Extremely slow weight loss
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snickerscharlie wrote: »shadowfax_c11 wrote: »Have you been using a food scale?
This.
This chart is for people who are experiencing a plateau, but most elements of it apply to you, too. Have a peek:
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coolcoci_115 wrote: »Be patient. Keep doing what you're doing.
Do some more math. .5 lbs lost X 52 weeks = ?
If only I had the luxury of time. In about 9 months from now I'll become a resident with a 80+ hour work week. Attempting to find time to meal prep and work out will be extremely difficult. Hence my want to whip up into shape before that.
You will not be able to return to your old habits 9 months from now. In fact, you need to stay on your current diet forever! By the time you reach your goal your TDEE will be reduced by about 200 calories per day, and since you're losing 0.5/week your deficit is currently 250 calories. So you'll be able to eat 50 calories more per day than now which is, essentially the exact diet you are currently on.
I recommend you make a plan that you can fit into your 80 hour work week and start following it, and plan to follow it forever. Because while you can push for 9 months and get to your goal, if you slack beyond your current plan you will just put a chunk of it back on.
I agree with everyone else that you are eating more than you think. But weighing and measuring obsessively is not the only way to adjust your deficit - I find it easier to do by watching my graph. I have a post about that if you don't want to have to weigh and measure forever.
Osric0 -
Many restaurants can give you the nutrition info if you ask for it.
Unfortunately nutrition info at restaurants are typically off by 20% can be off by as much as a factor of 2. There is no substitute for monitoring your weight and using your graph to calculate your deficit if you want to know what it is and lose or maintain consistently.
Osric
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coolcoci_115 wrote: »Example: fancy downtown place I ordered quail cooked over a bed of strangely sweet beans with peach crisps. There is no way of figuring that one out. Maybe it was a little, maybe it was a lot. The quail was tiny but who knows.
So here's what you can do: I'm sure you've eaten plenty of chicken at home. Let's say you usually eat 4 oz. When you were eating the quail, did it seem like the amount of chicken you would normally eat at home? Log 5 oz. to be safe. Did it seem like a little more than you would normally eat? Log 7 oz. Did you feel like you were stuffing yourself with it? Log 9 oz. As for the beans, when the server checks in with your meal, say "Wow, these are SO good? What are they? How were they cooked? So good!". Now picture a can of beans, did this seem like the size of a full can? Half a can? Log it and whatever the server said they were cooked with. I have no idea what peach crisps are, so you're on your own there! And whenever I eat t a restaurant, I always log a tablespoon of butter, because you know at least that was in there somewhere.
So get a food scale and use it when you are at home. And then take what you learn from that with you out into the world so you can guesstimate meals out. And log everything. EVERYTHING. Good luck :drinker:0 -
Coolcoci, you have the exact same height and starting weight as me. What I've found is even eating out for one meal makes a difference on the scale that week unless I've eaten out and managed to stay in my calorie range which is hard. It really stinks how just one day of overheating can derail things
I'm eating 1350 cal a day and doing little exercise. If I stay strict at that, maybe go over 500 cal one day at most, I lose at least 1 to 11/2 pond per week. Usually one. Seriously watch out for going over at weddings, eating out, ect and I'll bet you'll have success. 0 -
lindsey1979 wrote: »I have a couple of questions for you:
(1) You acknowledge some sources for possible error in your calorie counting -- like going to restaurants. How often is this happening? If it's only once a week or less, you're probably okay, but if it's several times per week, this could be the source of your issue. Calorie counts in restaurants are notoriously inaccurate (sometimes up to 30%), so you could be killing your deficit you've created the rest of the week right there.
(2) If you're pretty confident in your calorie counting and the potential sources of error are few, what are your numbers? From what I was able to gather from your initial post is that you believe you're eating at an average daily deficit of about 750 cals but only seeing weight loss in terms of 250 cals. Is that accurate? If so, do you know your macro break down approximately? It's possible that you may see better results from a shift in macros (but cals staying the same), but before I suggest anything, it would be helpful to see your cals and macros generally.
