Hello and Help!

[Brian_D]

Hi all! First i'll introduce myself. My name's Brian (duh), i'm 52 years old and grossly out of shape and overweight, and have been most of my life. I'm 5'8" tall and weigh 260 lbs. I've always wanted to lose the weight but never took the initiative to get it done. Now with age being a factor, along with some back and sciatic nerve problems, i'm finally trying to do something about it.

I took the first step and bought myself a treadmill 4 weeks ago. I don't run on it because i'm obviously too out of shape and in too much pain to do that, but I do walk on it every day. The first week was casual, easy walking about 1/2 hour a day at a fairly low speed of 2-2.5 mph. That week I lost 3 lbs. and was encouraged. The next week I started going 45 minutes to an hour at about the same speed, and lost 7 more pounds for a total of 10 pounds. Needless to say, I was ecstatic and extremely encouraged. I was also eating less and healthier foods, though not exactly dieting.

Anyway, here's my problem. I was so encouraged by this that i kicked it up a notch, and the last 2 weeks have been going 60+ minutes a day at a speed of 3 miles per hour, going 3-4 miles per day. I know that doesn't seem like much to runners but for me it's quite a lot. Here's my dilemma however. For some reason these last 2 weeks i have only lost 1 pound total. Suffice to say i'm a little discouraged. I will not give up, but I know it will get hard to motivate myself if there seems to be little if any results. Could it be that kicking it up a notch has built up muscle weight in my legs to offset any weight i've lost? Hoping for some advice from members here...this is my first post....just joined a few minutes ago. Thanks in advance for reading this and helping me out if you can!

 

[Steve]

I think before you go any further on this journey, you need to learn to manage your expectations better. How that's done is by educating yourself.

You'll also need to realize that weight loss is not a linear process. There will be weeks you do well. Weeks you lose nothing. Weight alone is not a good measure of success because it's weighing everything; fat, muscle, water, poop, etc. You're interested in fat loss and that's not what the scale is weighing.

Using a multitude of metrics is important such as weight, measurements, performance, pictures, etc. There's something to be said about removing yourself from the short term and worrying solely on leading a healthy lifestyle. At longer term intervals (couple of times each month) note the various metrics you're using and if things aren't heading in the right direction... it's not a matter of failing. It's simply a matter of successfully figuring out that something in your plan needs to be tweaked a bit.

Also, at first losing weight is very simple. Especially if you're really deconditioned and carrying a lot of fat. Once your body catches on to what you're doing, it's going to adapt and slow things down.

Lastly, there may come a time where you need to monitor your calories. If the longer term trend doesn't show movement in the right direction, chances are something is off nutritionally and tracking your intake with something like will be your first step in identifying the problem.