Why is weight loss so slow?
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"Days the scale doesn't move" means nothing. You might have some tweaking to do with expectations and timescale. Bodyweight fluctuates up and down by multiple pounds depending on various factors that have nothing to do with your actual fat loss. You can see proper trends over weeks or months.
10lbs a month is a lot, that pace probably won't last for long, and if you set your expectations to that, you might risk getting discouraged when things eventually slow down.
In the last (almost a) year I've been on MFP, 65% of my total weight loss happened in the first half, 35% in the second.4 -
rikkejanell2014 wrote: »I guess my hopes were high because i kicked off with a 30 day work out challenge where I have to workout everyday for an hour for 30 days. I did not work out at all and I drink soda and ate fast food every single ate before this so I thought the major change would be a shock to my system and make me lose tons of weight.
Starting exercise rarely has as a side effect of weight loss. Almost always it's weight gain, water weight, for many reasons.
So besides unrealistic expectations, perhaps too a misunderstanding of the use of exercise.
Diet is for weight loss - done right fat only, done wrong include some muscle in there - you'll regret that later.
Exercise is for heart health and body improvements - done right can encourage fat-only loss, done wrong can help lose it.
Only thing exercise helps with for weight loss is causing you to generally burn more daily than you would without it - so that when you eat in a diet, you get to eat more than if you didn't exercise.
Would you rather burn 2500 calories daily and get to eat 2000 because you exercise.
Or not and only get to eat 1500 while burning 2000.
The former might help retain muscle too - depending on the exercise. And drop 1 lb just fat weekly.
The latter would probably not help at all, so part of 1 lb weekly loss is muscle mass from somewhere.3 -
It's slow because fat is incredibly energy dense. If you ate nothing at all, a single pound of fat would keep you alive for about a day and a half. It is not healthy to starve yourself, so you have to accept that at healthy, reasonable levels of calorie deficit, it's going to take a lot of time.
Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.2 -
Quick weight loss is 2lbs a week (unless you are extremely overweight). 9lbs in 25 days is fast. Keep doing what you're doing.1
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CattOfTheGarage wrote: »It's slow because fat is incredibly energy dense. If you ate nothing at all, a single pound of fat would keep you alive for about a day and a half. It is not healthy to starve yourself, so you have to accept that at healthy, reasonable levels of calorie deficit, it's going to take a lot of time.
Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.
To further explain how your body gains its energy for breathing, moving and generally not being comatose (your resting metabolic rate)- energy is gained from three sources- sugars, proteineous structures (muscles) and fats. Once the sugars (of which you can only have so much available) is mostly used, your body goes in search of other sources. Fat is harder to tap in to than muscle, so your body will try to break muscle down, rather than use its "emergency rations"- your fat store. If you have a healthy lifestyles AND supplement your protein intake AND provide an excess of transport mechanism (water) then your body will bypass breaking down of muscle and start using the energy stored as fat. This is known as "hunter mode" whereby messages are sent around your system that good quality food is abundant and it's OK to use up the fat store.
The opposite of hunter mode is "hibernation mode" where the body doesn't receive the repletion signals and hordes fat again the onset of a cold and bleak winter. This is the reason that the Mac-A-Day diet causes so much obesity in the western world-- sedentary lifestyle, low protein value and poor hydration cause hibernation mode.
YOU are doing amazingly well- you are hunting every day and your fat stores are stripping off!!! I'd be inclined to up protein to 1g protein per kg bodyweight, 8 glasses of water a day and for heaven's sake-- measure your hips, arms and leg circumferences instead of weighing yourself-- more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless-- instead listen to people saying woooo!!! Looking good girl!!! :-D0 -
There's not going to be new muscle mass gained while on calorie deficit, no matter how much protein you munch on and how much you weight train. It's more of a game of minimizing loss of existing muscle.steveabode wrote: »more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless
Measurements are good, but scale is good too, given enough time for trends to show.
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steveabode wrote: »CattOfTheGarage wrote: »It's slow because fat is incredibly energy dense. If you ate nothing at all, a single pound of fat would keep you alive for about a day and a half. It is not healthy to starve yourself, so you have to accept that at healthy, reasonable levels of calorie deficit, it's going to take a lot of time.
Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.
