Need advice on weight loss goals

[JeremyWebber]

Hi guys. I am new to the Fit Bit community and have been recently rocking my Alta HR for the past 2 weeks. To give a bit of a background... I currently weigh 154kg, 188cm height and 34 years old. I have never taken my weight seriously before but I guess having a newborn baby gives you some perspective in life. 

At my peak, I weighed 175kg and have since shed it and in the process reduced the size of my clothes as well. My question is... 

My goal is to get to 100kg and currently I track myself 5 days a week (i dont wear my fitbit on weekends) and during the week days, I average somewhere between 10000 - 12000 steps daily and burning about 4200 calories a day. I am currently consuming anywhere between 2000 - 2500 calories a day and I do try to stick closer to 2000 cals when I can.

However, there are times that I feel a bit grouchy and I just feel like eating something. Is this a sign that my deficit is too large for my body to sustain? Sometimes, I feel that to lose all that weight is such a daunting task... I dont want to fall off the wagon so any advice/ motivation you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated!

[bikerhiker]

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@JeremyWebber wrote:

Hi guys. I am new to the Fit Bit community and have been recently rocking my Alta HR for the past 2 weeks. To give a bit of a background... I currently weigh 154kg, 188cm height and 34 years old. I have never taken my weight seriously before but I guess having a newborn baby gives you some perspective in life. 

At my peak, I weighed 175kg and have since shed it and in the process reduced the size of my clothes as well. My question is... 

My goal is to get to 100kg and currently I track myself 5 days a week (i dont wear my fitbit on weekends) and during the week days, I average somewhere between 10000 - 12000 steps daily and burning about 4200 calories a day. I am currently consuming anywhere between 2000 - 2500 calories a day and I do try to stick closer to 2000 cals when I can.

However, there are times that I feel a bit grouchy and I just feel like eating something. Is this a sign that my deficit is too large for my body to sustain? Sometimes, I feel that to lose all that weight is such a daunting task... I dont want to fall off the wagon so any advice/ motivation you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated!

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@JeremyWebber

Thank you for sharing your story and your desire to become more healthy with your body.  I like to think that when we choose to eat and live a healthy life, then eventually that healthy life makes our body health and hence naturally all the excess weight that aren't helpful in letting you live a healthy daily life will come off.  So I like you to think this way as opposed as to the current thinking that in order to loose weight, you need to starve yourself, be moody and hungry to try to loose weight.  This usually will never work in the long run.  You want to create a sustainable weight loss that works in all aspects of your life; be it with your family, your friends and your work life.  So you truly need to educate yourself on what is causing your weight gain, which food and drinks are causing you to overweight and how to avoid them and substitute them with more healthier options.

First of all, I like you to watch a video produced by the BBC about "The Truth About Sugar".

Secondly, do you have any thyroid, liver and digestive issues with your body?  This will only be revealed by blood work (blood pH, blood glucose level, lipids etc) , urine sample (urine pH, ketones etc. ) and your fecal sample (your feces) if necessary.  This can be requested by your GP, so that your GP can have a full picture of your body health.  

Why all this?  Well, before you start loosing weight, you need to know whether you have a healthy body to begin with.  The Fitbit's model of Calories In and Calories Out work when you have a healthy full functioning body and if you loose calories with a combination of exercise and eating less.  If your body is healthy, it will naturally burn calories in a form of both carbohydrates and fat in their appropriate proportions depending upon your movement needs.  Keep in mind that the human brain function gets its fuel only from carbohydrates, not fat!  So if you starve your brain of carbs, you will get moody.  This is a symptom called hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) (brain fog, grouchy, moody, depressed etc..) and of course if your body is unable to burn fat due to high insulin level in your body, then you would only burn carbs, not fat!  Now if you starve yourself from carbs by doing a low calorie diet, then of course you will feel hungry, and perhaps low energy and fatigue because your body is basically saying I need more carbs, more fuel.  Ideally the body will burn fat in the absence of insulin.  Insulin is secreted by the Pancreas in response to high blood sugar in your blood stream.  Too high blood sugar is toxic to your body.  That's the reason why I want you to watch the video as it shows you the many ways pure sugar can get into your blood stream via food that you thought are healthy, but they are really not.

Stress can also play a part in raising your insulin level, as the hormone "Cortisol" secreted via the Adrenal glands to calm you down can have the adverse effect of always making your body burn carbs, not fat.

