People aiming for a half pound a week loss

victoria_1024 · January 2016

I reached my goal weight of 137 back in October. It was 75 lbs lost and officially the top end of a healthy bmi. I wasn't sure if I wanted to lose more or not so I maintained at about 135 for a couple months. After Christmas I decided to try to lose another 8 lbs to get more in the middle of a healthy bmi range. I am aiming for a half pound a week and trying to focus more on fitness. My weight has been pretty stagnant. I just hover around that 135 mark. Sometimes it'll be 134 and I'll get excited and the next day it's 136.

Since there's so much fluctuation with weight loss I'm wondering how long it takes people losing at this pace to truly notice a difference. I feel confident that I'm doing everything right but the scale doesn't show that. I'm not frustrated or anything just curious how it's been for other people! I actually feel like my body looks way different lately, particularly my upper body looks way more defined and muscular.

strong_curves · January 2016

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/113609/relatively-light-people-trying-to-get-leaner/p1

StaciMarie1974 · January 2016

I went down to 250/day deficit in the last few months before hitting maintenance. I found that I lost weight at the pace I expected (averaged about 2 pounds per month). The key is accuracy. At a lower body weight, you use less energy per day. And when aiming for a small deficit, any logging errors will derail your progress. So weigh EVERYTHING solid, account for cooking oils, condiments, beverages, etc.

macgurlnet · January 2016

I'm going for a 1/2 lb deficit myself.

Seeing as my weight fluctuates ~3 pounds as it is, I really don't expect to see new lows for at least 6 weeks, if not more, since I know I won't stick to lower sodium and proper hydration the entire time.

How often have you been weighing yourself? Do you have an idea of what your weight range is? Are you strength training?

If you know your weight range, you'll have an idea for when you may see a new low on the scale. You know what to do, so just stick with it!

~Lyssa

jesoverley · January 2016

I see it in my body more than the scale. With toning, it is really more how you look than what you weigh. Plus, muscle weighs more than just fat... so as you add muscle, your target weight might change anyway! My target weight is actually 5 lbs more than before, because of muscle gains.

macgurlnet · January 2016

jesoverley wrote: »

I see it in my body more than the scale. With toning, it is really more how you look than what you weigh. Plus, muscle weighs more than just fat... so as you add muscle, your target weight might change anyway! My target weight is actually 5 lbs more than before, because of muscle gains.

1) You don't gain much, if any, muscle eating at a deficit
2) It's difficult for women to put on muscle in general

Weight gain that comes along with strength training is due to water retention for muscle repair and possibly "newbie" gains. It may or may not taper off, and does cause weight loss to be much less linear for some people.

I will agree that one's "happy" weight could be higher if they like their body composition, though.

~Lyssa

minizebu · January 2016

victoria_1024 wrote: »

I reached my goal weight of 137 back in October. It was 75 lbs lost and officially the top end of a healthy bmi. I wasn't sure if I wanted to lose more or not so I maintained at about 135 for a couple months. After Christmas I decided to try to lose another 8 lbs to get more in the middle of a healthy bmi range. I am aiming for a half pound a week and trying to focus more on fitness. My weight has been pretty stagnant. I just hover around that 135 mark. Sometimes it'll be 134 and I'll get excited and the next day it's 136.

Since there's so much fluctuation with weight loss I'm wondering how long it takes people losing at this pace to truly notice a difference. I feel confident that I'm doing everything right but the scale doesn't show that. I'm not frustrated or anything just curious how it's been for other people! I actually feel like my body looks way different lately, particularly my upper body looks way more defined and muscular.

Use the fact that you maintained your weight for a couple of months to your advantage. You now know that an average consumption of X kcal per day combined with the average exercise energy expenditure of Y (minutes, miles, Z strength training sessions, whatever your exercise routine is made up of) is what is necessary for you to maintain your weight.

In order to lose more weight you are going to have to adjust that equation. Either you need to eat less, exercise more or a combination of those.

Nothing about the process has changed from when you originally lost weight. It's just that you are starting from a new place.

If what you are doing right now is not resulting in weight loss, that is, you are maintaining, then something's got to give if you want to lose more weight.

You can run all your numbers through an online calculator, or you can go back through your food log and exercise diary and run some quick averages of your actual consumption and actual activity levels and determine what changes you are willing to make.

victoria_1024 · January 2016

minizebu wrote: »

Use the fact that you maintained your weight for a couple of months to your advantage. You now know that an average consumption of X kcal per day combined with the average exercise energy expenditure of Y (minutes, miles, Z strength training sessions, whatever your exercise routine is made up of) is what is necessary for you to maintain your weight.

