Weight Loss Question
 

I went on a diet that reduced my caloric intake by approximately 1000 calories per day from what I usually consume. In theory, this should result in a weight loss of 2 lbs per week, based on the idea that a pound of fat contains 3500 calories. Today is the fourth day I've been on the diet, and I weighed myself for the first time since starting. I have lost 3 lbs. According to theory, I should have lost about 1. What gives?

Water weight.

It varies considerably over the course of the day due to water retention, it's not a fast and hard number during the course of a single day, you could be + or minus a few lbs based on the amount of your fluid intake and the amount of salt you have consumed. Weigh yourself in the mornings before you have coffe and bfast and after you use the restroom, and then compare those morning numbers to each other and see if the 2 lbs is the result, for example, each Monday morning's weight should be 2lb less then the previous Monday, on an empty stomach with an empty bladder and colon.

Kind of what I thought. The immediate reason for me going on a diet turned out to be erroneous*, but I decided to continue it for a while to see what happens to the rate of weight loss, and because I am a disgusting fat body and I really do need to lose some weight. I'm expecting to slow down to about 2 pounds per week, but I'm not sure how long that will take.

*Thought I was going to have to wear my dress blues from boot camp (10+ years and about 15 pounds ago) this drill weekend. Plans changed.

I just got onto a diet regime thanks to porking myself to the point of almost-diabetes. Doc said unless I wanted to cross the line-of-no-return into insulin-needle land, I had to drop twenty lbs. I've dropped about nineteen in two months or so. I used a "modified Atkins", declare war on sugar and completely eliminate it from the diet, no cheating, no excuses. Cut carbs to the equivalent of one slice of bread a day, and watch fructose sugars by avoiding fruit juices, stick with low fat milk, coffee/tea or bottled water. Avoid sauces of all kinds. Eat all the pure protein you want, fish, eggs, and lean meat, but don't overally freak out on the fat because your body will flush the stuff if you are not eating carbs and sugar so go ahead and have a hamburger or steak once and a while, just make sure not to slather it in mayo or something. Go hog wild on salads and greens with "lite" salad dressings, and kill the cravings with sugar free ice cream (blue bell makes the best) and sugar-free chocolate candies and cookies. Finally, drink twice as much water as usual. Once I made all that a habit, the 2lbs a week became routine, at the rate I'm going I'll be under 175 in a week.

Nice, I've had good results with keto diet as well. My motivation is a bit different so I cycled and carbed up (essentially a weightlifting/"bodybuilding" diet), lost about 15 lbs in a month and a half, all of it fat. Unfortunately I got sidelined with an injury so I've gained some of it back. The epic and eternal battle!

In terms of water weight, chances are the OP cut a ton of sodium out of his diet. Sodium is directly related to water retention and is good for at least a few pounds day to day.

If you drink Diet sodas then you might want to check the sodium content on the side of the can. Some of them have enough sodium in them to cause you to retain a pound of water.

And if you just stop drinking soft drinks altogether you will lose weight as you will not be consuming so much sugar.

In diets the little things add up.

Go easy on the sugar free candy. Most of it is sweetened with Malitol, which can have a laxative effect when consumed in large quantities.

Ah, em,, yes.... I am quite aware of that now. It also has a rather embarrassing gassification effect. But it sure does kill cravings, man, I was like willing to kill for a box of donuts, and then I'd have a bowl of Blue Bell No Sugar! Chocolate and I'd be cool.

Yes, I forgot to mention, exercise is key. I decided to take up yard work with a vengeance. This is no $hit, I hand-dug a complete underground sprinkler system for my house, by myself with a shovel, and then shoveled in an entire dump truck load of sandy loam into the gardens. I just had five yards of river pebbles delivered for my next round. It sure beat paying 90$ a month for health club membership, and I saved about 5 grand in the process.

Some of the weight loss may be from not replacing your glycogen supplies. Stored glycogen requires water (you can't just store sugar in your body.

You may have also cut back on the sodium. Normal human sweat is about 1g/liter sodium to water. So if you don't replace the sodium any extra water just gets excreted.

I also did the Atkins thing. At my heaviest I weighed 284 lbs. I have lost 65lbs. and kept if off for 3 years now. It's worth a try. Also my diabetes is pretty much gone. :) Take care of yourself. Also I have lost an additional 10lbs. when I stopped drinking beer a while back. I'm sober and loving it. :)

I wish my thread in DD about my non-working blower got this much attention.

