LIVIN' LARGE: Minimizing yourself and maximizing your life!When you have over 100 pounds to lose it can seem impossible to get started in the right direction.
I was wondering what the general idea for weight loss is for an obese individual. I have been looking at a "weight loss" forum and these people expect 4lb/week weight loss, the entire time they are dieting.
Many of them are promoting 60 minutes aerobic training with 1000 calorie diets. Obviously 1000 calories is WAY too low. However we all have seen in the initial months weight loss of 20-30lbs/month. What about after this, on a proper diet with a good workout regimen. I just dont see how 2-4lbs/week is possible when thinking in terms of total calories needed to be burned (7K-14K).
~I know they have more mass, which burns more calories at rest, but...~ *scratches head*
Tony, I think the best person to answer this question is Newman. If you ask for it to be moved over the the Livin' Large forum, he'll be sure to see it.
I know they have more mass, which burns more calories at rest, but...~ *scratches head*
Which is true at first, especially more muscle mass, but engaging in these combinations of long-term, steady-state aerobic exercise and extreme caloric deficits, you'll most likely lose a lot of muscle in addition to (or instead of!) fat mass. This was my situation when I crash-dieted while wrestling in high school, and it's a real b!tch for me to put on any lean mass, especially in my upper body (noodle arms here).
As Lisa mentioned, Newman is the guy to talk to. Just my two cents.
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Well, they've probably been watching The Biggest Loser, which seems to feel ok with 8-15 lb/week drops.
The enemas those people must go through...
Two pounds a week if someone is obese is not that much of a challenge. Remember that they might be used to cruising on 4000 calories a day. If they drop to 3000 (still pretty high), then that's a 7k right there. Add in 500 calories from exercise per day and now we're up to the theoretical 3 lbs/week.
Obviously this won't continue forever, but if a person is really obese, starting at 30% body fat or higher then it can go quite a while before the whole leptin, etc situation really hits.
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Isaac Wilkins, M.Ed, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, and who cares what other letters?
you'll most likely lose a lot of muscle in addition to (or instead of!) fat mass.
Same here. Being morbidly obese I was easily able to lose 2 pounds or more a week but the problem was when I got down towards my goal weight I found myself to be very weak. Then I started weight training. I wished I had done it sooner.
i started on jan2nd weighin 416.5lbs. 24 days later and im at 396.5 thats 30 lbs in 24 days. so 4 lbs of week if your obese like i am should be easy. i estimate based on online calculators i had to be eating close to 5000 calories a day to maintain my weight. cutting back to around 1500....thats 3500 calories saved a day. now i work out. based on the calculator on the eliptical machine, with my weight and age of 23, a 50 minute workout(i push myself hard, as im a fairly athletic 415lb guy) and a 5 minute cool down....i brun around 800 caloreies. granted this is give or take, but the more you weigh the more you burn to do the same thing. so im around 4300 calories a day less than i was , even if i ate a 3000 calories diet, thats still close to a pound a day i could lose. so 4lbs a week is deffinetly possible
Well, they've probably been watching The Biggest Loser, which seems to feel ok with 8-15 lb/week drops.
The enemas those people must go through...
Two pounds a week if someone is obese is not that much of a challenge. Remember that they might be used to cruising on 4000 calories a day. If they drop to 3000 (still pretty high), then that's a 7k right there. Add in 500 calories from exercise per day and now we're up to the theoretical 3 lbs/week.
Obviously this won't continue forever, but if a person is really obese, starting at 30% body fat or higher then it can go quite a while before the whole leptin, etc situation really hits.
A word on my post: I didn't at all mean to say that it won't be challenging. Weight loss is a struggle and takes a ton of hard work. As someone who's always struggled with it, I never would mean to undermine anyone's effort.
I was simply saying that to reach the theoretical two-three pound a week loss isn't a tough plan to come up with. Execution can be a totally different thing!
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Isaac Wilkins, M.Ed, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, and who cares what other letters?
doesn't Alan A. say that one can expect about 1% a week after that initial "big drop" - so if you are 400 lb that's 4lb/week - but if you are 200 lb that's only 2 lb a week. And no one should assume constant losses - my experience is that the body likes to stop losing and "rearrange things" every so often
doesn't Alan A. say that one can expect about 1% a week after that initial "big drop" - so if you are 400 lb that's 4lb/week - but if you are 200 lb that's only 2 lb a week. And no one should assume constant losses - my experience is that the body likes to stop losing and "rearrange things" every so often
Good call on the 1% quote from Alan Aragon.
