Need some help

[Rikitikitembo]

Hi,

My wife started weight watchers over a year and a half ago, lost some weight initially but then it basically stopped. She become disgruntled but kept going. I tried convincing her to try something else as well as lift weights but she wanted to do her own thing which I respected, so I didn't push.

After seeing the good results I got from eating six small meals a day and going to the gym she finally came to me for help. This is where I unfortuately made the promise she could lose about a pound a week and that she would lose at least 10 pounds before her brother's wedding in twelve weeks.

I worked out her maintenance level using a BMR calculator to be about 2200 calories. So I went 500 under to 1700 calories a day spread over six small meals. After the first few days she complained that it was too much food and she couldn't eat it. After reviewing her food logs from WW I was astonished to find out she was only eating 900 calories a day for months. So basically she'd trashed her metabolism.

She has also joined a Gym and with her membership she got a free session with a PT. I was hoping this PT would validate everything I've been saying to her but unfortunalely it wasn't the case. The PT told her that she shouldn't use free weights because she'll become to "bulky" and that she should do high reps 20 or over on the machines to tone around her fatty parts or to just do Body Pump. So this has totally confused her. I aslo mentioned that she should get the PT to take measurements and do a BF% test with calipers. This didn't happed as the PT told her the superior way to measure fat loss was with scales.

To make things worse she's actually put on 1 pound over the last two weeks. She called me a "feeder" and I don't think she was joking. I told her that it's probably muscle and not to worry but she's fretting really bad.

The good news is her metabolism seems to be speeding up. She mentioned today that she now has to go to the toilet once a day to do number twos. I asked how many times did she go before and she said "Once every three or four days"

I'm just wondering if there's a list of articles written for women that I can give my wife to read. I have the one about "getting bulky" at the top of this forum, but are there any others?

I'm also wondering whether I should drop her calories? Any thoughts?

 

[dougp25]

2200 BMR for a woman sounds pretty high. I would go back and check that number.
Unfortunately for her, she got a PT that subscribes to really old methods. Dump him. Working out with free weights will not make her bulky, unless she starts injecting testosterone.
Is she doing any cardio? You don't mention. What's her workout like? Fully body workouts?

 

[deschain]

Definitely dump the PT - that's just messed up that a professional personal trainer would say such things.

She probably did slow her metabolism down. While, overall, I like WW - it has its flaws - that being one of them. They usually do stress eating enough, and not going below your points. However, the same thing that makes it good can make it bad - the fact that you are in control of deciding what you eat rather than a pre-made diet plan.

It sounds like you have given her decent advice - eat several times a day/lift actual weights/eat more than what they give coma patients.

There are lots of resources out there to prove what you are telling her, but the bottom line is that many women are just plain convinced that they are going to get "toned" by lifting little pink barbie weights 400 times, and eating as little as possible. I just hope that she wakes up and sees the light.

2200 isn't that really that high. After calculating activity level, mine is 2345.63, which puts me in the 1800s after subtracting for caloric defecit.