I'm keeping it pretty simple, but the result is pretty similar to what Jolly Roger is doing. A few months ago I kept track of everything I ate and drank, except water, for five days and then calculated my intake of calories and various nutrients. I came up with an average of 2636 calories per day. I decided to cut the calories by 1000, but keep my protein intake adequate to maintain muscle mass. My original goal was 100 grams per day, but I've been averaging a little over 80. So far it seems to be working. I was concerned about glycogen depletion affecting my PT regimen, but so far it doesn't seem to be a problem. I was expecting to be a lot hungrier a lot more of the time, but that hasn't happened to any great extent. I think the high protein content has something to do with that. I don't drink sodas anyway, and my candy and/or ice cream consumption happens maybe once a month. I don't do artificial sweeteners or fake fat.

My PT program consists of a three day cycle. Day 1 is lifting-upper body for about 50 minutes. Day 2 is a long bike ride, and day 3 is a four mile run/walk in which I run for the first part of each mile and then walk the rest. I've been gradually extending the length of the run portion.

Edit: Speaking of beer, I've quit drinking for extended periods of time on two occasions and didn't lose any weight. I think the environment may have had something to do with it. Both times I was working a lot of hours, to the point of not having much time for exercise. Most of the exercise I did was weight training since there wasn't much opportunity for cardio, and I ate most of my meals in chow halls staffed by third country nationals who are apparently told in their orientation that Americans like to eat more food in one meal than a family in their home country eats in a week.

Dude!! that ain't right. :D

LIAR!!! :D

Water weight? Might be you lost some muscle mass too when you reduced your calories. 1000 calories is a pretty radical deficit.

lol what? :confused::D

Also, what's the deal with those Granny Glasses that you wear? :eek::D

With a BMR of 2600, a 1000cal deficit is huge :eek:

hahah those are long gone, I think I might have actually left them in that car when it got towed off by accident. They were quite stylish!:cool::D

Diet modification and exercise, works every time.

Wrong thread!!! :mad:

Yeah, if your a 77 year old woman. :eek::D

I did the lemonaide diet for 16 days, and lost about 19 pounds. (Not sure how accurate the bathroom scale is). it cleaned a real lot of crap out of my system too. after the frist few days, when I stopped crapping out flatworm looking things, I was dumping out chunks of black stuff that were pretty hard that some said was lining my stomach and intestines...
didn't eat as much as I usually did for quite a while...

Your body stores up to 10lbs of glucose for situations when food is scarce. So you will have to burn that off first, which will be easy before your body starts to slowly consume the fat.

Lemonade diet?:confused:

Before our last BCA (Body Composition Analysis) a guy in my unit stopped eating for two days. He passed. Barely. I've also heard of the tuna diet, which I think consists of canned tuna and little if anything else.

I'm curious about the 10 lbs of glucose thing. What I just read on wikipedia was that muscles can store up to 2% of their mass as glycogen, with another 120 grams or so stored in the liver. For a guy my size that works out to a maximum of something like a pound and a half.

Side note: I just made my second attempt at a coffee mug microwave poached egg. It came out pretty nice.

Funnily enough I've lost 2" off my waist (about 10 lbs) in the last couple of months by doing less cardio. Seems the more cardio I do, the hungrier I get, and the hungrier I get the more I eat.

Sounds like somewhat of a self destructive diet. Lose a bunch of weight then gain it all back again once you start eating food again!

Ive done the Master Cleanse a few times. I only did it for 3 days or so. The first one was a bit rough. A bit dizzy at times. Felt a lot better afterwards. You can subsitute watermeleon instead. Some recomend two fastings a year.
About 4 years ago, I weighd 230 lbs, 40 inch waist. I was nearing the obese range on the BMI scale. I restricted my diet and walked a bit at work. I came down to 214 lbs after a few years. Still, my glycerides etc. were near diabetic levels. Years before, I was near perfect for all that stuff. Desk jobs will kill you.
I restricted my diet and walked, and also Ballroom dance leasons once a week. They were private leasons, so constant moving. I was droping 2 to 3 lbs a week. I was down to 178 lbs and a 33-34 waist. I stopped the ballroom lessons, eat a bit more, but still walk about an hour a day. I steadily increased weight. I am at 200 to 205 lbs. presently. OT at work doesn't help.
I wouldn't restrict you diet to much. I think the formula is 10x of your body weight. Restrict your diet to much and your body goes into crissis mode. Your metabolism will slow way down. Also, fat is not the evil it is made out to be. Your body needs some amount of fats to functions. It is the type of fats etc. As for a Hamburger, the meat isn't the problem, it is the bun.
One of my friends was/still is way over weight. I told him to stop eating the hotdogs for breakfast etc. Wouldn't listen. Then discovered he's diabetic. Really, adjusted his diet. Not much bread, cookies, sweets etc. Not much white, like rice, breads, sugar etc. He has dropped 50 lbs. Probably need to drop 50 more.
Tom

Your body lowers your blood sugar by storing energy. This is really important because that is exactly the opposite of how your body loses weight. If your blood sugar goes up your weight is not going down, end of story. In a healthy person this would be physiologically impossible.

