Need to lose just over a stone. Anyone like to join me?

[Thingsgettingstranger]

I'm just within the healthy weight range, but would love to lose 15lbs as that is where I felt best. Ideally I'd like to lose 1 lb per week, and be at my goal weight by Summer as we are planning a beachieve holiday - but mainly I just want to feel and look better as I haven't been taking care of myself lately. I will weigh myself every Sunday.
Today's weight: 9st4lbs (130lbs)
Goal weight: 8st3lbs (115lbs)
Lbs to go: 15

Anyone like to join?

Brilliant flash! Keep going - you'll be at 10 really soon 👍

Well done all. Not been in for a while, but lost a few more lb. Want to get down to 8.11 I think, so 4.5lb to go. Want to do that by my birthday end of Oct. Definitely doable!

Well done all - especially those who aren't losing but are still trying.
I've had a static couple of months. Haven't been able to exercise as much and have been a little less strict on the eating front. But I'm still just under the 10 stone (5'6") which has been my long held fantasy target and the lowest weight since before children so I'm very happy still.
I am going to have one last push to about 9st7 ish to try and shift the last bits of flab on belly and inner thighs. I've managed 2.5 stone so far - surely one more 0.5 can't be too difficult?

I don't suppose anyone is still on here but I'm back as I'm stuck at 10st5 and it's not going anywhere! I was desperate to be under 10 stone by my holiday but that's in just over three weeks so feels very unlikely.

Want some advice?

PS 5 lbs in 3 weeks is a cinch.

I would love some advice. BMI is 22, I run/do yoga/Jillian Michaels/walk 5 or so times a week, and eat homemade meals.

That's a great start @OverinaFlash. 22 BMI is good. Here are a few questions:

1. BMI is not a great measure for individuals bc a lean bodybuilder would show up as obese. If you were to guess looking at photos (do a google search), what is your body fat %?

2. typical breakfast lunch and dinner?

3. do you snack? if so how often?

4. do you take supplements? Eg protein shakes, etc

5. do you use MyFitnessPal?

6. any sense of your BMR?

PS: exercise is great but it won't get you to lose weight. I've gained fat when exercising more ... until I realised my diet was dialled poorly, then the weight flew off. Also timing matters a lot to accelerate fat burning ... I'll tell you more later.

Another 2 questions:

7. The Jillian Michaels rountine. Describe it briefly. Do you ever have shortness of breath with it (is it high intensity)? How long does it last? Times a week?

8. Running. How many times a week? How long do your runs last time-wise (not interested in distance)? Could you carry on a conversation when running?

I think my body fat is between 20 - 25 per cent. Mostly stored on hips and thighs.

Typical breakfast: full fat greek yoghurt with berries or 3 eggs scrambled.
Lunch: tuna with vegetables/homemade soup/baked potato with tuna or beans
Dinner: very varied, I like cooking and eating. Usually a protein (meat or fish) with 3 types of vegetables, often but not always a carb, usually potato

Snacks: once or twice a day, usually a piece of fruit.

I don't take supplements and don't want to.

I have my fitness pal and have used it but I think it overestimates calories burned and underestimates calories eaten, it's harder to use when you cook everything from scratch.

I don't know my BMR. Jillian Michaels is HIIT, so 25-30 mins combining short burst of cardio, strength training and ab work. It makes you sweaty and it hurts.

Running, is usually 3 times a week - 20 to 30 mins. No I couldnt talk while running. I run fast, about 8 - 8 1/2 min miles.

Well you're in solid shape and seem healthy @overinaflash. But your situation presents a bit of a conundrum, I think possibly because of the HIIT exercise (which is great btw, but it does need special treatment which I'll address in my second message because it can be tricky).

20 to 25% is already pretty lean for a woman ... Under 20% and you're getting into Jillian Michael territory - it's tough to maintain but obviously possible to do.

Right so here's what I would do. Bear in mind your first few days are going to be painful - I'll help.

1. you still eat carbs on a regular basis. Not excessive it sounds but enough for your body to fuel itself on glucose vs body / dietary fat. Using MFP, kill carbs to under 30g net (ie subtract fibre content) per day, less if you can for the first 3 days. you want to starve your body of carbs to reduce blood insulin so that your pancreas can produce glucagon and access your fat stores. This means you will be eating mainly protein and fat

2. manage protein to about 50 or 60 g per day - should be animal protein, so dairy, fish, meat, eggs etc bc there are 9 amino acids out of 20 that your body cannot synthesise and they happen to all be found in animal protein. So that's about a chicken breast per day - use MFP! Reason for limiting protein is any excess is converted to glucose by the liver which then spikes your insulin. The 50 or 60g are what you need in terms of amino acids

3. the rest of your diet will be fat. Focus on fats which are mainly saturated (butter, coconut oil, animal fat are great) and monounsaturated (olive oil, avocado oil). Eliminate trans fats (anything 'hydrogenated'). Avoid fats that are mainly polyunsaturated (like soybean, corn, safflower, sunflower oils) bc they are higher in Omega 6 which isn't great for health. Moreover these types of oils have to extracted using chemical solvents vs olive oil and coconut oil which are natural bc cold pressed.

If you're worried about fats being healthy, let me know and I can point you to resources that prove otherwise.

