Spartan - sounds to me as though you've hit a plateau. You can't expect to lose at the same amount or as 'effortlessly' when you have less to lose.
First off - you need to reassess your target of weight loss per week. 3-5 pounds is WAY too quick - a safe rate of HEALTHY weight loss is more like 1-2 pounds a week. Anything more than that will likely be lean body weight i.e. muscle - and that you DON'T want to lose, trust me - else you won't much like the way you look in the end.
Meals - sounds to me as though you might NOT be eating enough. Most nutrition/fitness experts nowadays recommend 5-6 small meals per day to keep your metabolism going. You definitely DON'T want your body going into starvation mode - it will hang onto the fat all that much more and make it even harder to lose. Meanwhile, as has been mentioned, your body will feed off of lean tissue - not good.
Exercise - I'm a big believer in weight training and would recommend it. However, if you don't want to go that route, at the very least I would recommend changing up your cardio and 'keep your body guessing'. The thing is, our bodies are very clever - if you keep doing the same thing for exercise, your bod will get accustomed to it and stop making progress. You might want to switch up the walking by throwing some inclines in, doing some jogging/running, stairclimbing, etc. High Intesity Interval Training is also HIGHLY effective cardio - an example would be a 5 minute warmup, then jog 2 minutes, run for 1 minute - repeat the jog/run for 15 minutes, then do a 5-10 minute cooldown walk. Total time expended is 30 minutes but the results are awesome!
In closing, I'd like to refer you to an article I've posted at the Ladies who Lift forum - this sounds like it's right up your alley - here ya go...
Quote:
Get Thin Slowly
...certainly it's better to stay down [in weight] once you're down. And apparently one "secret" to doing this is to go down slowly.
Wayne Callaway, M.D., notes that marketing studies conducted by one weight-loss organization found that, when dieting, most woment expect to lose between 2-3 pounds a week and most men expect between 3-5 pounds a week. If this expectation is unmet, dieters will discontinue the program by the 3rd week. Not for nothing do you hear slogans like Slim-Fast's "Give us a week and we'll take off the weight".
"To remain financially successful, commercial operations try to meet this expectation, even when they know that most of the early weight loss is from water and that a water retention cycle will eventually follow," says Callaway. "Virtually all the experts - from the Surgeon General to well-respected popular health and nutrition writers such as Jane Brody...agree that diets designed to meet these expectations always fail over the long term."
Remember that virtually any diet can cause you to lose weight; the real problem is keeping it off. With that in mind, choose a regimen that emphasizes not speed but permanency. While one often hears that no more than 2 pounds a week should be lost, it appears even this is too much for most people who are not extremely obese. (Obviously, the fatter you are, the less of an overall percentage of your fat 2 pounds is. So with some people, 2 or even 3 pounds might be OK.)
George Blackburn, MD, chief of surgical nutrition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is considered one of the nation's foremost authorities on weight loss. He suggests that you begin by aiming to lose no more than 10% of body weight at the rate of no more than a pound a week. Only after maintaining that loss for 6 months and recieving permission from your physician, he says, should you attempt to take off another 10%.
In my case, after I began writing this book I initially lost 14% of my weight, which struck me as a good goal since it brought me to the weight that I was at when I joined the army at age 18. So I went a bit overboard, perhaps, but not by too much. In any case, it brought me down to a good, healthy weight. Then I went conservative and held that weight not for 6 months but for a whole year before trying to drop more. Then I said, "Congratulations, you did it. Now it's time to try and reach your ultimate goal, which is to be not only healthily slim but downright athletic." I'm not advising that for all my readers. But this was what I wanted for myself and I did it.
The main reason to aim for slow weight loss is because you are seeking to permanently change your eating habits. The calorie deficit you create should be close to what will be your permanent calorie level and certainly no lower than 1,200 to 1,300 calories. The further you go below this, the more likely you are to suffer from hunger - and nothing defeats a weight-loss regimen more quickly than hunger.
Another big advantage of slighter reductions in calories is that evidence indicates you may lose somewhat less muscle this way than with sharper calorie restrictions...
Very low-calorie diets may be necessary for those few cases where people need to lose a lot of weight quickly because of serious health problems, such as the need for surgery. Other than this, I believe they have little going for them - though all too many doctors continue to recommend them to patients. Studies comparing the two types of weight loss regimens have found that you definitely get more bang for the buck with less caloric restriction. That is, you lose more fat off your body per calories reduced with milder restriction. Consider severe energy restriction as a jackhammer while lesser restriction is more like a hammer and chisel. You can break up rock more quickly with the jackhammer, but more to your liking with the delicate instruments.
