Reached my goal weight and not happy :(

K

kishe_lily

New member
Hi there,

I've been browsing through the forums on here for a while now, and I've people's achievements absolutely amazing! I was hoping you could offer me some advice with my weight loss issues.

I'm 20 years old and have been overweight and very unfit for pretty much my whole life; I don't think I was ever obese, but I could have always have done with losing at least 10kg. I'm 1.75m and currently weigh 65kg, my all time high was 80kg when I was 15, I dropped down to about 73kg during four years at boarding school (nothing like bad school food and long walks to reach civilisation!). I'm currently on a gap year before uni next year, and have been making the most of it to try and lose weight and get fitter before next year.

About three or four months ago, I started a big push to sort myself out. I've been calorie counting; I usually eat about 1500 calories per day, I know this could be lower, but giving up junk food has been majorly difficult for me, and I didn't want to make things too miserable all at once. I walk between 5 and 10km a day, run every second day and do a somewhat sporadic weight workout. Ideally, I would be doing it 6 days a week, but it's probably more like 3 or 4 due to time constraints. I also find it rather hard to find motivation to do strength work outs, because I'm working at a lower weight than what is recommended by my program, but I physically cannot work with anything heavier. I don't feel like I'm getting any stronger doing it and I haven't noticed any visual differences, which is somewhat depressing.

Essentially, my problem is that I've reached my goal weight and am not very happy with the results. I can't see any visual changes in myself, unfortunately, I didn't think to take any "before" pictures, so I can't use that to help. I have lost about 1cm from my waist, and 2cm from my hips, not exactly a huge difference. I still have quite a big tummy, and a fair amount of fat on my thighs and arms. The major improvement since I started is my running, as I couldn't run for more than about a minute when I began and am now doing 3 sets of 8 minute runs. While that is something I'm very proud of, I was hoping I would have a much nicer body to show off by this point.

My weight has been on a plateau for about 3 weeks, I think part of the problem is the psychological "I have reached my goal and can stop now" factor, which I am trying to push through. I would really appreciate it if anyone could give me any tips for how to stay motivated and get rid off the rest of this fat.

Sorry for my ridiculously long post. Thank you!
 
Hello and welcome to the forums. Congrats on your progress so far!

What you've pointed out in your post is my big issue with goal weights - I would say 99% of the time, they're a random number pulled out of thin air which have nothing to do with how you look or feel. But don't fret, you've made great progress!

Your diet and exercise you outlined sounds good in the basic outline. You don't need to starve yourself and live in the gym to lose weight. First thing is, do you know your BMR? That is the amount of calories your body needs to sustain its weight, just going about your normal routine. From there, you just have to create a defecit under that number, from eating less, exercising more, or both, to lose weight. a 500 calorie per day defecit should net 1lb (~.5kg) of weight loss per week. At your current weight, I wouldn't recommend you trying to lose more than that.

Next part of the equation is your muscle. When losing weight, you should really work on trying to maintain muscle mass. If you don't, your body will use some of your muscle mass as energy (to make up for the defecit you're creating). That means, when you're losing weight, you're not just losing fat. That is why the goal should be fat%, or inches lost, or how you look, rather than a number on the scale. The number doesn't tell the whole story. Muscle plays a big part in how "toned" you will look, so if you don't do anything to hold onto muscle when losing weigh, you may lose weight quickly, but It'll take a lot more effort and weight lost to get rid of the flabby parts and look "toned". And, its harder to grow muscle back once its gone.

To learn about lifting weights for fat loss, you can read , its a good one.

To get through a plateau, you may need to eat more (at your BMR maintenance level to maintain weight) for a few weeks, or change up your workout, or just keep grinding away until it passes. Sometimes our bodies just rebel against change, and losing weight is a change. Our bodies can adapt to lower intake calories by slowing the metabolism down a bit to try to conserve (though is phenomonon is usually overexaggerated). The body also gets used to doing the same workouts over and over again and gets very efficient at it, to where it takes less calories to do it.

Keep up the good work and read some of the stickies around the boards here, there is alot of other information around that can help as well!
 
Welcome and congrats on a job well done so far! Don't give up! You can do it!

Weight is merely a measure of the force of gravity on your mass; it doesn't measure *fat*. It sounds to me like you'd like to lose fat, regain your figure and get toned up. My suggestion would be to look into body building. Don't panic... you'll not get arms like Schwarzneggar unless you really bust ur butt and go crazy with teh food. Plus, women don't gain muscle nearly as quickly as men so again, don't panic. That being said, the more lean muscle you have on your body the more calories you'll burn at rest, since muscles take more energy to fuel.

