Not noticing progress fat% loss wise. Any advice?

AnnPT77 wrote: »

First, let me say that I think you're doing great: Huge results, excellent commitment, some smart strategies in there.

Second, let me say that I 100% and more endorse your idea of slowing down your loss rate, given your current status and goals.

If you've lost from 233.7 to 218.8 pounds between November 30 and December 30, that's nearly 3.5 pounds a week - aggressively fast, for someone not well over 300 pounds. I grant, if you're just getting started, some of that may be water weight, but parts of your scenario would tend to add some water weight, too, so I'm betting much/most is fat loss. I think you're getting away with losing this fast because you're 18 and resilient, plus working at good nutrition . . . but it's a risk factor, and a significant risk factor to your goal of muscle gain, even though you're at prime age to gain muscle.

That weight loss would math out to an estimated daily deficit over 1700 calories, i.e., it would suggest you've been eating 1700+ calories under your maintenance calories daily on average. That's a rough estimate, but it's also likely to be a more individualized estimate than the so-called calorie calculators. (They spit out population averages for similar people. You're an individual, not a population.)

Yeah, to support your stated goals, slow that bus down.

You also mention noticing that you've gained muscle, but not seeing that you're losing fat. Two things, about that:

1. Muscle gain, realistically, is fairly slow, though you're in the demographic where it can be fastest. Fat loss is fairly rapid, and most of what you've lost is fat, for certain. If you look more muscular rather than thinner, part of that appearance change is some fat being peeled off (maybe thin layers of it all over your body) so that muscles show more.

Personal anecdote: I'm a li'l ol' lady. I became very active, athletic even, in my 40s. I stayed overweight/obese for another decade plus, even though active. I looked totally doughy. When I started losing weight at age 59, without changing my exercise routine - a routine that's not lifting-centric at all - suddenly some surprising muscles started showing up. They'd been there, under the fat. They weren't much, if I were an 18-year-old guy, but they were kinda surprising in a 60-y/o woman.

That your muscles show more is in part a function of your having lost fat that would otherwise hide them. (You have more muscle mass than I do, even before lifting, because you're not a li'l ol' lady. 😆)

Fat loss can be like peeling an onion: The first layers you take off may not make the onion look much smaller, but as you keep going, each thin layer has more impact on the overall size.

2. For pretty much all of us - and I think that oddly this could be even more true for you as a younger person - it takes our brain some time to catch up to our change in appearance. We *know* what we look like, and that's what we see in photos, maybe even in the mirror: "It's me", the self-image. When I look at your photos, I see huge changes, and in only a month . . . like wowsers-level changes, in both fat and muscularity. The fat differences are over a lot of areas.

It wouldn't surprise me if you're looking at those same photos, and not seeing that same set of differences. In fact, it would surprise me if you did fully see them 😉: That would be kind of unusual, for a lot of humans.

How can you see them? Hard question. For one, believe the scale, whether you see it visually or not, when it's plummeting downward in the way it has been. For two, photos are good: I hope you're regularly taking multi-angle photos - maybe once a month? - from front, side, back, lightly dressed (but in something that won't make you embarrassed to show the photos to us or your friends later), and in as close to the exact same poses and lighting each time as possible. For three, if you're not doing multi-point tape measurements, start. Think about it as you start, figure out how you're going to measure at the very same body points every time, and under similar conditions (before eating for the day, pumped from a workout or not, etc.) Maybe once a month for those, too?

Generate multiple types of data evidence: Sometimes one will progress, sometimes others. As long as something's moving in the right direction, you're good. It will still be hard to see, but as time goes on, you'll learn to trust the data more.

One last gratuitous cranky-granny comment that you didn't even ask for.

You write:

. . . working out 5-6 times a week at high levels of intensity (elevated heartrate whole time, excessive sweating, fatigue/reps to failure).

That's great, and I'm sure you're doing a good job. Here's the thing: For exercise generally, and strength exercise especially, heart rate, sweating, fatigue/reps to failure, perceived intensity, muscle soreness after workouts . . . none of those are necessarily indications that workouts are optimally effective for any given set of goals. For your goals, make sure you're following a good program, in a smart way. I assume (hope) you're recording your progress in adding weight or reps, or some other similar indicator that strength is increasing.

Sweating, fatigue, elevated heart rate, etc. . . . signs that you're working hard, probably indications of will and work ethic - all good stuff. Strength progress is a better metric of effectiveness, and a good, smart program (with adequate recovery built in! because that's when the magic happens!) - that's a better indication of effectiveness. (Yes, measuring mass could be an indicator, too, but the relatively more accurate methods of doing that aren't super easy/cheap.)

You're doing great. Keep at it. Learn more about the process and its success factors. Make smart choices. Manage your expectations. Expect your visual feedback to lie to you. (😉) Continuing good results are ahead.

P.S. You're doing a wonderful thing, making this change at 18. You're at the perfect age to build muscle, the perfect age to find and groove in some long-term health-promoting habits. I wish I'd been that smart at 18. It would've saved me quite a bit of later trouble, improved my quality of life over many decades. Stay the course.