Fat provides more energy than carbs and protein; 9 calories/gram as opposed to 4 calories for carbs and 4 calories for protein/gram.  So there is plenty of potential energy your body can tap into fat, but you need specific conditions in your body to happen before you can burn fat.  Once you are able to burn fat efficiently, loosing that much weight is not a problem.  In fact, it's unnatural for a human to carry so much weight, unless he/she is in a life threatening situation. 

Hope this helps.  

[SunsetRunner]

Yes, it’s a sign you aren’t eating enough. Generally, most people go with a 500 calorie deficit. If you are burning about 4,000 calories then I would be consuming closer to 3,500 calories. You need to give your body time to adjust to the new calorie consumption so a drastic drop in calories is just going to mess you up down the road. The smaller the calorie deficit, the better chance you have at sticking with the diet. As you drop in weight, your deficit may even need to go smaller. I suggest wearing the fitbit every day. If you aren’t tracking on your off days you risk over eating and could end up blowing all that hard work you did during the week. If you aren’t already, I would start weight training. If you want to do some cardio here and there that’s fine but weight training will give you the biggest benefit. Now keep in mind, your body adjusts to what you are doing. So periodically, you may need to eat at maintenance for a while. Sometimes people will “cut” during the warmer seasons and “bulk” during the winter. They are never in a deficit for a very long period of time. As far as what you are eating, I would make small changes at a time. If you are coming from a very high carb, junk food diet, it can be difficult to make a lot of changes at once. So I would make little changes at a time. If you have a medical reason to jump the gun then listen to your doctor. I think the biggest thing out of this is don’t go too hard too fast. It will take time to get the weight off but you will get there.

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

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@JeremyWebber wrote:

Sometimes, I feel that to lose all that weight is such a daunting task...

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This is why you need to break it down in more manageable chunks. Here is one possible approach (described and explained in the Losing All Your Weight At Once video, which I highly recommend you watch): alternate weight loss phases of three months, during which you will lose 10% of your starting weight, with maintenance phases of the same length (three months). Then repeat with three months of weight loss, followed by three months of maintenance.

Your weight loss would look something like this:

It would definitely take longer (almost two years), but the idea is your metabolism wouldn’t be crushed by attempting to lose too much weight for too long at once.

[JeremyWebber]

Thank you very much for replying and your inputs truly makes sense to me. In regards to medical conditions, thankfully I am clear from anything that is serious and am generally in OK health. I had always seen weight loss as a "goal" where it is a finish line and not thought about it as being a sustainable change in lifestyle instead. 

I did watch the video you suggested and it was very insightful! Thank you again and I will take a new approach to my mindset about eating and living healthier.

[JeremyWebber]

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@Dominique wrote:

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@JeremyWebber wrote:

Sometimes, I feel that to lose all that weight is such a daunting task...

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This is why you need to break it down in more manageable chunks. Here is one possible approach (described and explained in the Losing All Your Weight At Once video, which I highly recommend you watch): alternate weight loss phases of three months, during which you will lose 10% of your starting weight, with maintenance phases of the same length (three months). Then repeat with three months of weight loss, followed by three months of maintenance.

Your weight loss would look something like this:

It would definitely take longer (almost two years), but the idea is your metabolism wouldn’t be crushed by attempting to lose too much weight for too long at once.

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This does make a lot of sense and I never heard of it before strangely. There is a growing stigma about being overweight in my country. We are the most obese nation in Asia and it is very easy to over enjoy the food here. A question about the method though, If I do achieve my goal of losing 10% of my weight in the first 3 months and I feel great about it, can I continue on my weight loss instead of taking a "maintenance phase"? Will this have adverse affects on my health if say I average losing 5kg/ month. I did my weekly weigh in and I have shed 1.5kg from the previous week!

[Dominique]

@JeremyWebber wrote:

A question about the method though, If I do achieve my goal of losing 10% of my weight in the first 3 months and I feel great about it, can I continue on my weight loss instead of taking a "maintenance phase"? Will this have adverse affects on my health if say I average losing 5kg/ month. I did my weekly weigh in and I have shed 1.5kg from the previous week!

I understand the desire to see things move faster rather than slower, but you need to think long-term: what is the approach that is most likely to make your weight loss permanent? There’s a lot of evidence that suggests going "biggest loser" style results in rebounds. But why not start with three months, aim at 10% and reassess things then?

You can do it, check inspiring stories such as this one from @nfinity!