To further explain how your body gains its energy for breathing, moving and generally not being comatose (your resting metabolic rate)- energy is gained from three sources- sugars, proteineous structures (muscles) and fats. Once the sugars (of which you can only have so much available) is mostly used, your body goes in search of other sources. Fat is harder to tap in to than muscle, so your body will try to break muscle down, rather than use its "emergency rations"- your fat store. If you have a healthy lifestyles AND supplement your protein intake AND provide an excess of transport mechanism (water) then your body will bypass breaking down of muscle and start using the energy stored as fat. This is known as "hunter mode" whereby messages are sent around your system that good quality food is abundant and it's OK to use up the fat store.
The opposite of hunter mode is "hibernation mode" where the body doesn't receive the repletion signals and hordes fat again the onset of a cold and bleak winter. This is the reason that the Mac-A-Day diet causes so much obesity in the western world-- sedentary lifestyle, low protein value and poor hydration cause hibernation mode.
YOU are doing amazingly well- you are hunting every day and your fat stores are stripping off!!! I'd be inclined to up protein to 1g protein per kg bodyweight, 8 glasses of water a day and for heaven's sake-- measure your hips, arms and leg circumferences instead of weighing yourself-- more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless-- instead listen to people saying woooo!!! Looking good girl!!! :-D
Wow thank you.0 -
steveabode wrote: »CattOfTheGarage wrote: »It's slow because fat is incredibly energy dense. If you ate nothing at all, a single pound of fat would keep you alive for about a day and a half. It is not healthy to starve yourself, so you have to accept that at healthy, reasonable levels of calorie deficit, it's going to take a lot of time.
Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.
To further explain how your body gains its energy for breathing, moving and generally not being comatose (your resting metabolic rate)- energy is gained from three sources- sugars, proteineous structures (muscles) and fats. Once the sugars (of which you can only have so much available) is mostly used, your body goes in search of other sources. Fat is harder to tap in to than muscle, so your body will try to break muscle down, rather than use its "emergency rations"- your fat store. If you have a healthy lifestyles AND supplement your protein intake AND provide an excess of transport mechanism (water) then your body will bypass breaking down of muscle and start using the energy stored as fat. This is known as "hunter mode" whereby messages are sent around your system that good quality food is abundant and it's OK to use up the fat store.
The opposite of hunter mode is "hibernation mode" where the body doesn't receive the repletion signals and hordes fat again the onset of a cold and bleak winter. This is the reason that the Mac-A-Day diet causes so much obesity in the western world-- sedentary lifestyle, low protein value and poor hydration cause hibernation mode.
YOU are doing amazingly well- you are hunting every day and your fat stores are stripping off!!! I'd be inclined to up protein to 1g protein per kg bodyweight, 8 glasses of water a day and for heaven's sake-- measure your hips, arms and leg circumferences instead of weighing yourself-- more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless-- instead listen to people saying woooo!!! Looking good girl!!! :-D
Wut?5 -
rikkejanell2014 wrote: »steveabode wrote: »CattOfTheGarage wrote: »It's slow because fat is incredibly energy dense. If you ate nothing at all, a single pound of fat would keep you alive for about a day and a half. It is not healthy to starve yourself, so you have to accept that at healthy, reasonable levels of calorie deficit, it's going to take a lot of time.
Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.
To further explain how your body gains its energy for breathing, moving and generally not being comatose (your resting metabolic rate)- energy is gained from three sources- sugars, proteineous structures (muscles) and fats. Once the sugars (of which you can only have so much available) is mostly used, your body goes in search of other sources. Fat is harder to tap in to than muscle, so your body will try to break muscle down, rather than use its "emergency rations"- your fat store. If you have a healthy lifestyles AND supplement your protein intake AND provide an excess of transport mechanism (water) then your body will bypass breaking down of muscle and start using the energy stored as fat. This is known as "hunter mode" whereby messages are sent around your system that good quality food is abundant and it's OK to use up the fat store.
The opposite of hunter mode is "hibernation mode" where the body doesn't receive the repletion signals and hordes fat again the onset of a cold and bleak winter. This is the reason that the Mac-A-Day diet causes so much obesity in the western world-- sedentary lifestyle, low protein value and poor hydration cause hibernation mode.
YOU are doing amazingly well- you are hunting every day and your fat stores are stripping off!!! I'd be inclined to up protein to 1g protein per kg bodyweight, 8 glasses of water a day and for heaven's sake-- measure your hips, arms and leg circumferences instead of weighing yourself-- more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless-- instead listen to people saying woooo!!! Looking good girl!!! :-D
Wow thank you.
