I have a friend - an actual friend who isn’t me - who has been trying to lose weight since July.
She began from a completely sedentary lifestyle, having a computer-based job and working from home.
She got a fitness band to measure her activity levels and she has increased her movements over time, from around 3,000 steps per day in the beginning to around 10,000 steps per day by the end of the year. Since just before the start of the New Year she has been walking twice a day, logging two or three hours in total and around 20,000 (or more) steps.
She has meticulously tracked her kilojoule intake in MyFitnessPal, measuring and weighing everything to make sure it is recorded accurately. She has changed her diet, adding much more fruit and vegetables. She consumes fewer calories than she burns, based on what she’s recorded in MFP and the estimated calorie burn from the exercise that the fitness tracker records.
Her weight normally fluctuates dramatically over short periods of time, so it’s hard to give an accurate starting point, but she’s recorded her starting weight as being the all-time highest reading she had, even though it could have been up to 2kg less than that. Working from that number, over 6 months exercising daily and restricting herself to a 1200 calorie diet (plus a little more from exercise), she’s lost about 10kg/22lb. At that level of commitment, the estimates were that she would be losing around 2lb a week, but she’s finding her actual weight loss is around 2lb a month.
She’s just had blood tests done which all came back normal, including her thyroid levels.
Obviously she’s frustrated with the slow pace of her weight loss, given the level of commitment she’s put in. Three hours of walking 7 times a week isn’t sustainable over the long term, as other aspects of her life are suffering for it.
How many calories does he/she eat per day? If one really wants to lose weight, 1200 - 1300 calories should be the limit. Lots of broccoli and cabbage, nearly no calories in those. Long walks, longer than 45 minutes, closer to 60, more like 90 minutes at least 3 times a week. There’s no reason to exercise more intensely than walking, if you want to and are able go for it but IMHO, walking for 90 minutes at a time is the best bang for the buck.
Never mind the fitness band and just walk for 90 minutes in a contiguous period.
She has chronic pain issues that limit some forms of exercise. Her doctor has told her not to do weights, for instance, and she has problems with her lungs that prohibit running.
But even if she switched to another form of exercise that allowed her to burn the same calories in a shorter time, the problem here is that she’s eating right, counting calories, exercising, and still losing weight at a pace much, much slower than she should be, and she doesn’t understand why. The dietary changes alone ought to be enough to be reducing her weight faster than this.
She’s walking up to 3 hours a day, seven days a week, usually in two session of 90 minutes or one of 60 minutes and one of 120 minutes. She is on a 1200 calorie diet, eats lots of fruit and vegetables although I don’t know if she specifically concentrates on broccoli or cabbage.
Actually, unless you reach athlete levels, calories burned during exercise does not burn a great deal. 1 mile of running is 100 calories(more or less). That’s one cookie.
The body is really good at balancing intake/output. She’s probably eating more than she thinks. Is she weighing or otherwise measuring all food?
Those fitness bands/gym machines can only make a general guess at calorie burn.
Unfortunately, number of steps won’t convert to distance without knowing stride length.
Definitely meticulously weighing and recording her food. I’ve got a few friends who I’d second guess on that, but this one is a smart cookie.
She does eat some of her exercise calories, but not all. I understand that it’s more an estimation that a precise number and so does she, but she’s eating a fraction of what her fitness band estimates she’s burned off. Oh, and she uses MapMyRun or possibly a similar app to record her walks too, so she’s got a pretty good idea of distance - about 100km/week (62 miles).
The fitness band app does have a workout feature that allows it to calculate the speed of walking from the number of steps taken during the session, but it could be overestimating. Even so, looking at her food diary I can see that she eats about maybe a quarter of the calories it estimates she has burned through exercise, which to me suggests a pretty big margin for error, especially as 1200 calories is already a deficit.
Remember, too, that weight lost slowly is more likely to stay off. I’m doing Weight Watchers, which recommends losing 1/2 to 2 pounds per week. 2 pounds a month is more or less in that range. Changing habits is just as important as the number on the scale.
I would also recommend that she take body measurements regularly: bust, waist, hips, thigh, upper arm. When I was losing, I also measured my gut at the navel, because it was a problem area. Often when the scale does not move, the tape measure does.
I’d try staying away from the fruits for 2 or 3 weeks and see what happens, fruits provide essentially the same as refined sugar, which is a no-no while on a diet. Bulk up on the broccoli and cabbage and meats, stay away from sugar, wheat bread and starches.
