Question Regarding Losing Weight

[_Machino_]

Hi all,

I have used Fitbit now for four months and enjoying their surge super watch a lot. Lost so far 16kg/35lbs by training and eating correctly using Fitbit to help me with training.

I have learnt a lot about heartrate and calories so far and that it does make a difference to know as much as possible about these two factors.

I have a question to anyone that is willing to give advice, as I am moving in to uncharted territory with my weight and size going down how do I keep my body from plaining to a certain mass? What I mean is how do you keep on losing at the same rate?

Do I adjust my calorie intake or my training program?

Currently I am training 6 times a week of which 5 times a week is treadmill at 60/70% pace and on weekends I cycle 30-60km.

O yes another thing, My surge started getting vapour inside yesterday morning early, took it in to get it fixed and within 2 hours I received a new device, Plus points for that Fitbit!

[FitBeforeFifty]

Plateus are caused by a combination of behavioural and biological responses. 

Essentially, you plateau because of a combination of adherence and reduced energy expenditure.

The adherence part is easy because it's behavioural. Don't allow yourself to get sloppy with tracking your calorie intake and don't allow yourself to backoff on your activity level.

The energy expenditure part is a little more tricky. When subjected to a long term calorie deficit our bodies will attempt to compensate by reducing energy expenditure. Our muscle movements become more efficient, our resting metabolism will drop, we fidget less etc... In my opinion, the best way to avoid this is eat more.  

People that create a deficit with exercise rather than diet tend to mitigate these adaptations: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004377.

In addition, calorie cycling/reverse dieting has also been used successfully to some extent by athletes trying to lose weight: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943438/

[FitBeforeFifty]

BTW, there is a lot of technical jargon in my previous post to back up this simple recommendation:

Instead of eating fewer and fewer calories during weight loss, eat more as you lose. You can do this by slowly increasing your exercise duration and/or intensity while simultaneously increasing your food intake. In addition, the closer you get to your goal weight you could intentionally reduce your net deficit which will allow you to continue eating more and more.

This is my combined graph of exercise calories, weight and calorie intake over time that demonstrates what I'm talking about:

[JohnRi]

As you lose weight, your body will burn fewer and fewer calories.  9 months ago, my body burned about 500 more calories a day just keeping me breathing, heary pumping, warm, etc. 

My diet has remained mostly the same, around 1800 calories.  I've recently increased it to 2000.

As my calories burned has fallen, I"ve had to increase my exercise.  I exercise around 60-120 minutes every day.  I've taken one rest day in the last 5-6 weeks. 

I've lost 67 lbs so far, and I need to lose around 31 minimum.  That will get me down to 183, the top of the normal weight range for my height.  I'd like to get down to 175.  But I really can't imagine being so small.

I recently purchased a weight bench, and free weights.  I now lift weights after my work outs ever other day.  My workouts consist of either walking 4-6 miles, or biking 14+ miles on average.  I'm trying to get my biking range up to 20-30 miles.

Last week I worked out 12 hours.  Yeah, I know, it's a lot.

I'm losing around 1-1.5 lbs a week.  It's getting harder and harder to lose weight.  I've had to lower my deficit too.  As I was starting to lose too much muscle mass, and not enough fat loss.  A clear sign I was not eating enough calories.  So I'm now eating around 2000 calories. 

Bottom line, losing weight is not linear.  You are going to have to pay attention to the weight lost, how much fat to lean mass loss, and make adjustments as you lose weight.

You can cut the calories, but only to a minimum range.  1200-1300 for women, around 1800 for men.  After that to maintain your deficit, you have to exercise.  And you will probably have to increase your exercise.

You may also have to switch up your exercise to maintain the weight loss.  You might find that your body becomes an expert at the treadmill.  But riding a stationary bike, or a real bike burns more calories, and leaves your muscles sore.  You might take up swimming.  Hiking.  Varried activity keeps the muscles guessing, and you burn more. 

Another issue, your body gets used to a lower calorie deficit.  So even though my bmr is around 1900 now, it might be actually be 1300.  So my fitibit could be off 600 calories because my body has gotten more efficient at it's normal functions.  This is a by product of a long term calorie deficit.  To make up for that I have to burn even more calories to keep my weight loss going.

So expect lots of readujstments and changes as you try to lose weight. 

[FitBeforeFifty]

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@JohnRi wrote:

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You may also have to switch up your exercise to maintain the weight loss.  You might find that your body becomes an expert at the treadmill.  But riding a stationary bike, or a real bike burns more calories, and leaves your muscles sore.  You might take up swimming.  Hiking.  Varried activity keeps the muscles guessing, and you burn more. 

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While this is a common statement, it's only partially true. There is no need to be sore or switch up exercises to burn calories. While our bodies do get more efficient as we become more fit, we still burn a significant amount of calories that is independent of fitness for a particular activity. I haven't been sore from lifting weights or running in years but I still burn the same number of calories per minute.  The key is increasing your work load as you become more fit. For weight lifting, that's increasing the weight ... for running that usually involves increasing pace. I burn the same number of calories per mile now as I did in 2012 but now I can run a mile much faster and sustain that pace for much longer.

[_Machino_]

Thanks peeps! I just got an info bomb on me! Will use this in my journey ahead. 🙂