4. eliminate snacking (with one possible caveat below). This is because every time you eat, insulin spikes up and stays in your system up to a few hours and we want to keep it to a minimum. Moreover, fruit as a snack is out bc of the fructose.

5. no alcohol. Water, coffee, tea etc fine. Avoid sweeteners bc they mess up gut bacteria. I use them but I shouldn't.

6. Calories. They don't matter a huge amount but if you want results you are probably going to need to restrict them. Main objective however to cut out carbs completely so I'd focus on that for a few days, then begin restricting calories as your body burns its own fat for fuel. In this way you will be fuelling your body to an increasingly large extent from saturated animal fat - your own.

So in your case I'd start with 1,700 net calories as a daily cap and progressively reduce down to 1,500 net calories as soon as you can (ie without being hungry; you should never be hungry if you can access your body fat). By net I mean add back calories from your exercise.

7. Four days after restricting carbs, you will need to move to a 18:6 feeding routine. You will eat your three (two is better) meals in a 6 hour window of your choice and fast (only water, coffee and tea). There are giant health benefits to doing this (if interested let me know), in addition to accelerating weight loss bc your body will fuel any energy deficit from your body fat. 20:4 is even better.

This is called intermittent fasting. Once you've started this, we can discuss how you take advantage of the hormonal effects - especially growth hormone production - by timing your exercise and adapting it a bit ...

Does all the above make sense? Any questions?

Right, now I'll work on the HIIT aspect in a second post.

OK, so the running and HIIT aspect.

Easy part first: running. For the next 3 weeks, slow down your pace to say 8:30 to 9:00 min mile so that you can hold a conversation and run for a longer period of time - say 35 to 45 minutes.

Why? Because

a) your body starts burning fat after about 20 minutes of aerobic exercise - the longer you run, the more fat you burn but this effect is only good up to 60 minutes based on the research I've read. Thereafter, aerobic exercise tends to break your body down

b) fat needs oxygen to be metabolised, so easy breathing is better to access fat but make sure your heart rate is still reasonably high - about 70% of max if you know what that is. I use a heart rate monitor.

Now the hard one: HIIT. Why am I saying this is hard? If done right, HIIT is anaerobic which means without oxygen. It is characterised by short burst of high intensity work which cannot be fuelled by fat metabolism - ie ketones - bc we've established that fat metabolism needs oxygen.

Instead, in an anaerobic context your muscles will use glycogen which is stored in a part of your muscle cells. Glycogen (of which we store about 1500 calories in muscles) is effectively glucose. So what happens is you are using up glycogen stores when you do HIIT.

Why is this a problem? It's not. What is a problem is how to replenish those glycogen stores so you can do HIIT again soon. Your body would do this naturally via fat metabolism but the process is slow. Athletes doing anaerobic sports need carbs to replenish glycogen stores quickly. And so here's the problem: we need to keep carbs away from you for the next 3 weeks.

So you have a number of choices with respect to HIIT:

1. continue as you are doing and see how it goes. If you are sluggish it will likely be bc of glycogen depletion; let me know and we can assess what to do. If you only do twice a week you may not notice a difference.

2. To avoid being confronted wit this problem, stop HIIT for 3 weeks and do something else. Heavy weights are great btw and should be part of everyone's routine esp as you get older.

Personally I would choose 1) and reassess if you get sluggish ... there are a few options we can try.

Sounds very comprehensive and I'll definitely give it a go. Can I ask, are you a keen amateur/currently doing this yourself to lose weight (I saw you'd started a thread saying you were trying to lose some weight) or a professional?

Good. Give it a shot. You will have issues to overcome; everyone does. As your body moves into fat burning mode from sugar burning mode, there will be adaptations. A lot needs to change.

Try in particular:

1. to consume 3 to 5g of salt per day because you will be losing a lot of water weight initially. I used bouillon cubes and added some salt
2. take a cal/mag supplement
3. eat an avocado or two a day for the potassium

Also; you may experience some initial constipation as your gut bacteria and enzyme production change to break down your dietary fat.

I'm a bit of both truth be told! I've done this myself with great success, even if I have had hurdles to overcome. I've also made a lot of mistakes by latching onto fad diets that just didn't work

Re the other post, I'm fishing around for information as I'm looking into starting a business around this experience. I have done about 12 months' worth of intensive research on keto diets and IF to make sure it was healthy and it aligned with biochemical theory and empirical studies - both work. The keto diet is the 'best' in terms of alignment to how our bodies work. But it does need adapting to individual circumstances. So I'm now back on some carbs as I need them to refuel after high intensity workouts - I crashed and burned hard until I relented and added them back.

It seems there's a lot of misinformation on the internet and I'm trying to assess how much my target audience for my business already know about weight loss and weight management and health.

On the one hand it seems there's a huge business opportunity; on the other it's sad to come to the realisation how little the general population knows about nutrition and health, even if I appreciate it's hard stuff. Even though it's hard, you really only need to know a few basic things to get it right ...

Well I will keep you posted on how it's going! Fingers crossed.

Shoot. I forgot something key:

eat a ton of veggies. They are key for the nutrients. Just make sure you hit your carb and protein macro limits!

Please do. I'm happy to help you work through the difficulties. In my view, there are 2 hard parts

1. knowing what to do and why

2. getting organised and doing it.

The rest was surprisingly easy. I was never ever hungry so discipline was never part of the equation. That made me feel good bc I had regained control.

Good luck!