Masking Weight Loss

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  • deannasawyer
    deannasawyer Posts: 47 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Also, you do mention feeling best at 113, which is BMI 19.4, pretty close to the bottom end of normal BMI range. Do you have narrow hips (bone spacing), shoulders? Small hat size? Narrow wrists, small hands/feet?

    Very much yes to all of the above, except for feet and shoulders. I wear a size 4 ring, extra small hats, under 5" wrist. My entire fist disappears in my husband's hand, easily.

    At 113lbs, I not only like the way I look, but I feel healthier, more energetic, less sluggish. I went from being very active (run every day, hike every weekend, 12k+ steps at work, farm work during free time) prior to being married to extremely sedentary (sub-2k steps save for the occasional neighborhood walk and no more active hobbies) and with much more access to food. I'm not surprised at all that my body fat percentage is as high as it is (err.. was.. hoping it's less now). I didn't just gain weight on top of my muscle mass, I also lost muscle mass and replaced it with fat.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Also, you do mention feeling best at 113, which is BMI 19.4, pretty close to the bottom end of normal BMI range. Do you have narrow hips (bone spacing), shoulders? Small hat size? Narrow wrists, small hands/feet?

    Very much yes to all of the above, except for feet and shoulders. I wear a size 4 ring, extra small hats, under 5" wrist. My entire fist disappears in my husband's hand, easily.

    At 113lbs, I not only like the way I look, but I feel healthier, more energetic, less sluggish. I went from being very active (run every day, hike every weekend, 12k+ steps at work, farm work during free time) prior to being married to extremely sedentary (sub-2k steps save for the occasional neighborhood walk and no more active hobbies) and with much more access to food. I'm not surprised at all that my body fat percentage is as high as it is (err.. was.. hoping it's less now). I didn't just gain weight on top of my muscle mass, I also lost muscle mass and replaced it with fat.

    Of course it is - the bolded. I may not have the timeline clear, but roughly: You were at 138, now at 128, so 10 pounds down. You mention losing fast the first month, but likely some of that was water weight and a decrease in average digestive contents, just from eating less. I won't guess at that (the fraction that would've been water/waste), but a minority.

    Then you lost about 4 pounds in the 2nd month, so it sounds like "fast" in the first month was averaging about 1.5 pounds a week - probably faster than sensible for your then-current weight, but not full-bore nutty-aggressive. Sounds like you may've ramped up exercise (walking/jogging) somewhere along the line, which - even though it isn't formal strength training - will've given your body a hint that your muscle mass is not an unwanted/expendable resources.

    A fair fraction of the 10 pounds will've been fat, certainly. No need to catastrophize about it - you're making progress toward your goals.

  • deannasawyer
    deannasawyer Posts: 47 Member
    edited May 2022
    In case anyone is curious, after about a month and a half of being stuck at 128, 2 pounds finally dropped off this past week. Crossing my fingers that from here on out I'll resume seeing steady loss like I did before the stall.

    TMI Alert
    I have been bleeding since a week after the IUD went in so definitely some hormonal shenanigans which are likely to blame for the standstill.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    In case anyone is curious, after about a month and a half of being stuck at 128, 2 pounds finally dropped off this past week. Crossing my fingers that from here on out I'll resume seeing steady loss like I did before the stall.

    TMI Alert
    I have been bleeding since a week after the IUD went in so definitely some hormonal shenanigans which are likely to blame for the standstill.

    Quite possibly some inflammation related to that as well, so overall honestly not surprising.

    Thanks for coming back to give an update: I always wonder what the next stage of people's stories turns out to be. I hope you have a smooth course going forward!
  • deannasawyer
    deannasawyer Posts: 47 Member
    Unfortunately, my course has not been very smooth.

    After a low of 125lbs and some change (yay!), I had a week where three events led to going over my calories by quite a bit. My weekly average came out to around 1500 calories/day, which should have just been a tad over maintenance. Even if I underestimated one or more of those meals, I couldn't possibly have underestimated by more than 1-2000 calories total. So NBD.

    Except the scale ticked up to 129, which is higher than it's been March. Which I expected given the large meals. More waste, probably water retention from increased sodium, etc. Problem is it stayed that way. It's been 16 days since the hike to 129 and I'm still bouncing between 129 and 127lbs. So for the last week I set my goal to 900 calories in the hopes of just seeing the trend budge (since that should have been a whole pound of loss -- easier to see). Expectation being that as soon as I start trending downward again, I'd go back to 1200 calories. That didn't work, as anyone might have expected, because 900 net is too low for me and led to a binge that brought my weekly average back to 1200/day anyway.

