@marymouse wrote:
So I always thought eat less calories than you burn lose weight. Calries in vs calories out. I am not losing weight. I am 51, premenopausal and obese. Why am I not losing weight.
There are really three choices from any given starting point:
1) Eat less calories while maintaining the same level of activity
2) Exercise more (increase level of activity) while eating the same number of calories
3) Eat less calories and exercise more (the little of both category).
First, losing weight shouldn't be seen as something that is a race to a value on the scale. It is just a number.
Although I lost 81 pounds, it hardly happened overnight ( just as putting on weight hardly happened overnight).
In 2007, I reached my maximum weight of 252.
In 2008, I dropped in weight to 214 pounds with no real coordinated plan. Yes, I walked, but didn't measure it in detail.
In 2009, I gradually gained some of that weight back. I was back up to 232 by 12/31.
In 2010, I lost ll fo 4 pounds in 3 months. I joined a walking "challenge," bought a pedometer and measured my stepson a daily basis to record in the challenge. No major changes in diet. I gave up or reduced a few things (I gave up carbonated soft drinks). By July I was down from 228 to 200 pounds. By the end of 2010 I was at 190.
In 2011, my weight was at or near 190...all year. I did gradually increase my daily step count so that I was averaging 20,000 steps per day but my weight was "stuck." Now my body was changing. I dropped inches, not weight.
In 2012, I added MyFitnessPal to my phone and began tracking my food much more closely and did a step change in my activity level (22,000 steps/day...that was more of a challenge in time than I thought). My weight dropped through my initial target of 179 by September and to my final target of 173 by Thanksgiving 2012. I bought my first Fitbit in June 2012 and linked it to my MFP account.
I bought a scale sometime during that year to measure more accurately than I had. I found out that my calorie intake was higher than I had estimated.
I finally flipped my target on from losing weight on MFP to maintenance. My weight kept falling and dropped all the way down to 165. I was still maintaining 20,000 steps per day.
When I took up running again in April 2013 in addition to walking, my overall steps dropped but I was using different muscles than walking. As I added miles and calorie expenditure, my weight actually increased and stabilized at 169-171 pounds...which is where it is today.
It took 5 years to get my weight back down to where it had been years before. I've been maintaining it for 1-1/2 years. Not a race, but slow steady progress.
If you work at it. It will come. No matter what, you cannot avaoid the laws of thermodynamics. You can, however, have challenges from your body that seem to defy them.
