Slow and steady.
Jun 17 weight: 253.8
Jun 10 weight: 255.8
Jun 03 weight: 256.2
May 27 weight: 262.2
May 20 weight: 264.2
I’ve lost 2 pounds in the last 7 days and 90.4 pounds in 21 weeks. Want stats from past weeks? Check out my entire 21 week weight loss progress.
I have good news and bad news.
First, the good news. The good news is that I’m less than 10 pounds away from losing a total of 100 pounds! It’s amazing how far we’ve come. Now, the bad news. The bad news is that my weight loss has slowed considerably over the last month — I’ve lost only about 11 pounds in the last 4 weeks.
While the gradual decline in my weekly weight loss was to be expected, it’s still hard to deal with. I’m still going to the gym 5 days a week and eating healthy, even more so than I was a couple months ago, but I’m losing at a much slower pace than I was in March, April, or even May.
It’s hard giving more and receiving less every week, but that’s what I’m prepared to do. I just know that when the ball starts dropping in Times Square this New Year’s Eve, that Escali scale pictured above will read 200 pounds.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
This is expected – your body couldn’t keep up that crazy pace forever. A few things to do to help you keep losing:
1. Did you up your calorie intake? See what effect that has.
2. Start adding weight training. Muscle burns more calories, even at rest, so it will raise your metabolism.
3. Find new ways to measure your progress: if you live by the scale/die by the scale you’re at risk of losing your motivation when things get “slow” — slow is in quotes, because there’s still a lot going on with your body. So the trick is to find new goals by which to measure your progress. Are clothes fitting differently? Is your mile time faster? Do you have more energy? Look for abstract ways to validate your efforts so you don’t get so bummed if the scale sticks.
Yeah, I know it was expected, but it’s still hard to take. I mean, who likes diminished returns?
To answer your questions, I do weight train — Mon/Wed/Fri. I’ve been meaning to post a really detailed guide to what I’m doing, I’ll make sure I get on that soon. Secondly, I haven’t increased my calories. I’m still hovering in the 1,500-2,000 calorie range a day. Next week, I’ll raise that by a few hundred and see how that works.
And other than the scale, life is better. Clothes fit better, I’m able to do more things, exercise longer, etc. I’ve actually had a lot of muscle gain it seems and I’m sure that attributes to the slower weight loss.
I’m going to keep chugging, Kate. I’m always grateful for any advice and suggestions, so keep that knowledge coming!
Thanks.
If you’re having any muscle gain at all, it can have a huge impact on your weight loss. Muscle weighs a lot. I’m sure you’ve heard the old “lose 4lbs of fat gain 2lbs of muscle looks like you just lost 2lbs on a scale”.
Anyway, you might want to look into an electric body fat monitor, but be forewarned they’re not perfectly accurate. It will at least give you another metric to monitor.
Hey, T. You crack me up. “I’ve ‘only’ lost 11 pounds in 4 weeks.” Anybody else (like me) would be saying, ‘HEY!!! I LOST ELEVEN FREAKING POUNDS IN 4 WEEKS! LOOK AT ME GO!!!” But I totally feel ya on this. Diminished returns such. To go along with what Kate said regarding living/dying by the scale, check out what a friend sent me yesterday when I was doing the same kind of lamenting: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200401/weight-loss-and-faulty-thinking
A very good article. Sometimes much easier to subscribe to in theory than in practice, but it’s something to give pause. You’re doing great. You’re doing all the right things. Now you get to learn patience!!!!
Yeah, you’ve starting to reach the point where you’ve either got to take a long-term view (as in weight loss over weeks and months, not days ) or give it up. You put the weight on over a long period of time, so it’ll take a long time to come off, but it will if simply keep doing what you’re doing. That’s the thought that has kept me going: what I’m doing IS working, incontrovertibly. Just not as quickly as it was at first.
And I’m sorry to say that you might slow down even more. 11 pounds in 4 weeks is almost 3 pounds a week, which is still rapid.
Uh, that should have said ‘diminished returns SUCK.’ not ‘such.’ I hate typos, dang it!!!
I would recommend you check out Jillian Michael’s podcast from her weekly radio show on Sundays at http://www.kfi640.com/pages/podcasting/. You can also get it via itunes. She has some great tips about health, weight loss, etc.
I know you’re feeling bummed that things have slowed down, but maybe now is time to look at the bigger picture.
Congratulations! You’ve lost nearly 100 pounds and have literally saved your own life! Your clothes fit better and you have more energy. It’s fantastic!
And now for the advice to keep you going. See if your doctor can recommend a nutritionist or has some advice about healthy, easy cookbooks. Poke around on the web for nutrition advice and resources for good health recipes.
And ask at your gym about meeting with a trainer. You may not be able to afford to see someone frequently, but even talking to someone once or twice should help you change things up, work different muscle groups, add some different challenges, etc.
My guess is that you’ve got a couple of things going on. One of them isn’t bad at all – muscle gain.
Since you’ve been doing weight training it’s a given that you’ve added some muscle mass. Ultimately that’s going to help you out because the denser your muscles are the more calories you’ll burn just sitting around. But it will make it seem, at least in the early going, like you’re not making any progress.
The other thing going on is your body adjusting to your new activity level. The body tries at all times to maintain metabolic equilibrium. If you start exercising – running, swimming, weight training, whatever – you throw that off and temporarily you boost your metabolism and burn more calories at rest than you did before. But then your body adjusts and it becomes harder to get the same burn you did before. By constantly increasing the intensity of your workouts you can thwart this metabolic mechanism.
One way to do that is instead of running at a steady pace on the treadmill, do intervals. Run as fast as you can for 30 seconds and then slow down to a leisurely pace for 2 minutes. Repeat this interval for 30 minutes and you’ll burn way more calories than you would running at a steady pace and you’ll make it virtually impossible for your metabolism to adjust.
I knew this would eventually happen to you. I have been reading your blog since the beginning and you mentioned you have never really done any type of weight loss before. You have been experiencing abnormal weight loss. You put your body in such a state of shock the weight just fell off. Now your body is getting used to the amount of food you eat as well as the activity you’re doing and you’re losing the recommended amount of weight which is 2 pounds a week (at most).
I am 360 pounds currently and started off my weight loss good losing 7 pounds the first week, but then I gained 0.8 the next week. so I know the frustration you feel, but you have to keep going. Even if you lost no weight, it’s better than it going up. Start measuring yourself to help get an idea if you’re still losing. Scales are just easy to use as a measurement, but weight loss is seen many different places. Fat content, waist measurement, chest measurement. Start keeping track of those things.
Also I think you’re eating way too little, there is a formula on may websites to calculate how many calories you should be eating. To lost weight you subtract 500-700 calories from the number you get. Here is the calculation
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) – (6.8 X age in years)
Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X ht in cm) – (4.7 X age in years)
This article goes into super detail on the different methods http://www.freedomfly.net/Articles/Nutrition/nutrition14.htm
This is going to sound odd, but maybe you should take a tape measure and measure out your arm circumference, waist, hips, and thighs. If you start doing this every week, along with weighing yourself on the scale, I think that you will get some positive feedback.
As everyone has said, muscle weighs more than fat! If you are tightening up and gaining muscle, the scale will not tell you.