In order to lose more weight you are going to have to adjust that equation. Either you need to eat less, exercise more or a combination of those.

Nothing about the process has changed from when you originally lost weight. It's just that you are starting from a new place.

If what you are doing right now is not resulting in weight loss, that is, you are maintaining, then something's got to give if you want to lose more weight.

You can run all your numbers through an online calculator, or you can go back through your food log and exercise diary and run some quick averages of your actual consumption and actual activity levels and determine what changes you are willing to make.

I think that's what is funny. When I was maintaining for 2 months, I was eating more than I am now and not working out as much (due to major stress in my family). And I wasn't logging accurately. Now I am back to logging accurately and weighing all my food, and working out for longer periods of time but still maintaining.

I didn't necessarily change my exercise, but I am doing more of it. I started a new 5 day fitness blender challenge that seems to have longer periods of strength training than I was doing before and I've been sore this week, so maybe some water weight from that. And possibly not burning as much as I think because of the extra strength training. I only eat back half of my exercise calories though so it shouldn't be a huge deal.

I'm going to see how it goes this week and if I haven't lost again I will make some more changes. I just decreased my breastfeeding calories from 300 extra a day to 200 (my baby has been nursing less lately) so I'm going to see if that makes a difference. I'm going to take measurements again too!

Thanks for the helpful replies!

Springfield1970 · January 2016

If it helps I'm a slow cutter. I believe it's better when you get lean to do it slow to avoid losing lean body mass. Sometimes I plateau for a while, then I suddenly drop. This is because the fat cells release fat, then replace with water so you weight the same. Then suddenly they release and hey presto you are back on track.
Keep weighing yourself but more importantly weigh and measure your food.
If it carries on too long, you're probably at maintenance, but at least you'll know your figures, then you can cut 100/200 calories per day off that and stealth melt that fat off!

Just read you're breast feeding! Give the weight loss a break until you stop. I regret not waiting until my boy was weaned.

Yi5hedr3 · January 2016

Forget BMI !!!It's an antiquated measurement system that is highly inaccurate for anything. Measure and track your percent of body fat instead. Much better!!!

victoria_1024 · January 2016

Springfield1970 wrote: »

If it helps I'm a slow cutter. I believe it's better when you get lean to do it slow to avoid losing lean body mass. Sometimes I plateau for a while, then I suddenly drop. This is because the fat cells release fat, then replace with water so you weight the same. Then suddenly they release and hey presto you are back on track.
Keep weighing yourself but more importantly weigh and measure your food.
If it carries on too long, you're probably at maintenance, but at least you'll know your figures, then you can cut 100/200 calories per day off that and stealth melt that fat off!

Just read you're breast feeding! Give the weight loss a break until you stop. I regret not waiting until my boy was weaned.

Thanks that is great advice!

As for the breastfeeding, I started losing weight when he was a month old and now he's over a year and still going strong so I think we are good! He's my fourth baby and I put off weight loss for many years because of breastfeeding and it was just time to do it. I've been very healthy about it and ate plenty to meet his needs! No regrets.

cafeaulait7 · January 2016

I disagree that you are definitely at maintenance. It's been what, 3 weeks? With a planned 1/2-lb a week, that's less than 2 lbs. Water weight easily masks 2 lbs.

When I did it, it did seem to take forever (8 weeks?) to see much scale change at first. After the first couple of months or so it got much better without changing anything. I think that's because I'd lost enough that it was more than my water fluctuations. I was lifting, too, so I knew I might "gain" weight for a while from that.

AnnPT77 · January 2016

I'm adjusting to the idea that a slower loss rate means buying into a longer time horizon to know whether it's working, because daily fluctuations mask the trend . . . and I'm not even finding my weight-trending app all that helpful in this scenario.

I've been trying to lose 0.5lb/week for a couple of months, and really feel like I'm just now figuring out that I'm probably still losing just a little faster than that. It didn't help that the holidays were in there, but at various times my weight-trend app thought I was losing steeply, maintaining or actually increasing. (I even tried playing with the advanced settings, and I understand statistics well enough to know what I was doing, but it didn't clarify the situation). And just looking at the raw data myself, I was not sure at all that I knew what was happening.

Are you doing tape measurements, too? Sometimes this can give you encouraging feedback on positive changes even when the scale isn't moving.

People aiming for a half pound a week loss

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