Partners weight loss woes
Discussion
Any tips guys as my partner is very disheartened.
Since new year she goes to the gym 75% of her days and eats approx 300-700 calories a day less. She eats a lot lot better now.
She barely went to the gym before and used to eat about 2200 calories ish a day.
She has lost not a single pound in 3 weeks.
I know people say you can put muscle on so weight doesent tell all, but she should have lost approx 3 pounds now, she cant have gained 3 pounds in muscle, even i as a male couldent put 3 pounds of muscle on in 3 weeka and i train hard and drink lots of protein.
Any tips?
Since new year she goes to the gym 75% of her days and eats approx 300-700 calories a day less. She eats a lot lot better now.
She barely went to the gym before and used to eat about 2200 calories ish a day.
She has lost not a single pound in 3 weeks.
I know people say you can put muscle on so weight doesent tell all, but she should have lost approx 3 pounds now, she cant have gained 3 pounds in muscle, even i as a male couldent put 3 pounds of muscle on in 3 weeka and i train hard and drink lots of protein.
Any tips?
dieseluser07 said:
No, shes really trying this time. Calories are approx 1700-1900 a day aswell as exercise
She still could be under-estimating - it's extremely common and easy to do, brutal honesty is what she needs when tracking.Importantly, it's only been three weeks - sometimes it will take longer for the body to respond. Most importantly, she needs to look at this as not being a temporary fix - rather it needs to be a correction and lifestyle adjustment to move to eating and living in a way that maintains a healthy weight and fitness level, with the weight loss merely being a effect of that adjustment rather than the end goal.
Keep encouraging and supporting your partner, and give it time.
Assuming she's not doing the following;
Use myfitness pal to track her calories and even macros. Its common for people to have too many carbs and not enough protein. This will make sure she is eating the number of calories she thinks shes eating.
Make sure her water intake is nice and high. Drinking mostly water will make sure she isn't drinking a lot of calories without meaning to.
Is her exercise program any good? A program that involves heavy weights as well as cardio is best.
Use myfitness pal to track her calories and even macros. Its common for people to have too many carbs and not enough protein. This will make sure she is eating the number of calories she thinks shes eating.
Make sure her water intake is nice and high. Drinking mostly water will make sure she isn't drinking a lot of calories without meaning to.
Is her exercise program any good? A program that involves heavy weights as well as cardio is best.
Many people do a 2km run and think they should have lost a stone by the time they get home. Your body burns more calories in a day just keeping you awake. Exercise is important for overall health, but unless you’re running a half marathon every day before work, you’re better off focusing the majority of your attention on a quality diet if weight loss is the goal.
Exercise is of course critical for health and wellness, and will help to burn some excess energy, but my opinion carbohydrates is where you need to start with weight control.
Exercise is of course critical for health and wellness, and will help to burn some excess energy, but my opinion carbohydrates is where you need to start with weight control.
Probably needs to tweak diet further but on these initial phases I would take a tape measure out and actually measure he waist, etc, you may find that sometimes he weight loss is not as much as expected but certainly changes are happening to your body. Saying that perserverence is key here.
You get fit in the gym. You get thin in the kitchen.
I recommend reading Taubes' "Why We Get Fat"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Get-Fat-Vintage/dp...
I recommend reading Taubes' "Why We Get Fat"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Get-Fat-Vintage/dp...
This article makes the case that calories is a completely misleading unit in terms of weight loss:
https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-useless-con...
https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-useless-con...
I'm no expert but 17-1900 calories/day seems quite a lot. I'm a girl and 5'9 so fairly tall and I'm losing around 1-2lb/week on 1500 calories/day, although less exercise than it sounds like your girlfriend is doing. Diet books I've seen talk about much lower than 17/1900 calories, although I guess it depends on the exercise she's doing.
durbster said:
This article makes the case that calories is a completely misleading unit in terms of weight loss:
https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-useless-con...
Admittedly I've only skim-read it, and yes it's very true that different foods trigger different hormonal etc reactions that can and do impact things like metabolism etc. Plus there's also the differing rates of TEF with protein, carbs, and fats.https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-useless-con...
However, those impacts are somewhat around the fringes and trying to consider them over-complicates things - the overall truth is still calories in vs calories out, other factors like hormonal influences of food, TEF etc will impact the calculation of one's calorific maintenance level, not disprove the in vs out theory - ie they impact the calculation of the "out" side.
While I appreciate the need to fully understand these factors, for most people trying to lose weight needs to be kept as simple as possible, thus calories in vs calories out. If results aren't coming, then either one of those requires adjustments (primarily by eating less, followed by moving more, and only then, if necessary, looking deeper into it).
Each to their own of course, but I believe keeping the challenge as simple as possible will return the best results, both in the short and long term.
Not wishing to be negative on her awesome decision to change her lifestyle but people often underestimate how much they are eating and over estimate how much exercise they are doing.
Get her to log her calories in my fitness pal and weight everything she does with a set of scales, a heart rate monitor would be good too.
Losing weight is a long term thing and part of a lifestyle change, if she hasn't seen results yet it could be a number of factors but if you do the things stated above you've rule out things like over eating.
Get her to log her calories in my fitness pal and weight everything she does with a set of scales, a heart rate monitor would be good too.
Losing weight is a long term thing and part of a lifestyle change, if she hasn't seen results yet it could be a number of factors but if you do the things stated above you've rule out things like over eating.
She needs to eat a lot less than she thinks. A pound of fat is 3,500 calories. An average female burns approx. 1,700 calories a day at rest (use a resting metabolic rate calculator if you want an exact value). To lose a pound of fat a week she needs to consume less than 1,000 calories a day for 5 days and less than 1,700 for the other 2 days (Google 5:2 diet). Exercise is a bonus but not essential to lose weight. Source; ex-fattie 
I’m another advocate of MyFitnessPal. Track everything she eats on that and can put her excercise in there too. I used it religiously 3 years ago for 4 months and lose 3 stone and it’s predictions were pretty spot on.
Maybe find a local personal trainer if you can afford it and ask them to put together a training and diet plan for her. Removes some temptation or slip up in eating the wrong foods by accident on her part then.
Personal trainer should be able to measure body fat, muscle etc on her then too so will help track her progress. I paid £30 for a diet plan and have a decent scales at home which measures my body fat and muscle then too.
Maybe find a local personal trainer if you can afford it and ask them to put together a training and diet plan for her. Removes some temptation or slip up in eating the wrong foods by accident on her part then.
Personal trainer should be able to measure body fat, muscle etc on her then too so will help track her progress. I paid £30 for a diet plan and have a decent scales at home which measures my body fat and muscle then too.
Fore Left said:
She needs to eat a lot less than she thinks. A pound of fat is 3,500 calories. An average female burns approx. 1,700 calories a day at rest (use a resting metabolic rate calculator if you want an exact value). To lose a pound of fat a week she needs to consume less than 1,000 calories a day for 5 days and less than 1,700 for the other 2 days (Google 5:2 diet). Exercise is a bonus but not essential to lose weight. Source; ex-fattie
3000 calories is 3 large Big Mac Meals a day. A sandwich from a shop is more like 3-400. Gassing Station | Health Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff