To think rapid weightloss in the morbidly obese isn't an accurate representation of weightloss for most people?

[Halfadamnlb]

I'm currently 10st 7 and want to get down to 9.5st, I'm overweight but not obese.

I've been making changes to my diet and lifestyle for a little over two weeks and giving it my all.

Daily walks for at least an hour, sometimes two hours.

No sugar in my hot drinks and I've switched from whole milk to skimmed.

I have cut out all unhealthy snacks like chocolate and crisps which I was eating most days.

I'm eating smaller portions at dinner time.

Drinking alot more water.

Doing some light cardio at home in addition to the long walks.

I have lost a measly 0.5lb, if that.

Meanwhile on a weight loss group on Facebook there are women bragging about having lost 12lbs in a bloody week.

The people who are posting this type of loss are, in their own admission, morbidly obese.

Therefore, in my opinion, such losses aren't representative of the reality of dieting for most people.

It's demotivating to work so hard on something and see such a miniscule loss then to read somebody has lost 12lb and done so well by "just cutting out takeaways"

AIBU?

I lost 16lbs in my first week on WW but I was 18.5 stone, like a previous poster the first 4 or 5 stone came off fairly quickly but the remaining 5 stone was hard going - the smaller I got the harder it was

How do you make sure you're getting protein and fat, if you don't mind me asking?

To be completely honest with you, I don't. I know next to nothing about nutrition. My modus operandi this past fortnight has been to eat less in general and cut out all unhealthy snacks. I haven't been regimental about ensuring I get enough protein and fats.

I also found mixing up exercise helped as the muscles being used in a new way seemed to really feel exerting but quite invigorating too. I liked the feeling of muscle soreness the next day knowing that the repair process would be burning lots of energy. That might sound a bit weird and it never became obsessive but I found it helpful. PE with Joe was enough to do this for me as I was out of shape after a pregnancy.

Exercise also really helped my mood and sleep.

Drinking lots of water or sugar free squash can help with energy and skin looking fresh and clear which can feel quite motivating.

Other meal options I enjoyed when I was tracking cals were:

Bacon (fat removed) and eggs on toast
Total 5 yoghurt and berries
Rice cake (kalo apple and cinnamon) with peanut butter

Cod and chorizo in a tomato and chickpea sauce
Frittata with sweetcorn, cheese, a few sautéed potatoes, mushrooms (any veg really and feta is nice)
Tuna, chicken or ham salad with hummus
Lean steak with bernaise sauce, asparagus, roasted tomatoes and a small portion of carbs
Those Merchant Gourmet and Jamie Oliver sachets of grains, lentils, daal etc- these are nice with marinated roasted chicken thigh fillets or fish.

I could only sustain the weight loss eating food I like so maybe base your choices on your faves but be more aware of carbs and cals

I used the Apple Health app to work out how far I've walked & it's synced up to My Fitness Pal. Even when I briskly walk 6-7 miles, the number of calories used is always under a 100!
Do you use a Fitbit or something to know exactly the speed you are going & for how long or are you working it out yourself?

The food suggestions above sound delicious and sustainable

I don't have a fit bit no, I have a watch that counts steps and the my fitness pal app.

I'm seeing now that it's almost certainly not accurate but what I do is set a timer when I leave for my walk then stop the timer when I get back. If I have been walking for two hours I put that into the MYP app and it calculates the 'supposed' calories I have lost.

With regards to the actual steps taken, I'm happy if it's above 10,000 which it almost always is.

No it isn't representative. If you are morbidly obese and eat a massive amount of food and then reduce it to meagre portions you will obviously lose weight quicker than somebody with far less fat to lose. Their weight loss will slow down as their metabolism slows.

Don't read about others.

The first week of trying to lose weight I ate very little and would get 'warning' notifications on the app telling me that based on my input data I'm not eating anywhere near enough. To be fair I was starving hungry for the most part.

That week accrued me a 0.5lb loss.

I listened to the app (another mistake) and made an effort to eat more but still stay on or under 1200 calories, no further loss.

@Halfadamnlb

How do you make sure you're getting protein and fat, if you don't mind me asking?

To be completely honest with you, I don't. I know next to nothing about nutrition. My modus operandi this past fortnight has been to eat less in general and cut out all unhealthy snacks. I haven't been regimental about ensuring I get enough protein and fats.

This is great! That means you can learn loads of new stuff that will help you, and you'll start to actually get somewhere!

If you eat less, as a blanket rule, your body will lose a bit of fat, and cut calories to other services too, like maintenance, growth and repair, and functioning of other systems like the endocrine system and the reproductive system and the cardiovascular system etc

People on long term calorie deficient diets end up with all kind of symptoms (exhaustion/depression/lank hair/greasy skin/susceptibility to infection etc) that have nothing to do with losing fat. Bodies do not WANT to lose fat. Bodies like it. It is a defense against extreme circumstances.

You have to tailor your actions so that your food doesn't trigger fat storage, and does trigger weight loss. Your easiest route will be via dropping carbs and filling the gap with fat and protein, and by doing a bit of fasting (which you do already with the timing of your dinner and breakfast) It's easiest because it means you don't have to be hungry all the time. It's effective because it cuts insulin release, which hinders fat storage, thereby promoting fat use.

Try not to weigh yourself every day. That gain is most likely because you ate something saltier than usual yesterday and you’re retaining water. Which is the same reason why someone with a lot to weight to lose can lose 12 lbs in the first week by cutting out their daily takeaways, their diet would be considerably lower in salt and they get a massive water loss.

Just to be clear, don’t cut salt from your diet, too little salt is far more dangerous than too much salt, just be aware that it can be the cause for an otherwise unexplained gain.