Also, I'd try HIIT cardio (high intensity interval training). This might ramp up your weightloss so taht you get faster resulst. If you have any questions, PM me.

Good luck! :)

bluemomma
 
Thanks for your replies. You're right, my real goal is to lose fat, become more "toned", etc. but I agree that I do get bogged down with numbers on the scale. I like to be able to see a quantifiable change, particularly because I can't see a change in myself when I look in the mirror. I have tried measuring my waist and hips, but I must be doing something wrong because these haven't changed at all, even though most of my clothes no longer fit. I know it sounds silly, but do you have any advice on measuring techniques? I think this would really help me if I could figure out how to put it into practice correctly.

Thank you for telling me about BMR, MAR1984. I have been reading about it online and used a handful of calculators, getting results between 1480 and 1500 as my basic rate, but I'm not completely sure whether to calculate my lifestyle as lightly or moderately active. I also wanted to ask you whether online calculators are accurate enough or whether I should try to see a doctor about this?

I have been doing weight training, but I have to admit that I don't find it hugely inspiring and generally have to really push myself to workout. Particularly as I am physically rather weak and am finding it a little disheartening that after two months of working out I still can't complete a set with anything heavier than 1.5kg dumbbells. I know there isn't really much that anyone else can do for me here, as I have to find a way of becoming re-motivated (and staying that way!) about working out and what it will do for me.

Thank you both so much for your help!
 
MAR1984 said:
First thing is, do you know your BMR? That is the amount of calories your body needs to sustain its weight, just going about your normal routine.
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Slight correction. BMR is not calories burned during your normal routine. Here is the definition from the wikipedia article.
Basal metabolic rate (BMR), and the closely related resting metabolic rate (RMR), is the amount of energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate environment, in the post-absorptive state (meaning that the digestive system is inactive, which requires about twelve hours of fasting in humans). The release of energy in this state is sufficient only for the functioning of the vital organs, the heart, lungs and kidneys and the rest of the nervous system, intestine, liver, lungs, sex organs, muscles and skin.
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To get the calories burned with little or no exercise you have to multiply that by 1.2 according to the Harris Benedict equation Harris-Benedict equation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
no, he's right. I get the scientific terms mixed up. I thought RMR was metabolic rate doing nothing and BMR was metabolic rate as caluclated by the equation, accounting for activity. Thanks for the correction.
 
Hi Lily! Welcome to the forum. It sounds like you've got some great advice given already, so there isn't much I would add except maybe to think about your goals and make sure they are realistic. Most of us want celebrity type bodies but few of us have the genetics or money to have that. I just want to make sure you're not shooting for something unrealistic, as that can have damaging effects, psychologically speaking. However, if your goals are totally obtainable and realistic then I say march on, sister! :D Keep the faith and stick with it, you're worth it!

Anyway - Welcome to the forum! I hope you find it as useful as I have! :D
 
kishe_lily said:
.......I was hoping I would have a much nicer body to show off by this point........
Click to expand...

It sounds like what you're talking about isn't weight, but a body make-up issue.

Try tracking your bodyfat % and knocking it down a 3 or 4% and I guarantee you'll be happier with what you see in the mirror.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

Is there any way I can track body fat accurately without a caliper? I have been using the body fat measuring function on my mum's elliptical trainer (it sends an electrical pulse through you through the handles), and I've gone from approximately 31% to about 27.5%, but it has a tendency to jump up and down from day to day, so I'm not sure that I trust what it says.

I don't think I'm being too unrealistic about my goals. Although, I guess it is hard to judge that objectively. I'm just at that point where I really want to see a change that matches the work that I've been doing. I found out recently that I'm small framed, which came as quite a surprise because I've always considered myself naturally large and bulky, unfortunately that did also remove another excuse for my weight. Well, it's fortunate really, because it helped motivated me to start working on it. My parents, siblings and all of my dad's side of the family is overweight, so I'm aware that keeping in control of my body is going to be an ongoing thing.

I don't want to use my genetics as an excuse for my body, and I'm worried about letting myself off before I reach my goal, because "it's unattainable for someone like me" because that's going to become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Besides, I seem to have the body shape that my gran has (small framed, wide hips and quite a narrow back) and she was a bombshell at my age (and until she was about 60!), so there might be hope for me too.
 
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