getting past a stall?

Hi David. You’ve been here less than a month. First, congrats on the first 15 lost.

That’s a healthy start, right?

Lots of folks experience fast loss in the “honeymoon” period of weight loss. Then it slows, or they gain back a pound or two or three.

If you don’t know that this is absolutely normal , this is where most people scream “”this isn’t working, I QUIT!!!” and throw in the towel and tell all their friends “calorie counting didn’t work for me.”

Yet, this is absolutely normal and predictable.

Just hang in there. Give it a couple of months, and during this period learn how to tighten up your weighing and be more accurate in your logging.

At the end of a couple of months, you should be able to have enough data to evaluate if your average loss is where you want it to be, or if you need to adjust your calories up or down.

We didn’t put it on in a month. It’s ridiculous to hope it will come off in a month. It’s a painstaking process, but doesn’t have to be painful.

How heavy are you now? I'm asking because 2 pounds a week is aggressively fast for many people, and you say "losing every pound is painful". If you've got a moderate amount to lose, you may be trying to go too fast. OTOH, if you've got a large amount to lose, can you keep up "painful" for the weeks to months to maybe even years it will take to lose all the way to goal? Just something to think about.

That said, there's often a couple of weeks adaptation period when a new routine feels very difficult, while your body adjusts to new habits. Maybe that's where you are now.

Beyond that, I agree with those above. Normal weight loss is ups and downs, with an overall down-trend over multiple weeks. Expect that. Don't expect a loss every single week.

While you're being patient - which is the right thing to do if you'd been losing well then stabilize for only a week - here are a couple of good reads:

About the "metabolic damage" concept, read the first posts in this thread (there are several from the thread's OP at the top) for some science on the subject, as opposed to blogosphere myths:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss/p1

About the "spikes and stalls" effect in normal weight loss, this thread, especially the very informative article linked in the first post:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

You can do this. "Pedal to the metal, max speed" may not be the best route. Springlering62 is right: This is the stage where people with unrealistic expectations give up, and people who commit to the process will learn more about how the process really works, and stick with it.

I'm cheering for you!

P.S. In case it may not be evident, people posting above have lost meaningful amounts of weight, and kept it off. I'm not the most excellent example here, but for me it was 50-some pounds off, and 7+ years at a healthy weight since. You're hearing about experience, not pure theory.

david9372 wrote: »

Thanks all!

I forgot to give the extra details - I started at 240lbs and lost 2.6, 2.6, 0.8, 2.5, 2.3, 0.7 lbs in the first 6 weeks (after losing about 5 lbs having a colonoscopy which made me start on the weight loss!). I guess that's better than I realised! The last week I was at the same weight for all but the last day.

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm 54 years old, 6' tall and keeping pretty strictly to 1500 cal/day. I feel pretty rough most of the time, so might be overdoing it! I just checked and saw I'm eating 1000 cal less per day than required to maintain current weight (220). Think I'm overdoing it? I figured it's better to do it more intensely but for a shorter time to get it over with!

Once you have enough experiential data, your weight loss defines your deficit, not MFP, a fitness tracker or some other calorie calculator. They just give you an estimate for an average person.

Since you've lost 11.5 pounds in 6 weeks, that suggests you're pretty close to average, since that's about a 958 calorie deficit over that time period . . . roughly.

I think you're on the border of overdoing it. At 6' and 220, you're technically overweight but not obese. You don't have a huge amount to lose. 1% of current weight per week is somewhat aggressive. Aggressive loss risks unnecessary loss of lean mass alongside fat loss, among other risks.

Also, as a reminder, you talked about the process being "painful". If you decide to lose down to the top of the normal BMI range (just to pull a target out of the air for discussion purposes), that'd be 183, so 37 pounds loss. At 2 pounds a week, you're looking at "painful" for at least four and a half months . . . probably longer, because loss will likely slow as you get lighter; plus possibly also more painful as your body may rebel more at fast loss as you get lighter, too. Does that sound good, like something you can realistically stick with that long?

As far as the bolded, give it a think: Do you want to stay at a healthy weight once you reach there, or get to a healthy weight then "go back to normal"?

The latter is the recipe for yo-yo regain, which is about the least healthy approach to weight management. Maintaining a healthy weight long term is a forever endeavor. That puts a premium on finding sustainable new eating/activity habits you can continue long term pretty much on autopilot when other parts of life get demanding . . . because they will.

Fast loss and finding/practicing new sustainable habits tend not to be the same thing.

Best wishes, whatever you decide!

david9372 wrote: »

hi Ann,

Thanks for the response!

I actually rechecked my numbers and missed the first week which was 0.5lbs. So I lost 12lbs in 7 weeks - so 1.7 lbs/week. Some of that time was aimed at 1750 cal/day and then I dropped to 1500 cal/day.

If I relax a bit and aim for say 1.5lb per week, I'm a bit confused on how to figure out calories to aim for?

Per your last question - yes, I am making healthy changes (full Paleo now) to make sure I don't put weight back on!

If you're losing at about the rate you told MFP you wanted (when you set yourself up here), you can just change your goal to losing 1.5 pounds per week. If you want to derive an estimate from your own data (which may be more accurate), continue as below:

Take the number of pounds (including decimal places/fractions) you've lost over the whole time period, or at least the most recent 4 weeks. Multiply that by 3500 (rough number of calories in a pound of body fat). Add up the number of calories of food you've logged in the same time period. Add those two numbers (calories of weight loss + calories of food). Divide by the number of days in the time period.

That's your approximate daily maintenance calories over the time period. For every pound per week you want to lose, cut 500 calories from that (3500 calories per week divided by the 7 days to get a daily value). So, for 1.5 pounds a week, subtract 750 calories per day. That's your new calorie goal.

That's the calculation on a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) basis. If you plan to eat back exercise calories separately, subtract the daily average of your exercise calories (over the same time period) from that TDEE-based calorie goal, and use that number as your new goal.

Test-drive that for 4-6 weeks, check results, adjust again if necessary for either loss rate or tolerability/sustainability. Rinse and repeat.

Hope that helps!