difficult to lose less?

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missikay1970
missikay1970 Posts: 588 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
i have about 27 more pounds to lose - i've heard it's more difficult to lose once you get under the 30 lb goal. does anyone find this to be true? does it take longer the closer you get to your goal-weight?

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  • cassondraragan
    cassondraragan Posts: 233 Member
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    bump
  • Elanesse100
    Elanesse100 Posts: 30 Member
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    Depends on where your goal is. I guess that could be true. If everyone's goal is under 200 somewhere (for guys; and down around like 120 girls) then certainly it does.

    It's easier to lose when there is so much to lose. When you have 200 pounds to lose, changing your lifestyle and exercise routines will pour off the pounds, but once your body reaches a more normal weight, it becomes more difficult to lose because there is less there. I don't know if I am making any sense, but the lower you go the harder it is regardless of where your goal is.

    I am at 210. I started at 237. The first couple of pounds dropped off, but now it goes slower, like 1 pound a week, I expect it to get even slower once I break the 200 mark.
  • paintitblack
    paintitblack Posts: 60
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    Yes it does! It's evolutionary. Back in the day, a good meal wasn't always guaranteed. The people who survived longest in harsh conditions with out food were the ones with the most fat on their bodies to use for energy. The people with low body fat percentages ran out of supplies quickly and were at a much higher risk of dying.

    Although we don't have to worry about not eating now, the process still happens when our metabolism slows down as we start to weigh less. It's an amazing thing our body does to keep us alive and unfortunately make it more difficult to diet.
  • 1goodymom67
    1goodymom67 Posts: 125
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    It has been for me. I pretty much have maintained. I'll lose a little here and there but i pretty much weight the same. I am giving my body a chance to realize that I am not done. I keep doing the same thing and staying positive. I also look at the accomplishment that I have made and continue to strive to do more.
  • vim_n_vigor
    vim_n_vigor Posts: 4,089 Member
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    The closer to your ideal weight (not necessarily your chosen weight) you are, the more difficult it is to lose. You won't typically see the large weight loss that people who have a lot of excess weight to lose can see. The composition of the body at those different weights is very different, contributing to the ease of dropping the weight.
  • poohkrazy05
    poohkrazy05 Posts: 19
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    Deffinately this is true for me. I lost 30lbs in 5months and have not lost anything since then. But on behalf of the weight lose, I have not been really sticking to it do to my operation and my mother is in the hospital again. But it does seem harded to get over the hump, but they say when you do it will start coming off again. Good Luck/
  • epj78
    epj78 Posts: 643 Member
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    It gets harder and slower every pound down you go. That's because you don't have the deficit you did when you started. Let's take a look at the math......

    Let's say you start out at 200. If you are a woman -- roughly (let's not get nit picky) - to stay at that weight, you need to eat 2,000 a day (weight *10) if you don't do any exercise. Speaking of exercise, let's say you walk 60 minutes, and burn 600 calories. If you eat 1500 calories a day......you'll lose 2+ pounds a week.

    Now, you are down to 170 pounds...yeah!! Now, you can only eat 1700 calories to maintain your current weight. So doing the same exercise --- which oops - you weigh less so it doesn't take as many calories to make you go --- so say 450 calories. you still eat 1500 calories a day. Now you will lose about 1.3 pounds a week.

    In short, the less you weigh the less you burn during the same intensity exercise and the less deficit you are putting your body in so the weight comes off slower. Which some equate with harder. The closer you get to your goal, the harder/slower it gets. And those little hicups that didn't effect your lose much before (pizza and beer during football anyone??) all of a sudden mean A LOT!
  • LorinaLynn
    LorinaLynn Posts: 13,247 Member
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    Don't mistake "slower" for "harder."

    It will be slow. It should be slow. But you should never feel deprived or like you're starving yourself, whether you have to lose 10 lbs or 100. You shouldn't feel like you need to spend 2 hours a day at the gym and burn 1000 calories a day, unless that what you really want to do. A moderate amount of exercise and a few hundred calories less than you'd need to maintain your weight... that's all you need.

    Plus a heavy dose of reality... knowing that your weight is going to fluctuate from time to time, knowing that progress will be slow, so you don't get frustrated and quit.
  • melsinct
    melsinct Posts: 3,512 Member
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    I needed to lose 30 pounds total. The first 15 pounds practically flew off. Then I plateaued for 2 months and had to fiddle with my MFP settings until the scale started moving again. The plateau happened when my BMI went from "overweight" to "normal," though I am not sure if that is just coincidence. I ended up having to increase my calories to start losing weight again, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. Once I set MFP to losing 0.5 pounds/week, the scale started moving again. I have accepted the fact that the last 10 pounds are slow to come off. I am now losing anywhere between 0.5-1 pound/week, though some weeks I lose nothing. If nothing else, this has prepared me for maintenance calories, as my daily deficit is only 250 calories.
  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
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    the leaner you get the harder it will be to shed fat. there are strategies you can employ if you are pretty lean trying to get leaner (carb refeeds, HIIT etc) but it will be harder to lose then before but every lb lost is much more evident in the mirror

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