Why is weight loss so slow?

24

Replies

  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,551 Member
    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.

    Working out for an hour a day every day isn't really all that much. If by "working out" you mean going for a 1-hour walk, that's only 200 calories. On a bicycle, that might amount to about 400 calories.

    When I started losing weight, I didn't lose anything at all for 10 days, and then it started dropping off and after 5 weeks had passed, I had lost 5 kg (11 lbs). I knew that was quite quick and I kept it up for 16 weeks, but then I slowed my loss to something more reasonable ... about 0.6 kg/week (1.3 lbs/week).

    And I aim to exercise a minimum of an hour a day every day ... and have done for about 2 years now. :)

  • rikkejanell2014
    rikkejanell2014 Posts: 312 Member
    Machka9 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.

    Working out for an hour a day every day isn't really all that much. If by "working out" you mean going for a 1-hour walk, that's only 200 calories. On a bicycle, that might amount to about 400 calories.

    When I started losing weight, I didn't lose anything at all for 10 days, and then it started dropping off and after 5 weeks had passed, I had lost 5 kg (11 lbs). I knew that was quite quick and I kept it up for 16 weeks, but then I slowed my loss to something more reasonable ... about 0.6 kg/week (1.3 lbs/week).

    And I aim to exercise a minimum of an hour a day every day ... and have done for about 2 years now. :)

    Whats your point about working out and only burning 200?
  • i6Shot
    i6Shot Posts: 51 Member
    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???

    On another note, LCHF is a very good way to lose fat as well as improve other health markers. Worth considering.
  • red99ryder
    red99ryder Posts: 399 Member
    Congrats on the good start , yes it does seem slow , then i look back . I have mfp set for 1.5 pound loss and im not perfect in my logging or eating . after 5 months it looks like i have averaged 1.75 pounds a week lost .. so right on schedule ,, still seems slow to me tho too . I know the closer i get to my goal im going to have to tighten up my logging and eating ..your doing good from what i can see keep it up

    good luck
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    Oh and it took me around 2-3 years to gain the weight, so taking that long to lose it is my comeuppance for putting on the weight in the first place! :tongue: It's also a good reminder to never, ever regain it, as i don't have the patience or motivation to do this all over again...
  • CharlieBeansmomTracey
    CharlieBeansmomTracey Posts: 7,682 Member
    Oh and it took me around 2-3 years to gain the weight, so taking that long to lose it is my comeuppance for putting on the weight in the first place! :tongue: It's also a good reminder to never, ever regain it, as i don't have the patience or motivation to do this all over again...

    I feel ya it took me 4 years to lose 45lbs and Im still trying to lose the last 24 lbs.took me more than a decade to gain it.The first year I lost 33 lbs but gained half back the beginning of the second year.
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,463 Member
    mom22dogs wrote: »
    How much did you think you could/should lose in a month? I would kill to lose almost 10 lbs in a month.

    I hear others say 15 pounds.

    Not others on MFP!
  • SKristianM
    SKristianM Posts: 11 Member
    "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.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    edited December 2016
    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.
  • CattOfTheGarage
    CattOfTheGarage Posts: 2,745 Member
    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.
  • trigden1991
    trigden1991 Posts: 4,658 Member
    Quick weight loss is 2lbs a week (unless you are extremely overweight). 9lbs in 25 days is fast. Keep doing what you're doing.
  • steveabode
    steveabode Posts: 4 Member
    edited December 2016
    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
  • SKristianM
    SKristianM Posts: 11 Member
    steveabode wrote: »
    more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless
    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.

    Measurements are good, but scale is good too, given enough time for trends to show.

  • rikkejanell2014
    rikkejanell2014 Posts: 312 Member
    steveabode 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.
  • dragon_girl26
    dragon_girl26 Posts: 2,187 Member
    dogemeat wrote: »
    steveabode wrote: »
    more exercise = more muscle which is twice the weight of fat, so scales are useless
    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.

    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.
  • dragon_girl26
    dragon_girl26 Posts: 2,187 Member


    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 :smiley:

    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!
  • rikkejanell2014
    rikkejanell2014 Posts: 312 Member
    Timshel_ 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
  • Timshel_
    Timshel_ Posts: 22,834 Member
    Timshel_ 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.
  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
    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.
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    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.