Get Fit Slowly

12 responses so far ↓

• 1 Anne Keckler, Personal Trainer // Apr 1, 2008 at 7:02 am

  While a formula like that is a good place to start, you have to remember that everyone is a bit different. The only way to really know how many calories you need is to count them. If you are currently maintaining your weight, then continue to eat the way you normally do for a few days while counting every calorie.

  Now that you know how many calories you are actually consuming for maintenance, lower that by about 500 per day (or 600, if you prefer).

  I wrote about the issue of stalling just the other day.

• 2 greenman2001 // Apr 1, 2008 at 8:29 am

  ” … but I wanted to underestimate.”

  You, my friend, are your own worst enemy.

  Although you haven’t come out and actually said it in so many words, it sounds like you’re gradually coming to accept the idea that being hungry undermines your ability to maintain a calorie deficit. But you really, really want to lose 2 lbs a week, and you need a 1000 calorie a day deficit to do that. You don’t believe me when I say that a 500 calorie deficit is about the limit one can maintain without feeling hungry. That’s okay: don’t believe me. But will you at least believe what your body is telling you? You’ve lost 21 lbs in 20 weeks. That’s about a pound a week. A pound a week means your average deficit has been 500 calories a week. So despite all of your exercise and careful eating and “goal setting,” your body is moving you inexorably back to what IT’S comfortable with, regardless of the goal you’ve set for yourself.

  If you’re working out vigorously (you’ve been pretty quiet about this since you got back from vacation), a higher multiplier may be more appropriate. But a higher multiplier would reveal the fact that you’re maintaining a calorie deficit greater than 500 calories, wouldn’t it?

  It’s a lot harder to accurately measure calories burned than calories consumed. My recommendation to you is to carefully follow an eating plan that assumes moderate exercise (that is, a multiplier of 1.3) and generates a 500 calorie a day deficit (6 meals a day). If you’re working out rigorously for 1 1/2 hours, you’re likely burning about 300 calories: I therefore recommend eating a 300 calorie meal immediately after exercising (a couple of low-fat yogurts should do it: eat them right in the locker room, one before your shower, one after). That will end your post-workout appetite until your next meal and protect your calorie deficit. It’s an easy system: if you don’t exercise, don’t eat the extra meal. (You should be consuming protein and carbs within 45 minutes of strength training anyway, but that’s a subject for another time.)

  George Leonard talks extensively about plateaus in his book “Mastery.” It’s a normal part of learning a new habit. (He would never use as negative a word as “stalling,” which implies something you should avoid; it’s impossible to avoid plateaus, and counterproductive to believe it’s a component of failure as the word “stall” implies.) You’re definitely doing the right thing by taking a step back and looking at your system, making adjustments as necessary. Just don’t give up.

• 3 macdaddy // Apr 1, 2008 at 9:29 am

  Thanks for the comments guys…Again, greenman, you read too much negative into my posts and not enough positives. My title was “Stalled–But Not Discouraged.” Stalled was a word that came to mind when trying to convey that my weight loss has slowed down. My plan is not stalled, I’ve already said I’m not discouraged, and I’m not giving up, and 600 calories is not that difficult of a calorie deficit to maintain. Where do you get your exercise calorie burning numbers, by the way?

• 4 Andrew is getting fit // Apr 1, 2008 at 9:59 am

  It sounds to me like your plan should work. I think it’s easy for us to slip into just eating without considering how much we are eating which leads to a gradual slowing down of our weightloss or even worse, a gain.

• 5 TosaJen // Apr 1, 2008 at 11:16 am

  Nice job at reevaluating where you are.

  And nice job of “practicing maintenance”. By giving yourself a bit of time without strict records-keeping, you’ve given yourself a chance to see where you are and what happens when you do what comes relatively easy to you right now. You pretty much stay the same. That’s OK — it beats the heck out of gaining 5 pounds, eh?

• 6 Cynthia // Apr 1, 2008 at 3:52 pm

  If you are weight lifting, have you also done any girth measures, to see if you could be losing inches? If you are losing inches anywhere, you aren’t stalled, you are still making progress, just not immediate scale progress. It can go in spurts, where you’ll see inches lost for a period of time, then scale drops.

