Fitness & Exercise Community

Consider this. To lose 2 pounds a week you need to create a calorie deficit of 1000 calories a day, and 1500 calories a day to lose 3 pounds a week. You currently consume 1000-1200 calories a day. Without considering exercise, to lose 2 pounds a week at that intake you'd need to cut your calorie intake to virtually nothing, and for 3 pounds a week you'd have to eat nothing and exercise even more than you already do. Considering you already exercise a lot, how would you go about accomplishing your goal, and if you did, you would risk losing muscle, losing body fat, and perhaps risk malnutrition. Excessive loss of body fat, or very low body fat, is associated with loss of menstruation, low bone density, and other medical conditions. As a nutritionist, would you counsel your patients to do this? To answer your question if losing 20-25 pounds in 3 months is unrealistic, yes it is, and it could even be unsafe. As for your eating, and this is always very sensitive, but you say you do not want to be anorexic nor do you intend to be. I would guess that no one would. However, if you read your post carefully, it is of concern. You say you are scared you undereat, you count the number of chips, a treat is an apple with peanut butter, and so on. This sounds uncomfortable emotionally, and must be exhausting. You don't need to be anorexic to check in on one of the eating exchanges, and so I recommend that you at least check in over there and see if you can get some insight and advice on how to proceed. http://boards.webmd.com/topic.asp?topic_id=1135

As for the weight gain over night you are retaining fluid, not gaining weight from fat. If you ate a jar of pickles before bed you'd wake up 4-6 pounds heavier just from fluid due to the sodium content and fluids. My suggestion for you is to do your best to shift your focus away from the scale and focus instead on maintaining muscle and strength, and shaping your physique. This may be a tall order, but you deserve to feel good about yourself without starving, and perhaps building a strong and toned physique, at any weight, will help.

The smaller amount of weight that a person needs to lose, the slower it's going to be to take off. Someone that maintains their weight with a 2500 calorie diet can more easily drop that 1000 calories a day to effect the 2 pound loss per week. Someone that maintains their weight at 1600 calories a day can't drop that many calories to effect the same loss. Nutrionally, you don't want to go below 1200 calories a day to keep your body nourished. So, even though it might be frustrating, it's going to be slow considering that you are already at a healthy weight. Like Rich said, maybe toning and sculpting are more where you should be putting your efforts instead of the scale.

I count number of chips and measure cereal ect, because i've been paying attention to serving sizes. And i've learned that in the past, i could consume 2-3 times more then the reconmended serving size and easily eat 1000 calories in one sitting. I'm frustrated because i keep getting told I dont need to lose wieght, I look fine, ect. But I'm not happy being hourglass, pear shaped or ''curvy''. being a size 12 in misses, size 11-13 in juniors does not make me feel good about myself. I don't understand why I can't be a size 6 and still be healthy?

There is no reason why you can't be healthy at a size 6. Weight loss, when you aren't significantly overweight, is going to be slow. Have you had your body fat percentage checked? If you concentrate on toning instead of pounds, you can definitely lose inches, dropping you a size or two without a significant loss in weight. You'd just be tighter and toned (and smaller).

I am not an expert in nutrition by no means; but have been talking to one a few days ago because I am a little like you, I am not overweight or unhealthy but there's fat that I like to shed off, especially that I am injured and not working out as much as I'd like.
What was told to me is that:
First I should eat supportively rather than diet. You might want to google: "supportive nutrition". And as per what I've been told 1000-1200 calories is not enough food, you are starving your body and it will retain fat.
What you are eating might be healthy but it might be the way you are eating that needs to change.
Hope this helps!

yes this does help thankyou!

What kind of home excersizes do you reconmend for toning that could help lose inches off those problem areas? I own a tredmill, a couple dumbells and pilates bands, what can i do using these that will give me results?