Um, he's not correct. Don't thank him. Muscle isn't easier to tap into than fat.9 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »rikkejanell2014 wrote: »steveabode wrote: »CattOfTheGarage wrote: »It's slow because fat is incredibly energy dense. If you ate nothing at all, a single pound of fat would keep you alive for about a day and a half. It is not healthy to starve yourself, so you have to accept that at healthy, reasonable levels of calorie deficit, it's going to take a lot of time.
Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.
To further explain how your body gains its energy for breathing, moving and generally not being comatose (your resting metabolic rate)- energy is gained from three sources- sugars, proteineous structures (muscles) and fats. Once the sugars (of which you can only have so much available) is mostly used, your body goes in search of other sources. Fat is harder to tap in to than muscle, so your body will try to break muscle down, rather than use its "emergency rations"- your fat store. If you have a healthy lifestyles AND supplement your protein intake AND provide an excess of transport mechanism (water) then your body will bypass breaking down of muscle and start using the energy stored as fat. This is known as "hunter mode" whereby messages are sent around your system that good quality food is abundant and it's OK to use up the fat store.
The opposite of hunter mode is "hibernation mode" where the body doesn't receive the repletion signals and hordes fat again the onset of a cold and bleak winter. This is the reason that the Mac-A-Day diet causes so much obesity in the western world-- sedentary lifestyle, low protein value and poor hydration cause hibernation mode.
YOU are doing amazingly well- you are hunting every day and your fat stores are stripping off!!! I'd be inclined to up protein to 1g protein per kg bodyweight, 8 glasses of water a day and for heaven's sake-- measure your hips, arms and leg circumferences instead of weighing yourself-- more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless-- instead listen to people saying woooo!!! Looking good girl!!! :-D
Wow thank you.
Um, he's not correct. Don't thank him. Muscle isn't easier to tap into than fat.
Precisely this. A long winded load of rubbish.7 -
There's not going to be new muscle mass gained while on calorie deficit, no matter how much protein you munch on and how much you weight train. It's more of a game of minimizing loss of existing muscle.steveabode wrote: »more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless
Measurements are good, but scale is good too, given enough time for trends to show.
Especially for women. It's harder for women to gain that much muscle mass.0 -
Christine_72 wrote: »jadevalentine wrote: »
I am impressed with your perserverance Christine_72! Inspirational! I really needed to read this today.
I am a very impatient person, but also very determined and stubborn. Losing so slowly was annoying, and i could have done it quicker if i was stricter. But the time was gonna pass either way, and i was happy and not incredibly hungry all the way through, so i got there eventually, and without white knuckling it through every day
Same here. Took me about 2 1/2 years to lose my 80 lbs. I'd take a break, gain some, lose it right back plus more, etc. I have no complaints doing it this way because I haven't seen the scale go above 200lbs in nearly 2 years, despite the statistics about how many people gain their weight back. Slow was the way to go for me!1 -
trigden1991 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »rikkejanell2014 wrote: »steveabode wrote: »CattOfTheGarage wrote: »It's slow because fat is incredibly energy dense. If you ate nothing at all, a single pound of fat would keep you alive for about a day and a half. It is not healthy to starve yourself, so you have to accept that at healthy, reasonable levels of calorie deficit, it's going to take a lot of time.
Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.
To further explain how your body gains its energy for breathing, moving and generally not being comatose (your resting metabolic rate)- energy is gained from three sources- sugars, proteineous structures (muscles) and fats. Once the sugars (of which you can only have so much available) is mostly used, your body goes in search of other sources. Fat is harder to tap in to than muscle, so your body will try to break muscle down, rather than use its "emergency rations"- your fat store. If you have a healthy lifestyles AND supplement your protein intake AND provide an excess of transport mechanism (water) then your body will bypass breaking down of muscle and start using the energy stored as fat. This is known as "hunter mode" whereby messages are sent around your system that good quality food is abundant and it's OK to use up the fat store.
The opposite of hunter mode is "hibernation mode" where the body doesn't receive the repletion signals and hordes fat again the onset of a cold and bleak winter. This is the reason that the Mac-A-Day diet causes so much obesity in the western world-- sedentary lifestyle, low protein value and poor hydration cause hibernation mode.
YOU are doing amazingly well- you are hunting every day and your fat stores are stripping off!!! I'd be inclined to up protein to 1g protein per kg bodyweight, 8 glasses of water a day and for heaven's sake-- measure your hips, arms and leg circumferences instead of weighing yourself-- more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless-- instead listen to people saying woooo!!! Looking good girl!!! :-D
Wow thank you.
