Is losing weight slowly really worth it
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VintageFeline wrote: »crzycatlady1 wrote: »vikinglander wrote: »I've been eating (mostly) Paleo since February, and have lost an average of slightly less than a pound per week (.879 lbs).
I am hardly ever hungry, except right before normal meal times.
My skin is nice and tight, with no sign of sag.
To me, this is the biggest reason to go slowly, so I don't have to deal with loose skin. I know three different people who crashed off 80 to 100+ pounds in a year or less, then had to have horrific surgery to remove the excess skin.
One girl now has fake nipples and a fake navel, and scars everywhere...why?
I ain't gonna deal with THAT...
I lost around 50lbs at a quicker pace and I have absolutely no issues with saggy skin or even stretch marks.
Conversely, whilst saggy skin isn't a problem for me thus far, I have had stretch marks since I was 13/14 because I hit puberty as soon as I stopped training as a high level competitive gymnast and shot up (relatively). I was still tiny but my genetics and particular circumstances dictated the stretch marks. And my genetics are dictating the saggy skin. Short time spent at my highest weight probably helps too.
I lost 66 pounds in the last year, which has been a very slow but surely great adventure. However, as you said VintageFeline, genetics is the greatest dictator in whether your skin will sag or not. I have stretch marks since forever and of course my skin is sagging everywhere.
But I guess I am sill happy because I LOST THE WEIGHT!!
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The key is to keep at it. Whichever way you go. If you go with the slow loss option you have to be prepared to commit to it for the rest of your life and you will live very long (happiness is not promised of course since you will live a limited life). If you go the fast way- and that would be eating disorders- then you will still suffer both physically and psychologically. As a person who has lost weight both ways I can say that for me it was much more fun to be bulimic than to be healthy attractive. However both after bulimia and after about a year of healthy life I gained back even more than I weighed at the begining, but that is just because I gave into depression. As long as you are psychologically stable and have a good support system you should be fine and you should definitely go the slow route.0
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To be totally honest.. If i could hack it i would choose the high deficit, fast weight loss route. Get it over and done with asap!!
However, i know i can't handle eating really low calories for more than 2-3 days in a row, so slow and steady it is for me.2 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »"Is losing weight slowly really worth it"
I don't really understand the question. Its worth it if you are overweight and want to improve your health, yeah. By "slow" people are typically refering to 0.5 to 1 pound losses per week which if you think of it in terms of your entire life is still really fast. If you have 50 pounds to lose (which would likely make you obese) you can do that in just one year losing 1 pound per week. Doing it faster certainly doesn't gain you anything in terms of longterm health and given the difficulties one can encounter trying to lose weight "quick" its not worth it practically, its just being impatient.
When I think of slow weight loss I think of less than 0.5 pounds per week, not 0.5 to 1 pound. To me, 0.5 to 1 pound is moderate and anything above that is fast.
I lost 52 pounds over the course of a year. If you take out my maintenance breaks, I was dieting for about 9 months. For the first 3 months, I averaged 2 lbs per week. After that I averaged a half pound per week. I consider the first 3 months to be fast fat loss and the rest of the time to be average fat loss.
I think OP's definition of "slow" is 0.5-1lbs per week though, from the sounds of it. Everyone has different definitions of slow and fast, and I feel like they've been skewed because of the media, like the TV show The Biggest Loser. I can see why people nowadays feel that 0.5-1lbs of loss per week is extremely slow when they've been shown a lot of people who dramatically lose 50 in a week.
I do believe that losing it slowly is much healthier than losing it fast (I don't want to screw up my metabolism by eating only 500 calories a day), however I feel like I need to point that out because I've seen so many people give up because they don't lose 10 lbs per week like they see so many celebrities do.1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »"Is losing weight slowly really worth it"
I don't really understand the question. Its worth it if you are overweight and want to improve your health, yeah. By "slow" people are typically refering to 0.5 to 1 pound losses per week which if you think of it in terms of your entire life is still really fast. If you have 50 pounds to lose (which would likely make you obese) you can do that in just one year losing 1 pound per week. Doing it faster certainly doesn't gain you anything in terms of longterm health and given the difficulties one can encounter trying to lose weight "quick" its not worth it practically, its just being impatient.
When I think of slow weight loss I think of less than 0.5 pounds per week, not 0.5 to 1 pound. To me, 0.5 to 1 pound is moderate and anything above that is fast.