  The scale is a tool, but not the only tool for measuring progress.

  Aside from that, if you are maintaining, you’ve probably given your body a little break, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

  Watch the intake and I’m sure progress will resume shortly.

  I find that cycling calories works well for me… on the days I train hard, I eat more… but I try to keep it clean. Days I rest, or just do a little mild cardio, I eat less.

• 7 greenman2001 // Apr 1, 2008 at 4:15 pm

  Mac,

  Here’s an alternative title: “Right on Target: the First Plateau”.

  There are many calorie counters on the web — all of them giving different answers, of course. Years ago I found a couple that made sense: 100 calories per half hour of 12 min/mile running and 150 calories per half hour of vigorous weight lifting, and since those are the two components of my gym routine, those are the numbers I use when I need to.

  I hear you clearly: you’re not discouraged.

• 8 Brigid // Apr 2, 2008 at 6:13 am

  You know - I’m kind of in Greenman’s camp. I sense your frustration even though you say you aren’t discourage. It’s kind of a “read between the lines” thing. If I’m wrong - I’m wrong. You know your own truths - just be concious of them.

  As for the weight - two things:
  I don’t believe that losing weight is a simple formula that always works the same way. There are a number of variables from eating bad clams to your metabolism slowing down to adjust for the calorie deficit. Sometimes your body is just going to fight you. Everyone gets to the dreaded plateau at some point so there must be more factors involved than the obvious “calories in vs calories out”.

  #2 - Use some other form of measurement to gauge your progress. Broken record here: muscle weighs more than fat. The BF% is good - so is measuring yourself, how your clothes fit or even how your exercise feels. This morning, I did one of my workout videos and there’s one part that is particularily hard for me to do (involves plyo jumps). It wasn’t as hard today so I must be getting stronger. To me, this means more than the numbers on the scale.

  Just remember if you never lose another pound, you are far better off than where you were a year ago. Keep up the great work.

• 9 brad // Apr 2, 2008 at 6:14 am

  Since muscle weighs more than fat, the scale is not necessarily the best way to measure progress when you’re combining weight training with diet; as Cynthia above mentions, you could use other measures as well. I don’t even own a scale and have only the vaguest idea what I weigh (I find out my weight when I get a physical every five years or so). I measure progress by how loose or tight my trousers feel.

• 10 greenman2001 // Apr 2, 2008 at 12:12 pm

  I don’t think Mac’s discouraged!

  But I don’t understand why he see’s an almost ideal weight loss of 1 lb a week as constituting “stalled” progress. How is it that an almost perfect success gets translated into something that sounds like failure?

• 11 macdaddy // Apr 2, 2008 at 12:22 pm

  OK, OK, OK…Stalled was a bad choice of words. BUT, I haven’t lost 1 pound/week over the last three weeks. Sure, I’ve lost 20 pounds over the last 20 weeks, but nothing during the last 3. I’ve definitely PLATEAUED! But I’m still not discouraged!

• 12 greenman2001 // Apr 2, 2008 at 8:34 pm

  And you were on vacation for 2 of those 3 weeks, right?

  I’m all for using the plateau as an opportunity to re-evaluate your approach and refocus, perhaps with a new plan. Plateaus are great opportunities.

  Here’s what I would put at the heart of that new plan: avoid hunger. Hunger is the enemy of weight loss. It’s extremely difficult to maintain a calorie deficit when you’re hungry. This is the lens through which I would examine ALL of the activities of my week: what you eat and when you eat, how you eat around exercise, how you handle parties, vacations, going out to dinner, driving in the car.

  It’s fine to say “My plan is to eat 2600 calories a day.” But if you’re burning 3600 calories because of your exercise program, 2600 calories becomes extremely difficult to maintain. This is the problem with “underestimating” your multiplier. You can hack the plan on paper, but in real life hunger will dismantle your resolve. Do you believe me yet?

  Something to think about is the idea of not using exercise to generate a calorie deficit — to not use it as part of a weight loss plan AT ALL. Use exercise solely to get fit, and eating to lose weight. Make up ALL the calories you lose exercising. After all, the weight loss part of your life is going to be over soon (20 more weeks should do it), and you’re going to spend the next 40 years exercising without creating a calorie deficit. How are you going to manage that?

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