Seems impossible to lose more than 10 lbs
bambusa
Posts: 6 Member
My weight is 174. It will fluctuate lower than this, but I can rarely get below 159. I exercise at least 5 days per week and measure and count my calories. Any recommendations on how to get to 140 or so? Seems like I'd have to practically starve myself.
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Replies
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Tighten up your logging. This may mean any of the following: ensuring that every single item that passes your lips gets logged, weighing all solids on a food scale and measuring all liquids, double-checking the accuracy of the items in the database, utilizing the recipe builder over "homemade" or "generic" entries, and being mindful of the number of exercise calories burned/eaten back.8
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Agree with @malibu927 - Tighten the logging, you might not think it but you have to be eating more than you think or you would be losing.
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It sounds like 174 might be a comfortable weight for your lifestyle and that you have a hard time making and maintaining changes that let you get away from there for long. Is 174 close to a healthy BMI for your height? Once you get down to those lower numbers, it's much harder to make the changes needed to sustain weight loss. Forget what you may or may not know about dieting and try coming at this from a different angle (I'm making assumptions here about what you've done in the past, so if I'm way off, ignore me!).
I'd recommend taking at least a week to log your normal eating and exercise habits, and see where you might have excess calories you'd be happy cutting out of your diet for the rest of your life. This is important because in order to maintain your weight at 140 lbs, you'll need to eat about 300-400 calories less every day then you are eating at 174 or else the weight will come back. If you can get to that level comfortably, you'll start slowly losing weight until you reach your 140 goal. If you want to get there faster, you'll need to reduce your calories even further, or increase your exercise, but this change will be temporarily and shouldn't be too large that you can't keep it up until you hit your goal. See if you can go down another 100-200 calories - this should put you at a 1 pound a week deficit, which may or may not be sustainable but is a solid place to start. If you're starving all the time, or binging and erasing your progress, you may need to back off even further.
You can lose weight quicker on lower calories, but it will be harder to sustain since you'll be hungrier. Plus, you're not going to notice the changes on the scale very quickly - water weight may disguise any weight loss for weeks, leading you to think it's futile and give up. Think of this as a long-term project and be patient - you can do this!5 -
Get a food scale. Check out this thread. It has several videos/visuals on why a food scale is such a powerful weight loss tool.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10634517/you-dont-use-a-food-scale/p1
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How y’all are you?3
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MegaMooseEsq wrote: »It sounds like 174 might be a comfortable weight for your lifestyle and that you have a hard time making and maintaining changes that let you get away from there for long. Is 174 close to a healthy BMI for your height? Once you get down to those lower numbers, it's much harder to make the changes needed to sustain weight loss. Forget what you may or may not know about dieting and try coming at this from a different angle (I'm making assumptions here about what you've done in the past, so if I'm way off, ignore me!).
This is very important. How tall are you and where are you on the BMI charts.
The closer you are to normal weight, and moreso the closer you are to the bottom half of normal, the harder and slower your weight loss will be.0 -
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In order to get lower, and stay lower, you may also need to take a closer look at what you eat, not just the calories. CICO is a good starting point, and the easiest thing to change and control, but there is a lot more that goes into how our bodies actually process and use food. Doesn't mean you can't have foods, but you may need to limit some things more than you historically have.
I'm not a proponent of any particular diet, as you have to find what works for your body and your lifestyle. Going through life hungry just isn't sustainable IMO.5 -
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autumnblade75 wrote: »
Bless your heart8 -
lkndaniels wrote: »
Yes. But I also now want to know how y'all I am. Like, since I live in Idaho, I'm not very y'all, but someone who lives in Georgia is super y'all?!?12 -
Big combo reply: I have a food scale and I do measure. I eat mostly whole foods. Right now I'm averaging about 1200 per day (calories).
I am 47 years old
CICO is what I do. Not doing keto or anything like that. I eat mainly like a core foods plan.
I'm 5'60 -
Big combo reply: I have a food scale and I do measure. I eat mostly whole foods. Right now I'm averaging about 1200 per day (calories).
I am 47 years old
CICO is what I do. Not doing keto or anything like that. I eat mainly like a core foods plan.
I'm 5'6
Maybe by making your food diary public we could offer better ideas?0 -
Also, I do strength training at least 3 times per week/boxing/elliptical or walking
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Big combo reply: I have a food scale and I do measure. I eat mostly whole foods. Right now I'm averaging about 1200 per day (calories).
I am 47 years old
CICO is what I do. Not doing keto or anything like that. I eat mainly like a core foods plan.
I'm 5'6
I'm older than you and I lose at 1700 - don't know why you are trying to eat so little.
I'm 142 at 5'7" - the last 15 pounds took about nine months because it DOES require discipline and eating very close to the least amount I can reasonably eat and still function.
Open up your food page for us to look at...go to FOOD settings and click Public (at the bottom.)
The fact you sayI'm averaging about 1200 per day
probably means something . . .else.
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quiksylver296 wrote: »lkndaniels wrote: »
Yes. But I also now want to know how y'all I am. Like, since I live in Idaho, I'm not very y'all, but someone who lives in Georgia is super y'all?!?