I lost 52 pounds over the course of a year. If you take out my maintenance breaks, I was dieting for about 9 months. For the first 3 months, I averaged 2 lbs per week. After that I averaged a half pound per week. I consider the first 3 months to be fast fat loss and the rest of the time to be average fat loss.
Well what "slow" is is subjective so its a bit silly to argue about what "slow" is. There are certainly plently of people who post daily on this forum complaining bitterly about losing weight so slowly and they are losing weight at 1 pound or more per week.
The OP seems to refer to people being proponents of "slow" weight loss and what I have seen is people telling the impatient to take it easy and try to lose weight at 1 pound a week. So apparently that is what we are defining as slow in this context.
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I hear this all time at my Weightwatcher meetings Slow and Steady Slow progress is better than no progress.1
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I have been averaging about a 1.12 pound loss per week. Hoping this will minimize the skin sag effect.. fingers crossed.0
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »"Is losing weight slowly really worth it"
I don't really understand the question. Its worth it if you are overweight and want to improve your health, yeah. By "slow" people are typically refering to 0.5 to 1 pound losses per week which if you think of it in terms of your entire life is still really fast. If you have 50 pounds to lose (which would likely make you obese) you can do that in just one year losing 1 pound per week. Doing it faster certainly doesn't gain you anything in terms of longterm health and given the difficulties one can encounter trying to lose weight "quick" its not worth it practically, its just being impatient.
When I think of slow weight loss I think of less than 0.5 pounds per week, not 0.5 to 1 pound. To me, 0.5 to 1 pound is moderate and anything above that is fast.
I lost 52 pounds over the course of a year. If you take out my maintenance breaks, I was dieting for about 9 months. For the first 3 months, I averaged 2 lbs per week. After that I averaged a half pound per week. I consider the first 3 months to be fast fat loss and the rest of the time to be average fat loss.
Well what "slow" is is subjective so its a bit silly to argue about what "slow" is. There are certainly plently of people who post daily on this forum complaining bitterly about losing weight so slowly and they are losing weight at 1 pound or more per week.
The OP seems to refer to people being proponents of "slow" weight loss and what I have seen is people telling the impatient to take it easy and try to lose weight at 1 pound a week. So apparently that is what we are defining as slow in this context.
I'm not arguing. I had originally typed that slow is relative but erased it. Regardless, as I stated in my first post in the thread, there are too many variables to answer this question.0 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »I guess when I think of compliance I'm thinking of the numerous daily threads and experience of seeing friends restrict too hard in order to lose quickly. They then can't keep it up and as above, rebound and then some as they compensate for over-restriction. And whilst you can reasonably safely restrict hard for 4-6 weeks, most people have a lot more weight to lose than going balls to wall for that short a time will achieve.
Those here who appear to be most successful are those who have a sensible deficit (and this of course varies depending on TDEE) and just get on with living and changing habits over the long term.
Of course this is anecdotal and I don't profess to know if this is total fact. Just my own personal and personally observed opinion.
As to the muscle loss but isn't it correct that the body can only metabolise so much stored fat in a day? And the muscle sparing diets require quite specific training methods and diet? not for the faint of heart or, I would have thought, for those with a lot to lose? I could be wrong though. Always learning.
They do require resistance training, yes, and a VERY specific macro breakdown (about 90% protein, and just enough fats to get in the essentials). There are actually different protocols for people are different bodyfat levels (1 for sub-15, 2 for 16-30, 3 for 31 and above). Each is structured a bit differently to keep hormones from tanking and provide the LBM sparing effect. Trust me, if they work to peel bodybuilders from 10% to 8% in two weeks, they work just fine for taking...ehhh...the average American back to human shaped just fine. There's also built in cheat meals for the uber-fatties so they don't lose their minds entirely in the process.
Is it hard? For most, though I'm actually finding my C2 run hilariously easy. Does it get results for those who can hack it, and the properly follow the procedures for going back to maintenance and taking short term diet breaks? Most definitely.
It's a matter of preference though. I prefer extreme short term pain, to long drawn out annoyance. The faster my fat is gone, the faster I can get back to real lifting, instead of this three day per week *kitten*.
10% calories from fat on a 2-lb a week cut for me would only be 15 grams of fat. I don't believe that would be an adequate total. It's barely enough to squeeze in adequate amounts of linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid if there were a fat source with only those, in the proper proportion.