1) Yes I do go to restaurants 1-2 times per week. And this is SO FREAKIN' TRUE!
It's like you screw up a little once, and your paying for it the rest of the week.SeptemberFeyre wrote: »Coolcoci, you have the exact same height and starting weight as me. What I've found is even eating out for one meal makes a difference on the scale that week unless I've eaten out and managed to stay in my calorie range which is hard. It really stinks how just one day of overheating can derail things I'm eating 1350 cal a day and doing little exercise. If I stay strict at that, maybe go over 500 cal one day at most, I lose at least 1 to 11/2 pond per week. Usually one. Seriously watch out for going over at weddings, eating out, ect and I'll bet you'll have success.
2) Macros averaged over the last week are: Carbs 39%, Fat 38%, Protein 22%
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coolcoci_115 wrote: »Example: fancy downtown place I ordered quail cooked over a bed of strangely sweet beans with peach crisps. There is no way of figuring that one out. Maybe it was a little, maybe it was a lot. The quail was tiny but who knows.
So here's what you can do: I'm sure you've eaten plenty of chicken at home. Let's say you usually eat 4 oz. When you were eating the quail, did it seem like the amount of chicken you would normally eat at home? Log 5 oz. to be safe. Did it seem like a little more than you would normally eat? Log 7 oz. Did you feel like you were stuffing yourself with it? Log 9 oz. As for the beans, when the server checks in with your meal, say "Wow, these are SO good? What are they? How were they cooked? So good!". Now picture a can of beans, did this seem like the size of a full can? Half a can? Log it and whatever the server said they were cooked with. I have no idea what peach crisps are, so you're on your own there! And whenever I eat t a restaurant, I always log a tablespoon of butter, because you know at least that was in there somewhere.
So get a food scale and use it when you are at home. And then take what you learn from that with you out into the world so you can guesstimate meals out. And log everything. EVERYTHING. Good luck :drinker:
I love this advice, this is very helpful thank you.
And just so everyone knows, I've already gone out and purchased a scale from Walmart. The general consensus says log everything, measure accurately, estimate restaurant food to your best ability (but keep these to a minimum). The whole don't worry about exercise thing for straight weight loss goes against everything friends have told me who stress exercise. That feels like a weight lifted off my shoulders (haha pun not intended but pretty funny
). I can figure out food, exercise... well I shall come back to that topic another day. 0 -
coolcoci_115 wrote: »coolcoci_115 wrote: »Example: fancy downtown place I ordered quail cooked over a bed of strangely sweet beans with peach crisps. There is no way of figuring that one out. Maybe it was a little, maybe it was a lot. The quail was tiny but who knows.
So here's what you can do: I'm sure you've eaten plenty of chicken at home. Let's say you usually eat 4 oz. When you were eating the quail, did it seem like the amount of chicken you would normally eat at home? Log 5 oz. to be safe. Did it seem like a little more than you would normally eat? Log 7 oz. Did you feel like you were stuffing yourself with it? Log 9 oz. As for the beans, when the server checks in with your meal, say "Wow, these are SO good? What are they? How were they cooked? So good!". Now picture a can of beans, did this seem like the size of a full can? Half a can? Log it and whatever the server said they were cooked with. I have no idea what peach crisps are, so you're on your own there! And whenever I eat t a restaurant, I always log a tablespoon of butter, because you know at least that was in there somewhere.
So get a food scale and use it when you are at home. And then take what you learn from that with you out into the world so you can guesstimate meals out. And log everything. EVERYTHING. Good luck :drinker:
I love this advice, this is very helpful thank you.
And just so everyone knows, I've already gone out and purchased a scale from Walmart. The general consensus says log everything, measure accurately, estimate restaurant food to your best ability (but keep these to a minimum). The whole don't worry about exercise thing for straight weight loss goes against everything friends have told me who stress exercise. That feels like a weight lifted off my shoulders (haha pun not intended but pretty funny ). I can figure out food, exercise... well I shall come back to that topic another day.
Take the exercise thing with a grain of salt. Yes, it's absolutely correct that the caloric deficit is going to determine a lot of your weight loss goals, but exercise can also be very important.