That "rearrange things" idea is so not scientific! But I totally agree with you. When I am working with parents of young children, I'll tell them to think of how their child grows. It's not 1% growth in height and weight per week on a steady basis! They stay the same for weeks and then seem to grow 2" in height and 2 pants sizes overnight. Weight loss is the same.
In my experience (this is totally anecdotal!), the body tries very hard to stay the same. If you just stay steady on your plan, then bam, one day there's another big drop like the amazing weight loss you had in the first week of dieting. It often comes about week 4 of a diet, too. You make great progress week 1, some week 2, then week 3 and maybe 4 it's like nothing is happening. Just stay true and wow, at the end of week 4 or 5 there's another big change in either the scale or the tape measure. It's very motivational when it happens and very discouraging when you're trudging through the tough weeks.
My entire PhD focus was on the prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity. Look at the scientific weight loss literature and the recommendation is a 1200-1800 calorie diet (depending on starting body weight). Yes, you will lose muscle mass...but at 400 lbs, the goal is to get weight off. Of course you want to preserve as much muscle mass as possible, but with this population, they need to do some type of aerobic exercise because calorie for calorie, you'll have the most success. Resistance training is of course fantastic as a form of exercise, but I want to jump out a window when folks tell me they (or their clients) are replacing fat with muscle, so the scale is not moving. No offense, but a person isn't going to have 400 lbs of lean body mass when all is said and done, so they need to get fat (and lots of it) off the body. And, the amount of weight or movements they can do will be very limited, so building muscle is not going to be that easy. The other misconception is that you can preserve your metabolic rate with resistance training--I wanted this to be true for the longest time, however, as I learned more and more about this population and read the science, I realized that because your overall body is smaller (for example 400 lbs to 300 lbs), your metabolic rate will be lower. Even if it is all fat weight, it's still a large amount of body mass and that means your metabolic rate will drop. As we all know, it's not easy to put on muscle when working out hard, so I'm not sure why folks think in the obese population they can pack on slabs of muscle quickly to preserve the drop in metabolic rate. There are some data to show a mild preservation of RMR with resistance training, but it will still go down overtime, which is why you need that calorie deficit coupled with exercise. Overtime, as folks become more able to exercise (I have worked with people who literally are maxed out with heart rates through the roof after 1 minute of walking at 3 mph), then you can add different exercise modalities as they adopt. With an obese population, it seems that resistance training may be most useful for getting them to do more activities of daily living (getting out of chairs so they can walk across the room, etc). Alright, I'll now step down off my soap box.
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Christopher R. Mohr, PhD, RD
Check out our NEW Grocery Shopping Made Easy DVD! www.MohrResults.com
For an obese person such as myself, losing weight in larger amounts initially wasn't so difficult. I say this thinking in retrospect. But I remember FEELING like it was the toughest thing to do in the world. Consistency is ultimately the key with whatever you decide to do. As others have mentioned...start moving and keep moving. I like to tell people to do things they enjoy. If running is something you enjoy and you can do it without hurting yourself, do it!
For me I started walking more. Eventually I was jogging (running to me in that state) from telephone pole to telephone pole then walking the next. Intervals if you will. Then I learned about lifting weights, TAP, and proper nutrition. I have studied and utilized different training styles and nutritional strategies. Some methods, like TAP, EDT, TT, NROL, Adam's Diet, and Precision Nutrition are more effective than others. But they all work!! Each one works differently based on the person and their application. I am happy to have all of these methods and many others in my arsenal to help me achieve my goals. But I want to state this again for emphasis...you can have the greatest coach, the greatest training program, and the greatest nutrition plan in the world, but if you don't implement it...if you don't apply it, it will do NOTHING for you.
For the obese person, my prescription is simple. Find something you enjoy doing and do it. Get your nutrition under control. Let's face it, most of the time, it is a train wreck. You don't have to get everything right all at once, just start forming good habits. Form a plan and stick with it and then evaluate its results on a set schedule not ad lib. When you have consistently had clean nutrition and have been training consistenly for a year or so then we can talk more advanced stuff. But let's face it, how many people who have trained for less than 2 years or so on a consistent basis are what we'd call advanced. My hallucination is few. If you are one of these...great, just realize that most aren't. There are people who have been lifting for years who don't consider themselves advanced. In reality, I don't care whether a person is beginner, intermediate, or advanced lifter as long as they are doing something to better their health and physique and aren't hurting themselves.
