Need advice: Why it gets harder to lose weight after losing toomuch of it?

Ritcher

New member
I used to be 232lbs, and I got peeled down to 160lbs, still want to lose 10 more lbs but it got so much harder from before, I jog 5~15kms 5 times a week, so if I add more weight on my self like sand bags and such, would that help me out?
Thankyou.
 
It gets harder to lose weight because you need less calories to do the same amount of exercise, and because you get hungry. It's your body telling you it doesn't have enough fat to make it through a lean winter and wants to store some up.

In order to increase your exercise, you could either add weight, run faster, run uphill, or run farther.
 
I think food matters more then exercise in terms of losing weight, your exercise will only have that much impact on your body weight as your body finds ways to slow itself down and conserve, also to utilise muscle for energy rather then just fat, thus if you do too much exercise your likely to be losing part of the muscles which you require to exercise more the next day.

Make sure you vary your exercise- your body will get used to the same form of exercise after about 8 weeks and it won't burn the same amount of energy as it learns how to work with conserving energy rather then using it all up. Make sure you include not just cardio but interval training, weights/resistance and stretching, rest days are also important to rebuild the muscles which have been torn during exercise.
 
Oh man, I have the same problem and it sounds like a lot of work Dx Better get started. Dunno if I can run that much though o.o
 
There's lots of reasons; some of which people eluded to above.

We start with a substantial calorie deficit to trigger weight/fat loss originally, right?

And a deficit is based off of your maintenance, or the point where calories in = calories out. If we cut calories below this theoretical maintenance for a long enough period of time, we'll lose weight.

Maintenance equals the total of all the calories costs associated with a day's worth of living. These include BMR, TEF, TEA, and SPA.

BMR = Basal Metabolic Rate
TEF = Thermic Effect of Feeding
TEA = Thermic Effect of Activity
SPA = Spontaneous Physical Activity

The majority of these factors drop with weight loss, thus reducing the energy out side of the equation. If the energy out side of the equation is shrinking, and the energy in side is staying the same... as we lose weight, the original deficit is getting smaller and smaller.

BMR drops because you have less tissue to support as weight is lost.

TEF drops because you're eating less food.

SPA drops because your body moves less for biological survival reasons.

There's also an adaptive component to dieting where your body adjusts itself (primarily via hormones) in an attempt to survive times of famine.
 
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