ETA: Plus, yuck. There's only so many chicken breasts and cans of water-packed tuna I'm going to eat. As you say, it's a matter of preference, and the food I could eat on that regimen would be so unappealing I would probably quit in less than a week. And I've done all of Lent vegetarian, with vegan Fridays (I'm an omnivore) without quitting.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »I guess when I think of compliance I'm thinking of the numerous daily threads and experience of seeing friends restrict too hard in order to lose quickly. They then can't keep it up and as above, rebound and then some as they compensate for over-restriction. And whilst you can reasonably safely restrict hard for 4-6 weeks, most people have a lot more weight to lose than going balls to wall for that short a time will achieve.
Those here who appear to be most successful are those who have a sensible deficit (and this of course varies depending on TDEE) and just get on with living and changing habits over the long term.
Of course this is anecdotal and I don't profess to know if this is total fact. Just my own personal and personally observed opinion.
As to the muscle loss but isn't it correct that the body can only metabolise so much stored fat in a day? And the muscle sparing diets require quite specific training methods and diet? not for the faint of heart or, I would have thought, for those with a lot to lose? I could be wrong though. Always learning.
They do require resistance training, yes, and a VERY specific macro breakdown (about 90% protein, and just enough fats to get in the essentials). There are actually different protocols for people are different bodyfat levels (1 for sub-15, 2 for 16-30, 3 for 31 and above). Each is structured a bit differently to keep hormones from tanking and provide the LBM sparing effect. Trust me, if they work to peel bodybuilders from 10% to 8% in two weeks, they work just fine for taking...ehhh...the average American back to human shaped just fine. There's also built in cheat meals for the uber-fatties so they don't lose their minds entirely in the process.
Is it hard? For most, though I'm actually finding my C2 run hilariously easy. Does it get results for those who can hack it, and the properly follow the procedures for going back to maintenance and taking short term diet breaks? Most definitely.
It's a matter of preference though. I prefer extreme short term pain, to long drawn out annoyance. The faster my fat is gone, the faster I can get back to real lifting, instead of this three day per week *kitten*.
10% calories from fat on a 2-lb a week cut for me would only be 15 grams of fat. I don't believe that would be an adequate total. It's barely enough to squeeze in adequate amounts of linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid if there were a fat source with only those, in the proper proportion.
ETA: Plus, yuck. There's only so many chicken breasts and cans of water-packed tuna I'm going to eat. As you say, it's a matter of preference, and the food I could eat on that regimen would be so unappealing I would probably quit in less than a week. And I've done all of Lent vegetarian, with vegan Fridays (I'm an omnivore) without quitting.
I actually pull about 12g total fat per day on my current intake (all cocentrated fish oil and incidental fat from tuna and swai). I'll see if I can find the study, but ALAs are basically crap compared to fish oil, due to the body's inefficiency at breaking them down to EPA and DHA.0 -
My husband was fine with losing weight slowly ... maybe about half a pound a week. He has kept it off for about 2 years now.
I couldn't do that. If I hadn't been able to lose at 2 lbs/week at first, I would have lost motivation.
So I lost 15 kg in 16 weeks (that's about 2 lbs/week), took a break, and the lost 11 kg in the next 16 weeks (that's about 1.4 lbs/week).
I'm into the lower half of my normal BMI range, and I've kept it off for a year now.
That's not really fast ... it's at the faster end of the recommended range ... but I just did not want to drag it out.
Since I'm one of the few people here who opted for a slightly faster weight loss, a couple comments ...
1) I would have gotten bored with it all if I'd opted for something in the 0.5 to 1 lb loss range. I'm not that patient. I can't imagine waiting that long to lose my weight.
2) Regarding "life long habits" ... I've got those already. I spent most of my life at my current weight (high school weight), and know what I need to do to stay at this weight. My weight gain was a temporary anomaly.
Others might have more patience or be in a different life situation.1 -
In my case, having a lot of weight to lose was the deciding factor. Being happily satisfied with just small modifications here and there and some clever near effortless strategies for a few years just felt more attractive to me than a whole year of absolute misery. Maybe if I had 10 pounds or something to lose I would have had a different mindset. I'm just eating normally and doing all the normal stuff I usually do, including social gatherings, tasty higher calorie stuff and so on. I strongly believe I'm currently eating the way I will always be maintaining (hopefully), so it doesn't really feel like a diet with a deadline. I also don't really mind the way I currently look enough to be bothered to go faster, and I have no pressing health issues. Putting my life on halt for a whole year just to lose weight feels too daunting and not worth it.