Each person is different but in the end, it will almost always be a combination of diet and different types of training backed by passion and desire that will produce results.
Newman
P.S. edit as an aside to Dr. Mohr's comments on caloric intake. Dr. Mohr is more learned than I, but I can tell you what I have used with clients and what we have used with patients in the clinical setting. For weight loss in the obese class I, II, or III individual it is awfully hard to beat an 1800 calorie diet.
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"Branch chainz, bro. Leucine in the sky with diamonds." - Alan Aragon
Good points, Newman. Merely changing what you eat and walking is probably a huge change to the lifestyle. Get too complicated, they might think it's not worth it. A good amount of time with a good amount of success and you're more likely to stick with it, long term.
When I am working with parents of young children, I'll tell them to think of how their child grows. It's not 1% growth in height and weight per week on a steady basis! They stay the same for weeks and then seem to grow 2" in height and 2 pants sizes overnight. Weight loss is the same.
In my experience (this is totally anecdotal!), the body tries very hard to stay the same. If you just stay steady on your plan, then bam, one day there's another big drop like the amazing weight loss you had in the first week of dieting. It often comes about week 4 of a diet, too. You make great progress week 1, some week 2, then week 3 and maybe 4 it's like nothing is happening. Just stay true and wow, at the end of week 4 or 5 there's another big change in either the scale or the tape measure. It's very motivational when it happens and very discouraging when you're trudging through the tough weeks.
this is one reason I chart my weight and use a trend line - the days of "no change" are reality but the pattern and the trend line are real as well - here is my "1st 50 lbs" chart: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=ddjhgjft_0cmdwqw
Very cool graphic Lisa! Look at all the flat lines through the summer! And even with an increase in late Oct and another in late Nov, the trend is still clearly downward. Good stuff.
Another function in going on a diet which cannot be over emphasized, in my view, is that you have to recreate a diet that you like. You need to look forward to the food your are going to eat, and find yourself satisfied. The biggest enemy to keeping weight off is the thought, and I have had it in the past, "Boy am I looking forward to getting off this diet". Recipe to Regain.
Congrats on your success, Newman. Research and my experience suggest that different caloric requirements are necessary in individuals with various body weights--and what they typically use in research and practice is 1200 for those under 200 lbs, 1500 for those 200-250, and 1800 calories for those 250 and up. The key is to determine where those calories come from; if I were 500 lbs and ate 3 Snickers's bars all day, I'd lose weight. However, to prevent the feeling of deprivation, they key is to focus on high volume foods that fill you, so the 1800 calories actually feels like a lot, even when you're used to a much higher calorie intake.
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Christopher R. Mohr, PhD, RD
Check out our NEW Grocery Shopping Made Easy DVD! www.MohrResults.com
I agree with the need to not feel deprived. The caloric scale I have used is 1500, 1800, 2000 where you use 1200, 1500, 1800 for the same reasons. I admittedly have little research background and only real-world application. Fortunately you have had the opportunity for both.
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"Branch chainz, bro. Leucine in the sky with diamonds." - Alan Aragon
One thing I like about using CalorieKing software was the constant (and slow) lowering of daily calories. You get used to 2000 calories, and then the jump down to 1800 seems like a lot to not eat.
When we updated our profiles every week, it automatically adjusted your daily calorie allowance. It was a small and subtle change, from week to week.
Although, I have to admit that Newman and Chris Mohr have me rethinking things, caloric deficit wise, for obese people. It took me going back into my memory a few years...
Newman and Chris both site good results using pretty low calories in heavier people, but I think that's more for people just starting out, who are heavy, but not particularly active.
I remember always eating a pretty decent amount of food, even when I was 235. But, in reality, when I started dieting with CalorieKing.com, I plugged in the numbers. Did zero exercise. Ate the amounts the recommended, which was only 1600-1700 calories.
Seems so low, now. But, it was doable, but when, after a couple of weeks, I added in exercise and added those calories in, too, it was better for me. Then, I kept going!
So, I ate more, kept the overall deficit about the same and was a happier dieter.
My doctor is suggesting 1800 calories. I was doing 2000-2100 calories and have stalled. Some of that is because my aerobic exercise is limited as is weight lifting for now. Still, after he said 1800 calories, I am having trouble eating 1000 calories. I don't know why, but I'm not hungry.
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