Lost 20lbs quick and then...

slavke

New member
Hi I am new to these forums. I have been having weight problems ever since I turned 18 and now I am 24. My height is 5' 9" and the highest I got was 212lbs. Now I got to 212 once before and then joined gym and did crazy 2 hour workouts 6 days a week. I lost about 40lbs pretty quick in few months but then once I stopped going to gym I gained it all back really quick over summer. It was going up and up since the gym workouts and 2 months ago again I got to 212lbs. So then I decided to try to go on a diet where I watch what I eat and how much I eat it.
Before my problems were I didn't eat too much just it wasn't in the right time of day. I used to miss every breakfast so lunch would have been my first meal and then I would eat late at night too sometimes. Anyhow, this is what my meals have been for past 2 months more or less. Every morning around 8 before work I make my self breakfast with 2 eggs over hard and glass of milk. Sometimes I add some vegies in there. Then at lunch 12:30 I usually eat half of what my lunches used to be, so if I ate a 12" sandwich now I ate 6" and lunches vary. I sometimes have a big salad only for lunch but again I take my time and watch how much I eat. And drink a bottle of water after each lunch. For dinner around 5-6pm after work I usually just take some fruit and glass of either apple or orange juice. Thats basically more or less what my daily intake has been in past 2 months. I have lost 20lbs so far and it started off really fast but now its slowing down more and more. But I think I am still loosing weight just not as much as I used to. Anyways now I am at 193lbs and started of with 212. I am pretty happy that I managed to loose weight without almost any exercise.
Anyways I know for me the perfect weight would be in low 160lbs. Maybe you guys have some pointers on how I could increase my loss rate again or should i just keep going this way and take it slow.
 
20 pounds in 2 months is really fast loss. I suspect that your faster initial loss might have been water weight, especially if you've been trying to be better-hydrated as part of your plan. That would account for a slowing-down in the last month.

I had good loss in the first two months, then noticed a slowdown in the second two months, and added exercise as a way of speeding things up again. I've also done the "exercise like crazy but don't pay attention to what I eat" plan, and it didn't work for me, either. But adding some exercise every single day (I have a 15-minute program I do first thing in the morning) once I had the healthy eating part down has worked really well for me. (I also started counting calories at the same time.)

If your eating plan works for you, I wouldn't necessarily change it, but you might think about adding some more lean protein, depending on how much you normally get at lunch.

Other than that, I think being satisfied with a slower rate of loss is the way to go. For comparison, I started out at 197 (and 5 inches shorter than you), and have been losing pretty steadily at a bit under 7 pounds a month for 6 months. A good rule of thumb is 1% of your weight per week, so at 193, you could reasonably expect to lose a bit under 2 pounds a week.
 
I drink a lot of water during the day. Almost between all meals, I have a cup with water beside me at work that I drink regularly. I am also thinking of joining gym again cause I know that will speed it up just I want to do the amazing and loose all the weight without exercising too much :) Lately my weight has been much slower maybe a loss of pound a week but I feel my pants are becoming looser and just feels like I am loosing more than if actually shows on scale. I might record the measurements and see if I am loosing physically. Even before when I used to go to gym I got the same effect, lost whole bunch of weight fast and then last 10-15 pounds took much much longer to loose.
 
I have a bucket of whey protein left that I used to drink when I worked out. Will drinking more protein possibly increase my weight loss?
 
Steve might have an opinion on that, in which case I'd take his opinion over mine, seeing as he does his research and I'm more of an anecdotal girl when it comes to weight loss. But in theory, total calories count much much more than the specifics of those calories - if you eat 2,000 calories in a day, it doesn't matter much whether they come from 500g of protein, 500g of carbs, 222g of fat, or some other combination adding up to 2,000 calories.
 
k I managed to track down how much I have lost in last 18 days. I lost about 5lbs in 2.5 weeks. So that seems to be k I guess, but the first 10lbs I lost in less than 2 weeks almost :) I guess as long as I am loosing weight I shouldn't worry too much.
 
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Getting enough protein is essential to perserving lean body mass (ie: muscle). Since you are on such a low calorie diet, you should be making efforts to get protein in or you are going to be losing fat AND muscle. In the long run, you'd end up being a skinny-fat person.

If you are going to do such a low calorie diet, I'd suggest getting enough protein and doing some resistence training. These two combined will go a long way in ensuring you are mostly losing fat and not muscle. Since you're on such a low cal diet, cardio at this point isn't really the best idea. Resistence training will still add to your calorie deficit, as cardio would, but it will help perserve your muscles.

What I'd really suggest doing if I were you though would be to eat 8-10x your body weight (1544 - 1930), do at least 30 (but no more than 60) minutes of cardio 3-5 days a week, and incorporate some strength training into it.

I know you said you're really not all that into working out, but it really does help with weight loss and well as overall health. Once you get into the habit of it, it's not so bad either. Plus there are a lot of fun things you can do for cardio, that don't involve being on an exercise bike or elliptical for over 2 hours.

I have a lot I could say, but I really need to start some HW so I can go to my 2nd Thanksgiving feast later today!! Good luck. I hope I provided some useful information :)
 
I got no problems going to the gym. I used to go for a full strait year before when I lost almost 40lbs. Just wanted to maybe prove something to see that its possible to loose weight without working out. I probably will go back to gym really soon and start drinking 1 serving per day of whey protein. I just hope drinking protein will not slow my weight loss down or make it stall too. My calorie intake is also not too low but around 1500 on average per day. Sometimes higher and sometimes lower. Usually on weekends I eat some of the junk food like snacks since I spend too much time with friends, but during the week I usually eat healthy stuff. Anyways tnx for the pointers I'll let you know how my weight loss goes in the future.
 
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