I do understand the desire to go fast though. When I first got diagnosed with prediabetes (the reason I decided to lose weight) I did go on a VLCD under medical supervision for a few weeks. It was very hard, but the prospect of having to control my carbs for life was too scary and trumped any temporary discomfort. I just wanted my prediabetes to go away as soon as possible!1 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »In my case, having a lot of weight to lose was the deciding factor. Being happily satisfied with just small modifications here and there and some clever near effortless strategies for a few years just felt more attractive to me than a whole year of absolute misery. Maybe if I had 10 pounds or something to lose I would have had a different mindset. I'm just eating normally and doing all the normal stuff I usually do, including social gatherings, tasty higher calorie stuff and so on. I strongly believe I'm currently eating the way I will always be maintaining (hopefully), so it doesn't really feel like a diet with a deadline. I also don't really mind the way I currently look enough to be bothered to go faster, and I have no pressing health issues. Putting my life on halt for a whole year just to lose weight feels too daunting and not worth it.
I do understand the desire to go fast though. When I first got diagnosed with prediabetes (the reason I decided to lose weight) I did go on a VLCD under medical supervision for a few weeks. It was very hard, but the prospect of having to control my carbs for life was too scary and trumped any temporary discomfort. I just wanted my prediabetes to go away as soon as possible!
Interestingly, the most obese people seem to report the least problems, both psychologically and physiologicallyy, with lowered calorie thresholds, and faster rates of loss, once they get past the initial couple of weeks of "zomg I'm starving" thoughts and feeling. My own experience mirrors this, and when you think about it, it makes sense.
The more bodyfat a person is carrying, the more fuel stores one has to get them through lean times in the food department. It also helps prevent a lot of the rapid falloff in metabolic hormones that come with caloric restriction, and they have far less problems with LBM loss.
Again, this assumes that they, as an individual, can get past the first couple of weeks, which admittedly, really suck.0 -
I went for the slow option. So far I am nearly three years in an very near to my (twice re-adjusted downward) goal.
For me the reason was that I knew that I was not far off in my eating habits (just a little too much over 10 years adds up) So I wanted to change hte upward trend to a downward trend.
Furthermore I did not want to become hangry - with my people oriented job that would scare my clients away Just could not handle that.
Last but not least I wanted to enjoy myself on the journey as well and slowing the speed down was the price I had to pay for that - which I was cool with.2 -
I went for slow weight loss at 1lb a week for the bulk of my weight loss and down to 1lb/month to fine tune my goal weight and maintenance calories.
Mainly as I love both food and exercise so wanted to enjoy a reasonable amount of food and not compromise my exercise.
In the past I got bored with long term restriction and gave up but am very determined short term so I dieted in a different way with most days at maintenance and some days in a large deficit.
Adherence is very personal and it's important to think of your own strengths and weaknesses when devising your strategy.
"Is losing weight slowly really worth it?"
For me a definite yes as I was successful - lost my weight and maintaining happily long term.
For others - it depends.....1 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »amusedmonkey wrote: »In my case, having a lot of weight to lose was the deciding factor. Being happily satisfied with just small modifications here and there and some clever near effortless strategies for a few years just felt more attractive to me than a whole year of absolute misery. Maybe if I had 10 pounds or something to lose I would have had a different mindset. I'm just eating normally and doing all the normal stuff I usually do, including social gatherings, tasty higher calorie stuff and so on. I strongly believe I'm currently eating the way I will always be maintaining (hopefully), so it doesn't really feel like a diet with a deadline. I also don't really mind the way I currently look enough to be bothered to go faster, and I have no pressing health issues. Putting my life on halt for a whole year just to lose weight feels too daunting and not worth it.
I do understand the desire to go fast though. When I first got diagnosed with prediabetes (the reason I decided to lose weight) I did go on a VLCD under medical supervision for a few weeks. It was very hard, but the prospect of having to control my carbs for life was too scary and trumped any temporary discomfort. I just wanted my prediabetes to go away as soon as possible!
Interestingly, the most obese people seem to report the least problems, both psychologically and physiologicallyy, with lowered calorie thresholds, and faster rates of loss, once they get past the initial couple of weeks of "zomg I'm starving" thoughts and feeling. My own experience mirrors this, and when you think about it, it makes sense.
