Quote:
Originally Posted by doopdoop
Well, I'm kind of wondering where the balance is. I know that I could easily eat a low enough deficit, but I feel like the weight loss slows when I get into too-low numbers. At the same time, I've never felt like hitting the gym has sped up my weight loss significantly, and especially not when I'm eating below 1200 cals a day.
I'm looking for some sort of synergy between my eating and exercising...whether it means eating more AND exercising more, or more or less of just one.
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None of us can tell you where your "balance' or "synergy" is, or even the answer to your original question, how feasible is it to lose 1.5-2 lbs a week?
Only your experimenting is going to tell you that. Personally I avoid "goal by dates" because they backfire on me. If I "fall behind" schedule, I'm tempted to do crazy stuff to "catch up," which makes it harder to stay on plan and I fall further behind. Eventually I start feeling "I'll never catch up, " and then I'll never lose this weight in time," becomes "I'll never lose this weight," which is only a hairs breadth away from "If I'm never going to lose this weight anyway, why am I depriving myself."
Also even if I do stay the course and keep trying, when I finally reach the deadline day, if I'm even a little behind my original goal, instead of celebrating the success, I start punishing myself for the failure. I obsess over every tiny mistake I made over the course of the time, and tell myself "if you hadn't made these 5, or 50 mistakes you'd have made it on time, you ginormous, ugly, moron."
For me, it makes more sense to decide what is mentally and physically best for me, and accept whatever weight loss is the reward for that behavior. What am I willing to do? What am I able to do, both physically and mentally. What sacrifices am I willing to make, and are any of them going to make me miserable? Am I really willing to be miserable, even in the short term. Which are the changes am I willing to make forever? Which changes am I only willing to make temporarily, and what are they and for how long?
I don't have the strength or stamina for "hard core" dieting any more. Not only does it backfire on me, it requires me to put weight loss not only as my top priority, but essentially my only priority. I have to "give up" too much to experience results that still aren't very impressive. I can be physically and emotionally miserable and lose 3 lbs a week, or I can have a life and be happy and lose whatever my body is going to lose (which right now is a couple pounds a month).
After decades of crash dieting (and thinking slow weight loss is no better than no weight loss), I'm surprised to find that I'm not only happier, I feel more successful when I choose the latter.
Only you can find your balance, and you have to do it by experimenting.
On a practical note, many people lose best/fastest on a low-carb diet. For me, it's just about the only way I can lose weight. However, if you hate eating like that, or do not believe a low-carb diet is healthy, I wouldn't recommend it.
Diets are like romantic partners, you won't stick with one you don't like and respect (and if you do, you're settling for abuse).