothing but fat, it would take you 35 days to lose one pound of fat.

See where I'm going with this?
- Steve

Steve is GREAT! His name on MFP is stroughtman81

Congrats - that is amazing!! Your an inspiration to the rest of us ..... Great work!! Thanks for sharing!

Amazing! That's a whole person!!!

That's awesome! well done!

That's awesome! WTG! I know how incredibly difficult it is, I've been heavy since a couple years after high school and finally just started taking it off. Lost 55 pounds so far and have probably about 90 - 100 more pounds to go. It's a struggle, but every pound you loose, is awesome - especially when you're able to shop in regular size clothes now I never wanna gain again cuz that's awesome for me!! I never thought I could get down there again myself but when I read stories like yours? It's definitely an inspiration. I just have to eat a lot better. I eat pretty much the right amount of calories, fat, etc.. (most of the time) ... but i just have to learn to eat more veggies and fruits. But for me, it's a start. Although I do love those strawberry fruit smoothies

I'll definitely take a peek at your site later

Incredible... simply INCREDIBLE!!!

Excellent work - you look a lot healthier too!

Woohoo that's awesome, I'm trying for my 100 for my 1 year in Sept. think I'll beat it though. Not 8 months but maybe 10:)