The more bodyfat a person is carrying, the more fuel stores one has to get them through lean times in the food department. It also helps prevent a lot of the rapid falloff in metabolic hormones that come with caloric restriction, and they have far less problems with LBM loss.
Again, this assumes that they, as an individual, can get past the first couple of weeks, which admittedly, really suck.
That was not my experience with VLCD. I did it for 6 weeks to bring my sugar numbers down as soon as possible and it did not get easier after the first couple of weeks. I love food. I love good food. I don't like meat and I need starches for satiety. So a combination of being constantly very hungry and eating foods I didn't like was extremely hard, but the fear of potentially having to control my carbs for life was a stronger driver so I stuck to the rules religiously and my sugar numbers showed a trend downwards. That was when My doctor decided I did not need to repeat for another 6 weeks and could take care of the rest at my own pace if I choose to.
After that I read about keto since it was advocated as beneficial for PCOS and insulin resistance and decided to add fat and try that, the adherence to that was even worse because I did not feel like it was absolutely needed. Interestingly the hunger was even worse and I ended up gaining 1.5 pounds because I was struggling to keep to maintenance. Deciding to take it slow and eat normally was the best decision I've ever made.
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I went for slow weight loss at 1lb a week for the bulk of my weight loss anddown to 1lb/month to fine tune my goal weight and maintenance calories.
Mainly as I love both food and exercise so wanted to enjoy a reasonable amount of food and not compromise my exercise...
This is the point where I am. I lost the first 10 pounds in 5 months and have plateaued and maintained afterward with 10 pounds to go. However I'm stuck with the last 10 it seems. Can you give me specific advice on how you lost 1 pound a month? That's my goal. I want to be 10 pounds lighter by thus time next year. I think I'm leaning in the direction of eating how I am now but adding extra activity each day. Is this how you did it?
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I lost 60 lbs very slowly (I usually had a deficit of about 350 calories a day) and steadily over four years ago, and kept it off (with the occasional smallish gain and loss). That seemed to work out well for me, and I was a big advocate of the slow, steady route. My view was that it was more sustainable and so made continuing and maintaining easier.
However, I'm now not so sure. I have the latest Michael Mosley book which was heavily influenced by a Newcastle UK programme where participants were put on an 800 calorie a day diet, and also his reference to research which seemed to show (IIRC) that fast weight loss actually increased rather than decreased compliance. So when I had a gain this year, I lost it quickly rather than slowly (although not by counting calories), and yes, I did find it more motivating and satisfying. In fact it has inspired me to keep going and perhaps shoot for lower than my previous maintenance weight.
I think that this may not be a one-size-fits-all thing, and might be due to how the restriction fits you and your circumstances.0 -
@DebSozoI went for slow weight loss at 1lb a week for the bulk of my weight loss anddown to 1lb/month to fine tune my goal weight and maintenance calories.
Mainly as I love both food and exercise so wanted to enjoy a reasonable amount of food and not compromise my exercise...
This is the point where I am. I lost the first 10 pounds in 5 months and have plateaued and maintained afterward with 10 pounds to go. However I'm stuck with the last 10 it seems. Can you give me specific advice on how you lost 1 pound a month? That's my goal. I want to be 10 pounds lighter by thus time next year. I think I'm leaning in the direction of eating how I am now but adding extra activity each day. Is this how you did it?
I dieted in an unusual way mostly eating at maintenance with a couple of days at a large deficit (5:2 fasting) so it was a simple matter for me of reducing the days I had a deficit. 2 to 3 days a month - the rest at maintenance.
If you are stuck for a long time you need to reduce calorie intake or increase output.
It's only a tiny adjustment on either side of the calorie balance equation to go from maintenance to very slow loss. Day to day activity - is there part of your normal routine you can add in some more activity to tip the balance? Swapping a car journey for walking or cycling perhaps? Or finding something to get you up on your feet more and sat on your bum less?
I've always exercised a lot and without retiring (soon hopefully!) I don't really have the option of exercising more.
You know your maintenance calories if your weight is generally unchanged for an extended period of time - how you turn that into a small deficit is your choice. I prefer to avoid every day restriction as it bores me and impacts my exercise, you could simply reduce your base calorie goal if that's an option works for you.
At maintenance I don't fast but if I need or want to adjust my weight downwards I simply skip breakfast or just make lower calorie food/snack choices on sporadic days - no real structure at all.
I do find I can comfortably have a deficit on a day when I do long or moderate cardio - far easier than on days when I'm lifting or doing high intensity exercise.
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