For example, exercise can improve other things that indirectly help you better lose weight/fat. It releases endorphins into your brain, so you feel better and sleep better (which is really important for weight/fat loss). It also generally helps insulin sensitivity. For me, I find it MUCH, MUCH easier to eat well when I'm exercising consistently. I find that I crave healthier foods and a lot of the less healthy foods just aren't as appealing to me, so they're far less a temptation.
Also, certain types of exercise can greatly help you maintain your LBM in a caloric deficit -- meaning that you'll lose more fat than muscle as you drop weight. This is specifically is heavy lifting. Eating enough protein also helps with this -- 1 g per 1 lb LBM is a good rule of thumb.
So, although yes, you can lose weight by diet alone, adding in exercise can make it much more manageable and/or yield better weight loss and body composition results.
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coolcoci_115 wrote: »Be patient. Keep doing what you're doing.
Do some more math. .5 lbs lost X 52 weeks = ?
If only I had the luxury of time. In about 9 months from now I'll become a resident with a 80+ hour work week. Attempting to find time to meal prep and work out will be extremely difficult. Hence my want to whip up into shape before that.
Just because you will be a resident doesn't mean you can't mean you can't Maintain your weight.. If you whip into shape prior. I worked in The ER trauma 1 center for 8 year, don't now though and there was a lot of food always in the common areas for employees from the drug reps. But I suggest making protein shakes or smoothies, or juicing some vegetables to get those vitamins and essentials in and taking Lara bars in your pocket that only have 4 ingredients and are cheap and give you energy.0 -
You received a lot of good advice. I travel a lot for work and I mostly eat out so I'm not going to use that as an excuse. My BMR is around that 16xx mark as well and I just make it all fit in my calorie allotment. You don't have to lower your BPM to a fat burning zone. You just don't need to try to max out your heart rate every single time. Don't stop what you are doing to walk just so that you can lower your HR. As someone else said, you should be focusing more on what you are going to be doing as a resident 9 months from now. Find those foods and eating habits now so that it's not going to be a major change. Getting in shape to then get out of shape seems like a waste to me.0
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Lots of good advice here. The truth is that you ARE losing at a decent rate; if you were working out for a month before you started logging, it is entirely possible that you lost a few at the front end (hence not seeing the "bonus pounds" at the outset).
I'm a lawyer, so I get the work/stress/time demands challenges. In fact this summer when I was in heavy trial prep, very stressed, I realized I'd put back on a bunch of weight (went up a jeans size) and more importantly I felt just awful. Tight chest stressed and no energy. Waking up with horrible headaches from grinding my teeth at night. The stress was literally eating me up like battery acid. So I made a conscious decision to reclaim a piece of my day and create some positive structure. (This may get a bit tl;dr, but maybe some of it will be of service or interest to you, as I face some similar challenges.)
First, actually, I quit diet soda. I know that a lot of people believe there's nothing wrong with it, and they may be right. I just know that when I've cut weight previously I've leaned on these artificial sweeteners a lot. So before I started exercising and logging a deficit, I got off diet soda long enough to stop missing it. Now I drink that fruity seltzer (a lot of it), and the headaches are all but gone (which could even just be a hydration issue). I have great tap water here (mountain well water), but honestly what I want 99% of the time is the bubbly stuff. Trust me, I still get plenty of caffeine.
Then I started logging to a deficit and working out again -- but the working out I'm doing right now is long hilly hikes. I am really very fortunate to live in the country/an exurb of a major city, so I can go right out my front door and see horse farms, mountains, all kinds of wildlife. My own yard is about a 15% grade the length of a football field, so I frequently just go up and down that. And I carve that time out every day for myself -- exercise, meditation, prayer, daylight, fresh air and stress relief all in one shot. I started at 45 minutes and now it's over an hour. And I basically do this daily. SO I agree with the comments above -- it doesn't have to be marathon training or even C25K -- great as those are. And heart health and stress relief are very important -- while you can lose weight without exercise, you have MANY reasons to exercise that have nothing to do with scale weight.