Better half went on the Dukan diet. Prior to this, she had tried just about everything else with limited success.

After approx. 3 months on this diet, she's gone from a size 10 to a size 6.

Not bad for an older woman.

I preferred the Dunkin Diet, hence the threat of diabetes.

I'm going to clarify some stuff on here, I see misinformation of nutrition and diets about as bad as bad info on cars when repairing your car. Just a disclaimer I'm not a registered nutritionist so take this with a grain of salt. However most of this info came from my nutritionist so its not all bad. Also, not meaning this to attack anyone, just as a clarification.

Those "master cleanse" things are just a matter of getting rid of the bacteria in your intestines. They'll regrow but obviously you'll have the weight back too. Its natural to have that in there. Drinking only lemonade or eating watermelon starves your body of a ton of nutrients and logically there is no way for this to work, nor remotely healthy. If you want to drop a big black log in the toilet, take a bunch of metamucil and guzzle some pepto bismal. If you look at the label on those "natural colon cleanse" products you'll find that they're just fiber (psyllium husk as main ingredient)

"optimal" is not 10x body weight for anything. You need to calculate your BMR (not BMI) using many online calculators to determine how many calories a day you burn through exercise. Use that against tracking every calorie along with gram of fat, carbs, protein, and satfat. Then you can determine an adequate calorie deficit and begin dieting. Skippy (OP) is doing it "right"...obviously there are different styles of diets but that is one proven to work. One of the most useful tools I've ever come across is livestrong.com, which allows you to track anything and everything. I've been using it for years (back when it was thedailyplate.com) and they have mobile apps that work great as well.

Well done! You should be proud of you weight loss and glad that everything is at a healthy level.

BMI is a crock of BS for actually determining anything factual. For example, I was considered "obese" for a while at 215 lbs, but what it fails to consider is the fact that I had less than 20% body fat. So statistically I was considered part of a national (global?) epidemic yet as a recreational weightlifter in some of the best shape of my life. All I'm saying is take BMI with a grain of salt :)

This is true from a ketogenic (such as Atkins) standpoint but very untrue from other diets'. By cutting carbs you drain your body of glucose, and force your liver into creating ketones to burn (called a state of ketosis). Ketones are generated from fat, and therefore your body will begin consuming its own fat along with that which you ingest. However, the balance between fat, carbs, fiber (also carbs), and protein is absolutely crucial. First, consuming this much fat often causes your cholesterol to spike so you need to have a healthy level of cholesterol before even starting....to maintain a healthy level you need to eat a large amount of fiber every day to essentially flush it out of your system. The fiber also helps move things along, if you catch my drift. If you do strenuous exercise you also need to consider "carbing up", which basically spikes glucose levels quickly and replenishes your muscles for a lot of energy exertion. A lot of folks also cycle in and out of ketosis not only as a "cheat day" but also to keep their livers in spec. In short, if you're on a regular low-cal-low-fat diet like most are, you can't just toss the bun from the burger and think its okay. It will work against you. The only time that sort of thinking is true is if your body is in ketosis and requires both the protein and fat to operate.

I think it would be fun to have a PP "biggest loser" contest. Obviously voluntary but it seems like there is a common shared interest on here. Just a thought!

Retro is cool again! I'm like the new camaro :D

That wasn't clarification, actually had a good bit of confusion and misinformation added to the mix.

I can agree with what you said about fiber, BMR and few other things but all in all you have a long way to go on understanding how your body works. I suspect you are still living on your youth and that lets you get by.

Consider the possibility that the information that you got was directed toward your weight lifting efforts and may not be useful to most of the population who are not weight lifters. Most of the official advice on diet is debatable and clear information is very difficult to find. What works for one person is not necessarily the best for another.

Master cleanse and Atkins are very misunderstood and shouldn't be commented on by people who have not read the source materials. I don't think that either one is a good place to start and should be fully understood before anyone tries to use them.

BMI is not a crock for most people and I'm betting that your waistline was larger than it should have been even when you thought you were in the peak of your health.