Um, he's not correct. Don't thank him. Muscle isn't easier to tap into than fat.
Precisely this. A long winded load of rubbish.
I always love how these threads can be filled with solid advice from successful people and one long winded ramble that has no basis in scientific fact is the one that an OP latches onto. I guess it's that whole "I just want affirmation not actual advice" thing...15 -
OP, keep reading through the forums. I think once you get a better understanding of HOW you lose weight, scientifically speaking, you'll understand your rate of loss better and feel more comfortable with what you're doing. It's not magic.5
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billglitch wrote: »have you ever considered LCHF? I averaged nearly 4 pounds a week for the first 6 months and about 2.5 since then. That said...you are doing great
I'm surprised you posted this and no one pulled you up on it. I mention LCHF with good intentions and everyone jumps down my throat like I'm suggesting they drain blood to lose weight???
Everyone jumps down your throat? Really?
The only time I ever see anyone taking LCHF to task is when it is implied that eating in this manner has some sort of magical fat burning ability over and above what any other CICO-based diet will achieve. If you're losing weight eating LCHF, it's simply because you're eating less than you're burning in a day, which is the scientific principal (CICO) that *all* diets are based on.
How you achieve the caloric deficit that permits you to lose weight via CICO is entirely up to you. 8 -
People spend years neglecting themselves until they get to the point they say, "ENOUGH!". Then expect to reverse that neglect in a month or so. That is the initial failure or people here though, and why so many fall off the wagon. Many don't even return because they focus on a quick fix, when it is truly a change in habits, thoughts, and how you live.
Meh.9 -
People spend years neglecting themselves until they get to the point they say, "ENOUGH!". Then expect to reverse that neglect in a month or so. That is the initial failure or people here though, and why so many fall off the wagon. Many don't even return because they focus on a quick fix, when it is truly a change in habits, thoughts, and how you live.
Meh.
You're so right. Im sorry0 -
rikkejanell2014 wrote: »People spend years neglecting themselves until they get to the point they say, "ENOUGH!". Then expect to reverse that neglect in a month or so. That is the initial failure or people here though, and why so many fall off the wagon. Many don't even return because they focus on a quick fix, when it is truly a change in habits, thoughts, and how you live.
Meh.
You're so right. Im sorry
Nothing to be sorry about, you are doing great. Just keep doing it to be the AMAZING you that you want.3 -
rikkejanell2014 wrote: »I guess my hopes were high because i kicked off with a 30 day work out challenge where I have to workout everyday for an hour for 30 days. I did not work out at all and I drink soda and ate fast food every single ate before this so I thought the major change would be a shock to my system and make me lose tons of weight.
I don't think you have high hopes or are being unrealistic, I think you are just experiencing the very common phenomenon of "unawareness" with weight management. You are not the first person to experience this, nor will you be the last.
You said it took years to put on the weight, and that's not uncommon. For many people, they are aware that they are gaining weight, but aren't really aware of how much they have gained. It happens so slowly that they don't really notice, especially with all the other commitments they need to focus on in life. Then one day, boom, "how did I get so big? It almost feels like it happened overnight, but that's not possible, because I haven't been that out of control with my diet. It's not like I'm eating more than I was 6 months ago."
And there's the problem. Since it happened so slowly, people don't notice how off the mark they were with their diet or exercise over the long term, and figure that once they make those changes, the weight is just going to fall off. It's completely normal to experience this, and many people are shocked once they start logging here at how they had underestimated their calorie intake and energy output.
You said you've lost 9 lbs - that is fantastic! And it did happen in a short amount of time. Think of it as the opposite - if I told you that you gained 9 lbs in a month, would you think that "wasn't enough"? Or would you be flabbergasted that you put on so much weight in such a short period of time?
You are doing great and are well on your way. Don't let yourself be discouraged by what you think you "should" be losing each week or month. Congrats on all the changes you've made so far. That 30 days of exercise is awesome, especially managing an hour a day. Keep up the good work.4 -
CattOfTheGarage wrote: »Anyone who says they lost 15lb in a month is either making it up, or they're taking about the first month in which they shed 6 or 7lb of water weight. 4lb in a month would be a usua, healthy rate of loss, or 8lb if you're very heavy. You are losing weight quickly.
Don't mean to sidetrack, but those with a lot to lose can lose a lot. First three months I lost ~15 a month. From ~330 to 285. It's slowed down now that 10 a month looks like a tough haul and I have a target of 8 going forward, but I was done with pure water weight long before I hit 285.
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