I lost weight without trying!
I gave myself a break from the diet - but I still lost two pounds in a week!
As I’d hit my target weight with a fast finish that just took me over the line I decided I could relax a little and let the plateau work for me. I was happy to stay the same for a short while then try to lose the final stone and a half (21 pounds/9.5 kilos). I wanted to see how many calories I could eat to maintain. Gain, maintain or lose. You only get one of three results when you step on the scales. I was happy to maintain for a bit, if I could. Usually my weight is either on the up or slinking slowly southwards. I averaged 1500 calories a day last week and thought that was a good maintaining amount. I also walked for about 12,000 steps a day. My hope was I wouldn’t gain from eating 1500 calories a day as that’s quite a low level to have to stay at once the diet is over.
I needn’t have worried. I’d lost two pounds! Two lovely pounds in just a week. Which when you’ve already lost 49 pounds/22 kilos is quite an achievement. Perhaps the weight loss was a delayed reaction to my strict calorie control leading up to the anniversary of my diet when I was trying really hard to hit a milestone target? This is worth bearing in mind if you find weight loss tough. Keep going and your reward may come a few weeks down the line. Sometimes it’s in the post!
According to the NHS women need 2,000 calories a day and men 2,500. This is just for maintenance so it’s the amount you need to eat if you’re not trying to lose weight. Even so it sounds quite a lot to me. I’m fairly sure if I ate 2,000 calories a day even with all the steps I do I would probably gain weight, not stay the same. The NHS recommends 1400 calories a day for women trying to lose weight and men get to eat 1900 a day. That sounds about right to me. It’s a nice slow loss too and slow losses are far more likely to stay lost than fast ones.
I seem able to lose on 1500 calories a day but I think that might be due to all the exercise I do. Even so, all that walking only gives me an extra 100 calories a day. So you do need to bear in mind that exercise doesn’t make that much difference. It helps. Sure it helps. It keeps your metabolism going. And there are many good health reasons for taking regular exercise. But to lose weight you have to eat less than you would maybe like to! There really isn’t any way around that.
We all have to find our own way through this. There is no plan that works for everyone. I long for the day when I just need to maintain the weight I’ve lost rather than continuing to try and lose. That’s a way off yet. I just hope I can have a bit more than 1500 calories a day once I hit my final target. I think 1700 calories a day will be ample. Once you’ve got used to living on far fewer calories, 1700 seems like absolute luxury!
Why are people so reluctant to congratulate a weight loss?
With such a big loss now people are definitely noticing and starting to comment on it. “You’ve lost weight!” “You look so much healthier” and my favourite, “Hello Slim Jim!” Very nice but why did it take so long? I’ve been losing weight for just over a year now. I know I look and indeed am a lot thinner. But for ages no one said anything! Well apart from a couple of close friends. Those encouraging comments aside most people I know seemed reluctant to remark on it. But they must’ve noticed! So why didn’t they say anything? If this has happened to you I think there are three main reasons why people may be reluctant to tell you they’ve noticed your weight loss:
* It’s an admission they clocked you were previously overweight
* They fear you didn’t lose for a nice reason but due to illness or emotional upset
* They don’t want to make a personal remark on your appearance.
Of course it could also be sheer envy. Not all human motivations are positive after all.
I don’t know how other successful weight losers feel but for my part I LIKE it when people notice and say something! It’s very encouraging. It took me three and a half stone before people finally started saying something. Maybe it got to the point where they couldn’t pretend not to notice? It helps that I post my weight losses on Facebook and Twitter so people know this is deliberate. But if you have a friend or someone you know is trying to lose weight and you clock they’ve succeeded, please congratulate them! It really is very motivating to know it’s noticed.