I’ve really toes the line this week, no snacks, good sessions at the gym and I’ve drop 7.5 pounds 247 down to 239.5. Now whilst I have been good, I haven’t been running a calories deficit of 21000 in one week. So is this water weight?
Not necessarily just water; could be less total intestinal content as well. Even any body mass loss doesn’t reflect only fat either, as you know.
Keep up the good work. I sometimes think the scale is our worst enemy for weight loss. It could reflect muscle or water loss. Weigh yourself every two or three weeks as proof you are going in the right direction. Too often will have so many ups and downs it can get discouraging.
If you just started, then a significant percentage may be water loss.
Keep in mind that, while exercise is good for you, for most people it will not be an effective method for losing weight. Weight loss is primarily archived by eating less, not exercising more. (It’s a lot easier to ***not ***eat a donut than walk for an hour.) There are exceptions to this, obviously.
I’m doing both. I’m eating something like 1200 calories a day, and doing just over an hour at the gym 5 times a week - 5 mins warm up on the rowing machine, 30 mins on the treadmill (some days a steady jog at 8 kilometres an hour, some days interval training), The rest of the time taken up with resistance training.
That’s great, and it will make you feel better and for some folks curb your desire to eat more. But the weight loss will still come mainly from your diet, not the exercise.
The average person needs about 11 calories per pound of body weight to maintain said weight.
So if you were 247lbs it takes 2717 calories per day to maintain this weight
If you’re 239 it takes 2629 calories to maintain that weight.
So you can see as you lose weight it gets harder to lose.
Water weight varies diet to diet. For instance, fiber retains water much better than other things. Try this for an experiment. Buy some powdered fiber and mix up a bunch and drink two or three times the recommend water to go with that fiber. You’ll find you’ll weigh more longer. But that is water weight.
The ideal way to measure water weight outside a lab is to take your weight everyday after a period of not eating or drinking. For most people that is first thing in the morning over a period of a week than average that.
Good luck to your weight loss and though I know we all like to measure it to see how well we’re doing, don’t pay too much attention to it. Just keep doing what you’re doing and use other measure like “Oh I can button my pants” 
3500 calories = one pound. So, to lose one pound a week (recommended for steady, permanent weight loss) you need to create a calorie deficit of 3500 calories a week. Whether you do that by eating less, exercising more, or a combination of both is up to you.
Sparkpeople.com is a good free website to track your nutrition and log your fitness activity.
You’ll pile it all back on come August, when you tuck into the balti pies at Molineux…
It’s good to see the One And Only Wanderers back where they belong…
Better than that shower from near Manchester…
Muscle mass increases your metabolism. Toned muscles are more active than untoned muscles and they use more calories. So, if you are working out, increasing your muscle mass and their tone, along with increased nerve activity, you will be using up more calories. In addition, there is an after-exercise effect, wherein your body uses more calories after working out hard. Most of the calories we ingest are used to produce heat, not work. So if your body is producing more heat, it is using up more calories.
Those who start running at least 30 miles a week will notice that they start losing weight when they weren’t so much with less running. 30 miles a week appears to be a threshold which kicks in an increased metabolism.
If you’re eating 1200 calories a day, and you’re not losing weight, it means you need to eat less than 1200 calories each day.
It means said person is 110 pounds or is misrepresenting their caloric intake.
But he is losing weight. A lot. He’s lost 7.5 pounds in one week. Or am I misreading something?
I’m using the daily plate on livestrong, I assume this is an equivalent site.
nope, you read it right. The question was originally what was this 7.5 lbs made up of. I didn’t think it could all be fat, because I was pretty sure I wasn’t running a 24K calorie deficit. I’m being good, but not that good.
How do the benefits of running compare with the benefits of walking?
I do about 30/35 miles a week, but most of it walking (half of which is going down a very steep hill, making it neccessary for the second half to be going UP a very steep hill).
I have a question related to this topic. Why do people make such hard-line statements like “X calories = Y pounds” and “if you weigh X, you need Z calories to maintain that weight” when it seems so obvious that these values aren’t even close to the same for everyone? Especially the second statement, which completely leaves out of the equation the difference in calorie usage in two people who weigh the same.
I’m not a scientist or anything, but I know a whole lot of people eating much fewer calories than me, and I’m maintaining a much better height/weight ratio than they are. I also notice from the small number of poop conversations I’ve had that I tend to poop more often and with more volume than most people. That throws the calorie calculations right off, doesn’t it? Also, I’m naturally a lot more unconsciously active at “rest” than most people, fidgeting and tapping and bouncing even if I’m just watching TV or playing a computer game or reading a book. Some people use more calories to power their heart and lungs, because a more efficient cardio/vascular system requires less work to operate, right?
I just don’t see how any kind of equations or calculations can be true which say X = Y when one of the values is weight and the other is calories. How can 3500 calories equal a pound, when 3500 calories worth of celery doesn’t weigh the same as 3500 calories worth of butter, and calories aren’t even a measurement of weight to begin with? If you get on a treadmill and burn 3500 calories, you’re not a pound lighter when you’re finished. You can get 3500 calories from food that weighs less than a pound, like powdered protein “weight gain” stuff the bodybuilders use. How can eating something that weighs less than a pound make you gain a pound?
Anyway, if someone could give me a reasonable explanation for this stuff I would appreciate it.
I wouldn’t mind more information in that direction myself. Might be worth a separate thread, though I don’t mind the hijack in this one.
(p.s.) just back from the gym again. I swear it gets addictive.
Might find this article relevant.
Otara
You can? How? A pound of pure protein is about 1800 calories. A pound of pure fat is about 4000 calories. That’s as energy dense as you’re going to get, as far as I know.
Oh, and here is an article addressing the difference between the 3,500 and 4,000 numbers.