I've been walking extensively, for the past month, and I've been logging it all into MapMyWalk.
I just received my September Workout Summary:
30 Workouts
102 Miles
50 Hours
16,370 Calories
So, I was happy until I realized that.. I've only lost around 3-4 lb. this month.
In terms of food, I usually eat around 1,000 calories, which means that on days where I've walked for more than 6 miles I've lost more calories than I've eaten.
But the combination of eating 1,000 calories and losing 16,000 calories has not done almost anything for my weight.
I feel discouraged.
I was ~235 lb. at the end of August and I'm ~231 lb. now.
Most likely, your problem is that you're eating too few calories for your height/weight. Believe it or not, eating too few calories will actually cause your body to hold onto as much weight as it can. Do some research on this and find a site to calculate how many calories you should eat a day in order to lose your desired weight.
As a mental estimate, I would say around 1500 calories a day should be enough for you to lose roughly a pound and a half in a week. If you struggle to eat that many calories, you should try including healthy, high calorie foods in your diet. These include peanut butter, nuts, and avacados.
I doesn't make sense to argue that a person eats too few calories to lose weight. I think that the OP is overestimating how many calories are being burned and/or underestimating calories eaten. I just looked up a chart for calories burned while walking. The average speed of walking is 2 miles per hour (102 miles in 50 hours) and at that rate, a person is burning about 130 calories per mile. In 6 miles you would burn 780 calories, not more that 1000. In the whole 102 miles you would burn just over 13,000 calories. If that's the case, perhaps all calculations are off and calories burned is off - by about 20%. Just a thought.
Speaking from experience and from a scientific point of view, most of the time we cannot eat too few calories to lose weight. Take it to the extreme - a person eats nothing. Do they stop losing weight because they didn't eat enough? No, they dodn't. Our bodies adjust and slow down, but if we eat fewer calories than we burn, we lose weight.
I saw a recipe for ham and potato soup from WW the other day that said there were 151.7 calories per 8 ounce serving. NO WAY can the average recipe be figured that closely - to fractions of calories! I think we all - myself included - underestimate what we eat and overestimate what we burn.
All that said, I also, believe the OP should be able to lose weight on more calories than 1,000 per day. That's why I question whether or not all calculations are done accurately.
Believe it or not, eating too few calories will actually cause your body to hold onto as much weight as it can.
The fewer calories you eat, the more you will lose. Think of people in the months after weight loss surgery, who eat well under 1,000 cals per day and lose massive amounts of weight. It's true that metabolism does slow down a little when you undereat, but it's never enough to offset the weight loss. I agree with the poster who says that the OP may be underestimating caloric intake and overestimating energy output.
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Last edited by freelancemomma; 10-02-2013 at 09:01 AM.
Congrats!! You have lost 3-4lbs!! That is awesome! Even on my best months, 3-4lbs is a good loss for me. That is almost a pound per week! Be proud of the weight you have lost!
It is not recommended, unless on a medically supervised diet, that a female should eat below 1,200 calories a day. I've also seen it recommended that weight loss should average between 0.5 - 2.0 pounds a week. Your 3 - 4 pounds for this past month is nothing to sneeze at!
In my experience, I can lose when I eat between 1,500 - 1,700 calories a day, with or without exercise. When I eat 1,200 - 1,300 calories a day, I usually need to do hard-core cardio for an hour a day at least 5 times a week for the scale to move in any meaningful way. I've found that my body doesn't really react the way science says it should.
Additionally, most exercise calorie estimators aren't very accurate. This includes the ones on machines at the gym, estimators on websites like MyFitnessPal and SparkPeople, and quite possibly the one on MapMyWalk. I've even found that the one on the WeightWatchers website doesn't work for me. I do use a Fitbit, but I only use it as a guide for calories burned. The most accurate way to track them is a heart rate monitor.
It may be worth a couple of weeks at an increased calorie rate, to see if that bumps your rate of loss. Additionally, eating more calories makes your WOE more of a sustainable lifestyle change, versus a diet. In the long run, that'll prove easier to sustain.
Whenever I add in exercise after being sedentary for a while, I end up stalling for about 6-8 weeks. I sometimes see a difference in how my muscles look, but I typically don't get any weight loss. This is usually a water retention issue, but I don't know how much that would apply with walking.
The most likely answer is usually the correct one. When one loses less weight than expected here are the most likely reasons.
1) Retaining water. In this case there are many potential reasons that water could be retained. Female, more exercise than previous, very low calories.
2) Eating more calories than being logged. It is very common for people to eat more than they think. Not logging everything, eyeballing portions, or just using wrong item in a calculation.
3) Not burning as many calories as one thinks while exercising. This is very common. In this case, not too relevant though.
On the too few calories ... this has been rehashed so many times but there is no such thing as starvation mode in the sense that the body stops fat loss.
My opinion is that the OP simply needs to be patient. A woosh is coming.
I agree with John's 3 reasons above, so no need to rehash them. I recommend weight/measuring and logging your food intake to be sure that you are not getting more calories than you think.
John is also right that "starvation mode" has been rehashed here many times. However, as a junior member, you can not be expected to know that. John and I disagree on this concept, at least in part. Here is a link to the best explanation that, in my opinion, I have seen here. Kaplod's explanation is in line with what my doctor says and what I have experienced - http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/weig...ml#post4816224. Find the posts by Kaplod in this thread.
I prefer the term "starvation response" to "Starvation mode".
I agree that the calories burned is overly ambitious. I estimate 80 cals/mile when I run (and yes, I understand body weight is a variable here).
Re: starvation response, etc, either way, when you eat so few calories, your body will be forced to burn muscle. Losing muscle = lower metabolism in the long term. I'd suggest bumping up your calories and lifting weights.
I know it's scary to bump up your calories, especially when you're not satisfied with your loss as it is, but it's for the best in the long run!
I prefer the term "starvation response" to "Starvation mode".
I like Kaplods' term "conservation mode" even better. Our bodies do try to conserve energy when we're eating at a deficit, but there are certain minimum energy requirements that can't be sidestepped (like keeping your brain, heart, lungs and other vital organs going). That's why it's impossible for our bodies to "hold onto" all the calories we consume.
Actually 4 lbs is pretty much right on target for a 16,000 deficit. In fact, it's better than average.
A recent review of the weight loss research found that conventional diet math does not accurately reflect actual results. In actuality, people lose significantly less than the conventional math would predict, even when the opportunities for cheating and calorie miscalculations are minimized or even eliminated. On average, actual results end up being about half what the math predicts.
This does suggest that some type of "conservation mode" is at work, which doesn't prevent weight loss, it just slows the process a bit.
This means you're doing MUCH better than average, because the "old math" predicts a 4.5 lb weight loss, which means a 2.25 lb loss would have been a more reasonable expectation. Instead of losing 50% of the theoretical math (which would be average), you lost nearly 90%. You didn't lose less than normal, you lost more.
Keep in mind that there are thousands of variables that affect your personal math, but even if you lost "only" 3 lbs, that would still be 75% of the "old math" which is damned good when the average is 50%.
I'll see if I can find the research review citation for anyone interested.
Lost 16,000 calories this month but only 3 lb.
