Random question... How much weight did you lose or do you expect to lose in your first 21 days?

Considering I set my deficit at 1000 calories, I expected to lose roughly 3kg. What in reality happened was that I gained 1kg the first week, no change the second week and lost around 1,5kg the third week. All in all I lost .5kg in 3 weeks.

The reason for this is that I also started lifting weights and I probably had a decent amount of water retention because of it. Since then my average loss per week has been around .75kg

I setup with a goal to lose 2 lbs/week from caloric deficit, using an activity level that was probably below my true level. I also was exercising 4 days a week at the time, each day doing a combination of machine based weight lifting and treadmill cardio. Most days I ate back ~ 75% of exercise calories from cardio, and didn't track burn from lifting at all.

So, my expectation was to lose no less than the 2 lb/week, and likely more. I lost ~ 13 lbs the 1st 30 days of tracking, which averages out to ~ 3 lbs/week. I am sure that a portion of that was due to less water retention, because I started tracking sodium intake along with everything else, and I changed my hydration as well.

As far as perseverance, that has been easy for me. I have always been able to do something or stick to a plan, once I truly decide I want to. For years I was a smoker, and my mother constantly bugged me about it. I always told her "I'm not trying to quit, because I know I don't really want to yet", knowing that if i wasn't invested in the change, it wouldn't be sustainable. When I finally did decide to quit, I dropped them cold turkey, and haven't looked back ... its been over 2 years now.

It's been the same with eating better and exercising more. I finally decided it was time, and then I just started. I get my motivation from my clothes fitting better, having fewer aches and pains, and being able to exert myself doing everyday activities without getting winded ( climb stairs, walk around the block on break, etc ). Seeing the number on the scale go down is nice, but the other stuff is more important to me.

You also have to be able to take it all in stride. Although there are goals you want to achieve, the truth is, this should be more about the journey. You have to make it work in a way that you can continue indefinitely ( lifestyle change ). If you think of it as something you can pick up and put down, you will likely get caught in that cycle of stopping and restarting.

When you get to that point, and you realize your going to be doing this for the next 30+ years, it changes your perspective. When you start taking the long view, the day to day progress and fluctuations become less important, and you start paying more attention to the overall trend. And when that is going in the right direction, its easy to stay the course.

Here is my weight loss progress. I am set up for a 2-pound-per-week goal, but I actually achieve about 1 pound per week.

WatchTamimMelt2015 wrote: »

Details of what you did, if it went faster or slower than you accepted, what made you perseve

I lost about 5 lbs in the first 21 days.
I was set to lose 1 lb per week so I lost a bit more than my goal for those first couple of weeks.
I just used the calorie goal MFP gave me.
My expectations of losing any weight were really low so any progress was motivating.

I didn't track as religiously as I should, but looking back on my (private) journal from when I started, I lost 6kg in about 30 days.

To be honest though, I kinda jumped in at the deep end, completely overhauling my diet/daily routine overnight, and, let's be honest here, starving myself.

I wanted to lose 10 pounds, but in reality, I lost like 2...

Now I'm over 100 days in and still only at 11 pounds down, depending on the day.

Yay my body...

I started at 288
I'm now at 280 and I've been logging for 30 days. Granted I didn't try very hard the first 20. My diet still wasn't great but now in the last 10 I've lost 8lbs. So slowly but surely.
I have no scheduled exercise schedule but with the extra energy I've had recently I do a lot more around the house so I keep myself moving.

7lb in first 3 weeks (started at 195). The 4 weeks since have seen a more steady 5lb loss. I actually held off from adding exercise into my routine for around 2-3 weeks, and have very gradually increased the amount of exercise I'm doing (from 1x60 min workout in week 3, to 3h of cardio in week 7). I've got plans to increase that further over the next few weeks, but I think not pushing too hard at first, when weight loss was fine anyway, actually helped in the later weeks, and has enabled my loss to continue steadily. I've no clue if doing anything differently would have changed my early loss, I just did what felt right for my body.

I've only average 1 lb a week. So three pounds my first 21 days. I stuck to my calorie deficit and started being more active. I persevered because I wasn't happy with my body.