Compare yourself against no one but yourself. Good luck, you can do this!

you should totally ignore ‘calories burned’ through exercise

I agree. I eat 1200 calories a day regardless of how much or how little exercise I do and I've been losing 3lbs a week so far.

Same as pp. What works for me is intermittent fasting and then focusing on good fats, mean protein and veg. No snacking and lots of water. Multi vitamin. I also use myo-inositol as it seems to stop me craving carbs and sweet things.

I have 3 stone to lose so I understand how frustrating it is when you don't lose the weight you want! But just over a stone won't take long, do more research into dieting and calorie taking, try and do some home workouts if possible it'll come off in no time

I also use myo-inositol as it seems to stop me craving carbs and sweet things

Eating less carbs and sweet things stops cravings for carbs and sweet things. If you're full of protein and fat, not only will you not fancy a bar of chocolate/bag of crisps, the idea of eating them will be unpleasant.

You're all so helpful thank you! I'm taking everything on board and making notes

Somewhere else I'm probably going wrong is taking the calories at face value when I input my meal into my fitness pal.

For example yesterday I had pasta bake so entered that into the dinner diary and the top result for homemade pasta bake was around 600 calories, I clicked that and it tallied up my daily amount.

But how do I know that it was just 600 calories? It may have been 1000 for all I know.

Because I know so little about calories and dieting I just take these things at face value, I don't weigh my portions so the MFP calculations could be way out.

If you get a ready made cottage pie which says 526cal on the front its easy to know that if you eat exactly half, then you're consuming exactly half of those calories.

Not so easy when you're making the pasta bake yourself iyswim?

I'm was tempted to just sign up to weight watchers because I just didn't know what I'm doing.

If you drop your kcal in by x, and expect your body to drop its fat levels by x, you're doing it wrong. It just doesn't work that way.

Weight watchers don't know what they're doing.

I posted this up thread

It will educate you with everything you need to know in 40 minutes. Is your weight loss worth 40 minutes? Lots of what we get taught by the dieting industry is based on no science whatsoever. Like 5 a day, for example. There is no biological need at all for us to eat 5 pieces of fruit per day, it was pulled out of thin air. And yet we try to live by it.

You can add recipes to MFP. Just weigh the ingredients as you go. For the first few weeks at least, I would recommend weighing everything, and logging it before you put it into your mouth. You don’t need to do it forever, but it will make you more aware of calories and as well as any mindless eating you might do.

Thank you Eckhart I'm going to watch that video this afternoon when my kids go down for a nap

@Halfadamnlb your last post hit the nail on the head of why so many people struggle with MFP especially when they home cook a lot of food! I've been using it for over 10 years, have never managed to lose weight but that's because I eat too much and never stick to my calorie allowance! But the comments about it are always the same.

If you make a pasta bake, you need to create your own recipe in the app (it takes ages!) weighing and measuring everything then decide how many portions its going to serve then be honest about how many portions you are eating. If you have the time and patience to use it properly MFP is brilliant but it is time consuming to set up to your personal preferences.

Your point about pasta bake is one reason why I can't get along with MFP.

Just about everything I eat is either home made or from independent takeaways and I can go for weeks without eating the same thing twice so I just CBA making a sensible estimate of the calories in what I eat most of the time and it often doesn't come up accurately in MFP.

Someone posted a link on here that you could paste in a recipe and the fraction of the whole thing that you eat and it calculates the calories, so that would make things easier, as long as you follow the recipe of course.

If you mostly cook from scratch and can stick to low fat processed foods, both Slimming World and Weight Watchers have a plan where you base most of your meals on non starchy veg and just eat what you like out of veg, lean meat, fish, pulses, eggs, fruit and then have very limited amounts of bread, dairy and all the treaty crap like crisps, alcohol, chocolate etc. No need to count or measure most things, or be hungry.

FFS low fat unprocessed foods that is.

Or look at the Pinch of Nom or Two Chubby Cubs websites. They're both SW friendly recipes.

I'd just like to point out @Suaf and @The6thQueen that low carb diets are just that - low carb and not no carb!

The whole point of a low carb diet is that it's just a re-ordering of the macronutrients that we eat. So instead of:

high carb/medium protein/low fat

we switch it round to

high fat/medium protein/low carb

The carbs that you consume on a low carb diet are predominantly vegetables and salad, with some fruit and pulses.

@Halfadamnlb you are quite right when you say I also suspect I have some hormonal issues going on which may be contributing to the struggle to lose weight

Weight loss is controlled by a balance of three key hormones - primarily insulin but also grehlin and leptin. These hormones, if they're out of balance, cause us to gain fat and also allow our appetite to get out of control. So we're constantly hungry - so eating more - and then laying down fat. (That's a very simplistic explanation but essentially how it works).

We're just about to start a new Bootcamp (on Monday) so why not come and join us? There's a huge amount of information about food and nutrition on our weekly spreadsheet, plus loads of support from other Bootcampers. There are currently 150 of signed up to start, so plenty of other people in the same situation!

I've lost a simar amount of weight but towards the thin end you HAVE to calorie count or it just doesn't work.

I had the same experience with MFP- it’s hugely out in terms of cals. Like other posters I would weigh food and put ingredients in separately. Pasta bake is a meal that could contain 300 cals (small portion of pasta, tomato and veg sauce, sprinkling of cheese) or 900 (big portion of pasta, protein, veg, cheesy or creamy sauce with cheese on top), so MFP just doesn’t work for these types of meals.

Op please listen to @BIWI, she really knows what she is talking about.

And please don’t try to eat a tiny amount of high carb foods - you will be starving hungry as you have found out. That’s not good for anyone especially someone with a history of ED.