Hi,
I have joined you all with an impressive reading of 55. I am trying to get below the 47 reading by losing weight. However I understand I need to lose 34lbs off my shapely 16 stone that I started with. I have lost 8lbs but have walked 80 miles to achieve that. Has anyone achieved weight loss on this scale? I will need to walk at least another 260 miles and thats going to be 8 weeks hard slog! And I am missing fish and chips etc.
So if my maths are right, you're walking 32.5 miles per week and have lost 3.25lb per week? If so, that's some fine work!
🙂
Depending on which research you pay attention to
@harbottle is correct about the 'only diet can make you lose weight' thing, up to a point. The body has evolved all manner of mechanisms to compensate for an energy deficit, be it from diet or exercise. It tries to hold on to body fat. When you increase exercise and do it regularly the body will compensate by reducing energy expenditure by whatever means it can. The same goes for diet however - when a person's weight loss 'plateaus' for long periods of time when dieting they're running into the same phenomenon. However, the body can only go so far to compensate - there are only so many ways the body can conserve energy. So - if your diet, or exercise, or both combined, result in a massive energy deficit, you will lose plenty of weight fast.
The best metric I know of to indicate how hard the body is trying to compensate for an energy deficit is resting heart rate (RHR). Reducing heart rate at rest is one of the many ways the body can conserve energy at need. Attached is a graph I pulled from my Fitbit which shows my own RHR over Christmas. I stopped dieting on December 18th and started again on New Years day. There was feasting and merriment, some chocolates were scoffed, and you can see how my RHR rose for a while as body stopped trying to conserve energy. Right now I'm close to the lowest my RHR ever goes - last week I lost 1.5Kg and somehow an ancient part of my brain knows it. Any extra exercise I do right now is going to affect my weight loss directly, because the body can't compensate much more than it already is.
Back to your question
@lordburnside - yes, I'm trying to achieve lots of weight loss too, trying for remission. I've lost around 15Kg (33lb) since the end of October. I walk around 13 to 15 miles per week, lift weights twice per week (little tiny weights, just beginning at that) and I eat around 1550 to 1650 calories per day on average. I've been aiming to lose 1Kg per week and I make little adjustments regularly to either my exercise pattern or my diet to try to stick to 1Kg per week. So far so good - soon I'll need to buy new pants that fit. Celebration pants. I also miss chips. Chips and pizza.