I’ve lost weight on what I’ve said in this thread with the walking and at another time by juicing a lot of carrots without exercising. I can lose weight and be thin but I prefer to be happy and eat what I want, for the moment.
Is she drinking plenty of water? Getting plenty of sleep?
Is she hungry all the time or satiated? Is she eating protein and fat or just carbs (fruit, pasta)?
Lots of times it seems like people are starving themselves and just miserable all the time and they’re not losing. Or they’re stuffing themselves with fruit and veggies but never getting full enough to have the energy to work out very hard.
I recall from MFP forums that everyone freaked out if you ate under 1300 calories a day. Is 1200 the number that the MFP calculator recommended? Is she very short?
From just what you’ve written, without further knowledge, I’d say she’s starving herself and not eating a diet that satisfying. Possibly too much sugar and “low calorie” foods with nothing substantial to fuel her body. More fats, more protein, more low-glycemic fruits/veg and whole grains. More calories. See how it works.
She will lose most of her weight via diet and simply augment her weightloss and tone her body (and keep her heart healthy) via exercise. She needs to spend more time in the kitchen and way less time on the road.
ETA: I found the MyFitnessPal forums very helpful for getting good info. She should join a group (or 10) there that suit her. Women her age, women who have similar joint problems, women in her area. She can hash the details out with people who have found the key and know about nutrition.
2 lb per week on an ongoing basis may not have been a realistic expectation. Plateaus are the norm - people lose weight at that reasonable clip for a bit and then, doing all the same things, stop losing for a period of time. It’s just what happens.
How much did she weigh at the start? If something like 200 pounds then she has already lost more than 10% of her body weight, which is a more impressive and important achievement than she may be realizing. It is “serious” weight loss - if maintained with her improved nutrition and exercise plan.
She may want to consider transitioning from losing much more weight as her goal to figuring out what level of exercise she actually can sustain over the long term and a long term nutrition approach.
Otherwise the thing to change is to not eat any of her exercise calories back. Odds are she is misunderstanding how much net additional she has burned … she is likely making the mistake of using the gross calories burned during the activity (the app reported number), not the net additional, forgetting that there were calories in those three hours that were going to be burned just sitting there doing nothing as well. The calories that matter are the calories above and beyond those baseline ones … and with walking, as important to health as it is, there are not really that many of those above and beyond calories, especially if her pace is not so quick.
Stick to the 1200/d. No extras for walking more. Or transition to a long term plan she can live with.
I worked with a guy in Pt. Noire who was 6’4" and weighed close to 300 lbs. He tried all kinds of diets but had little success until he ran out of his lariam pills ( a antimalarial agent ). He was a little slow - and careless - about filling the supply and manage to contract malaria. The “bad” news was that he was out of commision for a week or so but the “good” news was he dropped almost 80 lbs. by the time he got over it.
How about cutting carbs - not a radical Atkins/primal type diet, but just way back on carbohydrates and upping protein and lots of leafy greens and other low-carb veggies and whole grains? IOW: High fiber, high protein, low on carbs/sugar/processed.
What about stair climbing? Aerobics? Pilates? Exercise bike? My wife has an exercise bike that has a chair seat instead of the more common bicycle seat. It is very comfortable and doesn’t hurt your bum like the bike seat ones do.
Has your friend talked to her doctor about this? Maybe he/she can make some recommendations for more intense exercises that are safe for her to do. And it might be possible that her meds are interfering with her weight loss, depending on what if anything she’s on.
Another thing I thought of is: physical therapists/pain clinics are great because they know how to target certain areas of the body and how to work you out while working around your restrictions/health problems. They can teach you all sorts of exercises and will show you how to do them right. The ones around here require a doctor recommendation, but if you explain what you’re trying to do, your friends doctor might give it to her.
Why is your friend on a non sustainable exercise plan? Is she planning on stopping exercises once she hits her target weight, and just rely on low calorie diets to maintain her weight? That does not sound like a good idea to me, but I am not a nutritionist or a dietician.
One other factor in the net calories impact from her exercise goes beyond what I already posted (the fact that the calories burned during exercise above and beyond what she would burn during that time are actually 45% less than the total calories burned her app reports to her). The other aspect involves what is called non exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). This article may be of interest but the key point is that the obese appear to, without any conscious awareness, alter how much they move around during the rest of the day in response to exercise and calorie restriction, hence as a little to none net additional daily calorie burn impact.
In short the estimated calories burned in a fitness tracker is based on an algorithm for some mythic average person and is a poor estimate of what is likely occurring in her. Having been obese and having lost a significant amount of weight she is likely burning less each day than she thinks is. That’s the why.