    I know 1200 is not my maintenance calories. My tested BMR is 1186, so that wouldn't make sense. Based on my average rate of loss being 0.5lb/wk at 1200 calories, sedentary maintenance is probably a little over 1400. And 1200 was working... albeit in a trend of plateau/whoosh/plateau/whoosh according to Libra (which is probably what caused the initial confusion in this thread to be honest).

    I'm very frustrated to be 6 months into my journey and be back where I was mid-March. Should I try reverse dieting back to maintenance for a while and then cut again? Or am I just relying way too much on the math and I should just hunker down and expect that it won't always make sense?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,717 Member
    I
    Unfortunately, my course has not been very smooth.

    After a low of 125lbs and some change (yay!), I had a week where three events led to going over my calories by quite a bit. My weekly average came out to around 1500 calories/day, which should have just been a tad over maintenance. Even if I underestimated one or more of those meals, I couldn't possibly have underestimated by more than 1-2000 calories total. So NBD.

    Except the scale ticked up to 129, which is higher than it's been March. Which I expected given the large meals. More waste, probably water retention from increased sodium, etc. Problem is it stayed that way. It's been 16 days since the hike to 129 and I'm still bouncing between 129 and 127lbs. So for the last week I set my goal to 900 calories in the hopes of just seeing the trend budge (since that should have been a whole pound of loss -- easier to see). Expectation being that as soon as I start trending downward again, I'd go back to 1200 calories. That didn't work, as anyone might have expected, because 900 net is too low for me and led to a binge that brought my weekly average back to 1200/day anyway.

    I know 1200 is not my maintenance calories. My tested BMR is 1186, so that wouldn't make sense. Based on my average rate of loss being 0.5lb/wk at 1200 calories, sedentary maintenance is probably a little over 1400. And 1200 was working... albeit in a trend of plateau/whoosh/plateau/whoosh according to Libra (which is probably what caused the initial confusion in this thread to be honest).

    I'm very frustrated to be 6 months into my journey and be back where I was mid-March. Should I try reverse dieting back to maintenance for a while and then cut again? Or am I just relying way too much on the math and I should just hunker down and expect that it won't always make sense?

    If I were you, I'd probably try to hold steady at the calorie level you find sustainable (doesn't trigger compensatory over-eating) and know has produced gradual loss in the past (though it would also be fine to inch back up toward maintenance and hang out there for a bit, if that's psychologically easier for you at this point).

    I'm saying this as someone who not long back went through losing around 10-15 vanity pounds crazy-slowly (effective deficit around 100-150 calories, over more than a year's time). There was a stage where even Libra (my weight-trending app of choice) thought I was maintaining/gaining for a whole month, when I knew I was eating at a slow-loss intake. IIRC, I didn't even have any major high-calorie days in that time period, which would've made the false plateau/gain look even more misleading (and I'm fully in menopause, so I don't have any hormonal water-weight cycling in the picture). Sure enough, with patience, the expected loss eventually showed up on the scale, at around the 5-6 week mark.

    IMO, slow loss - even the half pound a week - is ultra likely to look like plateau-whoosh, because (if you're similar to me) daily water fluctuations are routinely in the 2-3 pound range (even without major high-calorie days), and that can mask half a pound a week of fat loss on the scale for a surprisingly long time. Eventually, the peek-a-boo breaks through when the fat loss is more than that maybe 3 pound range . . . but how long it will take is pretty unpredictable IME.

    Bodies are weird. 🤷‍♀️
  • deannasawyer
    deannasawyer Posts: 47 Member
    edited May 2022
    @AnnPT77 Thank you for sharing your experience. That makes a lot of sense. I think what I'll do is hang out at maintenance for a little bit (because if I'm being honest, after 6 months of this I am ready for a break) and then resume 1200 calories/day in a few weeks and try to be a bit more patient. Hearing that your Libra trend thought you were gaining for a whole month when you were actually losing is comforting, since I'm probably in that boat right now. If I can maintain a loss of 0.5lb/wk, I should be at goal weight around next January-ish. Longer than I would have liked, but more sustainable.

    The hard part will be figuring out how to eat at maintenance, so I guess I can use this short period as practice. I completely changed how I eat when I started eating at a deficit and I've gotten used to that.