I think this needs a spinoff thread, because I'm also curious.5 -
Have at it
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Looking at your diary it only seems to go back about 10 days so I think it's just a case of patience. You will be retaining water weight if you have recently increased your exercise (your muscles retain water for repair, perfectly natural you can't do anything about it) you're probably looking at a month before things start going as expected loss wise and since you don't have a lot to lose 1 pound a week is considered good progress xxx Good luck.
Edit. Other tips also try to use digital scales over cups, cup measurements should only be used for liquids and sauces, and for things like rice try to get the dry weight. x Also don't forget to include hidden things like oil for cooking or beverages, it all adds up.
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Big combo reply: I have a food scale and I do measure. I eat mostly whole foods. Right now I'm averaging about 1200 per day (calories).
I am 47 years old
CICO is what I do. Not doing keto or anything like that. I eat mainly like a core foods plan.
I'm 5'6
Do you eat exercise calories back?
how do you calculate cals burned?
Make sure you are picking the proper database entry (weigh all solid foods and measure liquids)
If all the above is "by the book", then you may want to get some blood tests done to determine if there is a thyroid issue.0 -
I looked at your food diary...on Jan 27 and Jan 30 (or 31?) you have fish and chicken servings at "1 ounce." I bet you ate more than that. Most everything else is measured in cups...which won't work...
Lots of possible errors in your logging...not to mention almost no vegetables...is that on purpose?
With so little to lose, I would tighten up that food weight/logging.
It looks like you started logging on the 22nd of Jan. Keep it going, get more accurate - and eat the 1500 that is recommended by the site before exercise. 1500 sounds about perfect if you are accurate.5 -
Big combo reply: I have a food scale and I do measure. I eat mostly whole foods. Right now I'm averaging about 1200 per day (calories).
I am 47 years old
CICO is what I do. Not doing keto or anything like that. I eat mainly like a core foods plan.
I'm 5'6
If you feel confident that your data when you weigh solid food and measure liquid food is accurate, and you feel confident that you are using accurate entries in the data base to record calories in, and you are absolutely measuring/weighing EVERYTHING you eat, then my best guess is that you are "eating back" too many activity calories.
I am a 66 year old female, 5'6", & the only "exercise" I have been getting this winter is walking the dog (so not "brisk") a couple of miles a day. At 160-ish pounds, my TDEE based on several months of data is about 1600 calories/day.1 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »lkndaniels wrote: »
Yes. But I also now want to know how y'all I am. Like, since I live in Idaho, I'm not very y'all, but someone who lives in Georgia is super y'all?!?
I lived in in a border state in high school. We had an exchange group visit from New England, and they thought we were very y'all. Then we had a group visit from North Carolina, and they didn't think we were y'all at all.
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quiksylver296 wrote: »lkndaniels wrote: »
Yes. But I also now want to know how y'all I am. Like, since I live in Idaho, I'm not very y'all, but someone who lives in Georgia is super y'all?!?
Here in Colorado, we also aren't very y'all.3 -
If it's only been a couple of weeks, I agree that you may just need more time to see changes happening. That said, I really do encourage you to try and look at this as a long-term process. I don't believe that our bodies necessarily "want" to be a certain weight, but I do think that humans settle into comfortable eating and exercise patterns, and temporary dieting only results in temporary loss unless we change those patterns. I think this is also why you often see weight gain after a major life change: meeting a long-term partner, having a child, changing jobs, etc. Theoretically it should work the other way, but it's a lot harder to lose weight without trying. Instead of the change coming from outside, the change has to come from inside.
I also agree with the comments encouraging you to continue to work on accurate calorie logging. 1200 is a fairly low number and it's very common for people to think they are eating less than they are. This may or may not be true for you - it's too early to say - but I think it's important to keep in mind.0 -
Consistency and patience is key.
Consistently log your food and drink as accurately as possible every single day, sticking to your calorie deficit.
Consistently weigh in and log your weight in a weight-tracking app to see how you're doing as the weeks go by.
Consistently take your measurements to see if they're slowly decreasing over months.
When you don't have a lot of weight to lose, it can come off very slowly. And a day or two of bad eating can undo a whole week's deficit.
I'm 5'7" and I used to think there was no way I'd be able to get below 150lbs. So I'd always subconsciously sabotage my efforts when I reached that number, loosening up on tracking and eating more junk.
This time, I'm down to 145lbs and still chipping away bit by bit.
Good luck!2 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »It sounds like 174 might be a comfortable weight for your lifestyle and that you have a hard time making and maintaining changes that let you get away from there for long.
I think this is such a vital point. People often choose their goals based on an ideal and not the body they can realistically maintain. A person has to appreciate the amount of effort their goal weight is going to require in the way of maintenance calories and activity level, and acknowledge if that is impractical for them. On the other hand, some people do develop a heightened interest in/commitment to a more active lifestyle as they go along, or become better accustomed to the lower calorie requirement. Generally though, I think most of us have a pretty good idea the level of sacrifice we're going to be willing to make (or not) long-term.2 -
stanmann571 wrote: »autumnblade75 wrote: »
Bless your heart
I'm y'all enough to know what you meant by that.6
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