BTW, I read that Master Cleanse is actually a ketogenic diet. Didn't go back yet to follow up but I can see it is possible.

Basal metabolic rate: What you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day. Basal Metabolic Rate : Calculators : Discovery Health Mine worked out to 1654 calories per day at my starting weight of 165 lbs.

Body Mass Index: Free Body Mass Calculator : Free BMI Calculator : Discovery Health Mine was 30.2 at the start of this, so I was obese, at least by BMI. On my last BCA a few weeks ago, I taped at 21.5% body fat, which isn't great but isn't terrible either. I know from personal experience that my best weight is about 152-154 lbs. Above that I don't get much stronger, and below that I get a lot weaker. According to the BMI folks, I'd still be "overweight" at that weight. (Note: Those of you good at math can now figure out how tall I am.)

I decided to start tracking my sodium intake to see if it's changed significantly from the baseline study I did in March. At that time I was consuming an average of about 3000 mg of sodium daily.

This is one of the areas where the official advice is highly questionable. Some people get by fine with about 200-300mg of sodium a day. Average in the US is probably over 5000mg. If you eat restaurant food sodium is out of control. Ditto with processed food.

MSG is a big one too. Gluten, glutamate, glutamine, know them all and decide for yourself.

20% bodyfat for a guy is actually pretty terrible.

You are right I am stating it from the position of someone who regularly gets strenuous exercise. It doesn't make the principles invalid however, and there are numerous source documents available via the internet and academic resources (if you have those available). I would like to see, outside of a keto diet where eating large amounts of fat is healthy except in rare and unusual circumstances.

I admit I don't know much about "master cleanse", I thought it was sort of like a long term colon flow commercial :eek: because there are a ton of those "diets" out there. THOSE are not healthy.

Keep up the fight.

You get older and you're wishing you could see around your belly just to see the numbers on the scale. Eyes wouldn't focus on something that small anyway. 20% is "the good old days". A whole lot of people can't get to their feet to wash them.

I refuse to be a part of it, won't go there. The food industry in this country is the genocide industry.

17-18% for a 5'11 215-220lb guy isn't too bad ;). Not great/cut but certainly not bad.

As I understand it, the master cleanse was a diet designed by a doctor in the 1970s to give the digestive tract a chance to rest, heal, and get a chance to be completely cleaned out. I knew a bunch of guys with intestinal infections, ulcers and the like who did thie cleanse, and no more uncers, and the digestive tract infections were gone...

That's not that bad for a white adult man. You're not in top shape but not obese.

The worst part of the fat seems to be all of the fat soluble chemicals. Modified fats are neck and neck for that position though and both are best avoided. Some fats pass through the cell wall and so are often the delivery mechanism for drugs and hormones. Steroids are part of this line of information. Good clean fat should be part of your diet but within reason. Actually our brains have a lot of cholesterol naturally. They don't tell you that when they are trying to prescribe anti-cholesterol drugs.

Most of the Keto diets are not super high in fats if you play them right. At first, back in the 70's, Dr. Atkins didn't seem to understand what fiber was. His later work was much better.

LOL! Yeah I think that's not too bad.

THC?

Agreed on all points!

First, I don't think the BMI index is accurate for all people. I sort of works for me and my frame size. I'm roughly 5' 11" to 6 ft. I do stand behind that you can cut to much calories out, and your body will rebel. I do agree that fiber is part of the equation. It helps pull out toxins etc. Part of the problem is that a lot of foods are nutrient deficient. So, your body is hungry till you eat enough to supply the viatmins, minerals etc. you need. I do take some vitamin suppliments etc. That gets tricky, as to the types, bioavailabilty etc.
I am more in the Blood type diet camp. There are some other influences, like Dr. Mark Hymen and some others. Keeping toxins out, and getting rid of them ones that get in. Its a big challange in todays enviroment.
Tom

In the words of Michael Pollan, here's your diet: "Eat REAL food, not too much, mostly plants."
Eat everything fresh. No processed anything. No "convenience" foods. Stay out of the center aisles of the "grocery" store, that's where the high fat high carb high salt crap is concentrated.
If you snack a lot, purge your pantry of snacks. I refuse to buy that garbage anymore. Chew gum. Celery sticks, carrots or something but get rid of the bagged snacks altogether forever. My wife moans about not losing her last 10 pounds and then I find Dorito's bags and peanut butter cup wrappers in the trash bag in her car. "I just need something for the drive home, that's all!!" Oh Ok, so then the calories don't count. I get it.
Eat less, move around more. Pick up heavy things and move them.