The logging and weighing seems like a lot of focus and energy right now, but it will get better. The advance meal prep and figuring out what works for you actually makes it more efficient. There are services in most major cities who will do this for you, but for the most part it's expensive and unnecessary. An hour or so a week is enough to get you situated. (There are lots of hacks for menus/prep/ordering things online.)
The "grab and go" challenges are significant. And yeah, if you're on the run and starving, you have to do what you have to do. Restaurant portions are such a crapshoot; even things you'd think are really standardized like McD's. I recently got a takeout portion of thai shrimp (stock velveted, not fried) and brown rice from a chain. I had a number of calorie counts for this item on MFP and from the restaurant. But the dish didn't look right to me. It looked really light on shrimp and more rice. And so I took it apart and weighed it separately, and sure enough, the rice was over and the shrimp was under. Which if you think about it -- cheaper for the restaurant, right? And I bet anything that these things happen all the time. Fat is cheap. Protein is expensive. And this is a chain with published calorie counts and macros.
Bottom line is that "life" is going to happen, and the more straight-up-the-middle you are on logging days you can quantify, the less that will impact you. And with experience you will learn that, over time, little blips don't change the trend. It's whether you consider it a blip or a fork in the road that does.
As far as eating back exercise calories goes -- I do. It is what gets me into my sneakers when it would be easy to blow it off. In theory "leaving some on the table" is a good idea. If nothing else, netting out the 1-2 calories a minute you would have burned at rest is probably a good idea (because I think in essence you're double counting otherwise). And in theory this impacts longer steady state workouts more.
You may well have a skewed idea of the calorie deficit you need, because in truth you're taking in more than you think due to difficulties in counting. But every number out there (TDEE/RMR/calories in a peach) is inherently just a prediction. The real test is what goes on in your own walking, breathing laboratory. You're losing consistently with what you are doing and if you can find easier and more sustainable ways to maintain that, you will be down 15-20 pounds in nine months, with habits that you can sustain when your schedule changes. That is enough time to develop the habits, knowledge, and resiliency you need to make it work long-term.
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coolcoci_115 wrote: »I think it's been officially two months since I began this process. I really (re)started exercising 3 months ago, but started counting my calories and inputing daily weigh-ins with MFP exactly two months ago. Right now there is about a 4 pound difference between when I started and today (187.4 --> 183.2). That averages a loss of 0.5 lbs/week. Now I'm not ungrateful, but I'm also very frustrated. Almost everywhere I read on the internet, there is a quick and fast weight loss at the very beginning followed by a plateau. I never experienced this.
I think this is more common when people radically change how they eat. I just ate 500 calories less of what I normally eat, and did not experience an initial big loss.
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One thing that really helped me was to recognize that I wanted to change my entire relationship to food. It was more than the lbs I had put on. I was uncomfortable with how I was eating, too. The Calorie Counting system helps me a lot to be real about what I can eat and still lose. I am set at 1200 calories but really wasn't losing much at that level. I reduced it and found my own groove as far as losing weight goes. I started adding in exercise, but moderately. Zumba Gold twice a week. Then I had to up my hours at work to 11 a day, so couldn't make the class. What I did was just buckle in for strict calorie counting then. Not even half a bag of french fries.
Anyway, I know when I accepted that this is more than just about losing weight. I need to get back to moderation with food, period. I just have to recognize and embrace that at my age, I can no longer eat large portions. I knew it was giving me stomach problems, but I had no idea how much would change when I got back on track with eating.
All of my stomach problems have gone away. I mean......all of them. It's amazing. Apparently I was really stressing my body out by over-eating. The calorie counting has changed my diet as well. I find I'm hitting my carb goal easily with vegetables. And, lo and behold, they taste good. I am busy right now, so I just chop a bunch up, toss them in light olive oil and roast. Then I have veggies for quite a few days.
Eating out? I do Panda Express. The bowl with vegetables as the side and then chicken and mushrooms or chicken and green beans is less than 400 calories. Or Subway ham or turkey, no cheese, mustard only. For me, a standard breakfast of 80 cal yogurt with a hand full of my favorite cereal for crunch is less than 200 cals and works great. You've got your own set breakfast, too. I find that really helps me not obsess about food so much. Just eating the same thing takes the choices out of the equation.
I found some bread for 45 cals a slice for when I really don't have time to cook. Corn tortillas work well, too. Making a wrap with those is fast and easy.
Just find what works at the rate you want to lose. For me, all the weighing and whatnot would take me too deep into ocd territory. I need to lose, but I'm not going to be doing this for a year, even. I just know what I'm eating and keep it honest on my logging food. I do log every day, no matter what. I learned that in Weight Watchers years ago. People who log lost weight. Those who didn't, don't.
I set my calories at 1000, and that's working for me well. I'm losing at a healthy rate of 2 lbs a week. And I am looking forward to adding back in calories as I near my goal.
But the important point for me was to work on my entire attitude about food. Obviously what I was doing was adding weight in life. I'm not interested in yo-yo dieting. And I do like moderate exercise. So set your goals to what you want out of this effort. It's simply too much work to lose weight to NOT make it so that you can succeed.
Good luck!
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coolcoci_115 wrote: »...Exercise: i HATE exercise... did I say that I hate exercise. I would rather eat less than go exercise. Hands down, any day. People tell me it energizes, makes you feel better, clears your head. B**S***. I never felt energized after a workout or cleared my head. I have felt sweaty, exhausted and defeated. But never the less I have been trying to go jogging/walking for 30 minutes most days of the week. I started the C25K program but fell of around week 4/5 because I could not run for 20 minutes straight. I eventually just revised the plan to 5 minute warm up walk at 3.5 mph, followed by a 10+ min run, followed by 4 min walk 3.0 mph, 5 min run (5.0 mph), rest and than last 2-3 min run. I try to increase that first bout of running from 10 min to 11 min, to 12 min every workout. There was one week, I don't know what happened, I actually ran 19 min straight, 19 MINUTES!!. I didn't run the weekend, and bam I was back down to 10-11 min and that's where I'm stuck now...
I haven't run since I was in the military and had no choice about running. I have no desire to run. Or walk on a treadmill. However, I very much enjoy hiking in the woods. And gardening, and yoga, etc.
Sure, you don't need to exercise in order to lose weight. However, it does obviously help, and people who successfully stay in maintenance tend to exercise (maybe someone can source this for me.)
Exercise will also help you with your residency program.
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Let us all remember that eating a low carb with high protein meal works well with hunger pains. When it comes to losing weight, a calorie is not just a calorie. Your body always likes the short cut so it would rather go for stored fat than work all day to process the protein. Carbs (sugar) gets a direct pass to the blood stream and is quick to be stored as fat.
After you drop a few pounds, eat more carbs the next day so your body will not go into starvation mode. Then go back to low carb till you drop the next two pounds. Your body is a chemical furnace. Feed it the right calories to keep it as a fat burning machine.
This app is great for that. With this app, low carb diet, and exercise I always drop 2to 4lbs and I am never starving.
Water is very important. Drinking lots of water actually helps flush fat and water weight. Be careful not to drink too much at night. Nobody wants to wake up at night to go to the bathroom several times.0 -
sinbadfxdl wrote: »Let us all remember that eating a low carb with high protein meal works well with hunger pains. When it comes to losing weight, a calorie is not just a calorie. Your body always likes the short cut so it would rather go for stored fat than work all day to process the protein. Carbs (sugar) gets a direct pass to the blood stream and is quick to be stored as fat.
After you drop a few pounds, eat more carbs the next day so your body will not go into starvation mode. Then go back to low carb till you drop the next two pounds. Your body is a chemical furnace. Feed it the right calories to keep it as a fat burning machine.
This app is great for that. With this app, low carb diet, and exercise I always drop 2to 4lbs and I am never starving.
Water is very important. Drinking lots of water actually helps flush fat and water weight. Be careful not to drink too much at night. Nobody wants to wake up at night to go to the bathroom several times.
The OP already has enough problems. Please do not add inaccurate information to the mix.
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