Lose Weight Slowly

A 13 kg (30 pounds) loss is not in the range of weight loss that causes
flaps of skin or requires surgery, it takes a whole lot more weight than
that. Stretch marks happen not when you are losing but when you are
gaining. Also, how old is the OP, in her pictures she looks quite young,
that makes a big difference in skin resiliency.

Roger Zoul wrote:
| XiaoZhen wrote:
||| Just basing on my personal experience and what I know and seen,
||| losing weight slowly have its benefits.
|||
||| I lost 13 kgs over a 1 and 1/2 year period. That's slow, by a lot
||| of people's standard. but I do not have loose flaps of skin or
||| stretch marks.
||| There is no need to go for plastic surgery.
|
| How do you know this is the result of losing weight slowly? It could
| be that you didn't have much to lose and you have fairly elastic
| skin....

"Roger Zoul" writes:

Aaron Baugher wrote:
:: If you start eating right and lose 5 pounds a week, great!

So, if one follows an Atkins inspired LC diet of 800 / day and loses
5 lbs a week, great? While I think people do this kind of thing,
I'm not so sure if it's great if the means by which it is achieved
is not sustainable.

No, because "eating right" doesn't include starvation, and Atkins
never suggests cutting calories back that drastically, certainly not
at the Induction stage. None of the LC plans I'm familiar with tell
you to restrict calories at all unless you hit a genuine stall, at
which point they might say to lower calories until you start moving
again, but not until you move 5 pounds/week. So that situation is a
strawman, as far as LC eating is concerned.

:: If you
:: start eating right and lose 2 pounds a month, great! Moving in the
:: right direction is the important thing, not only for the weight loss,
:: but also for the other improvements in health that come from turning
:: off the insulin spigot.

But people have shown the ability to move in the right direction for
short period of time many, many times. Some of these people are
called "yo-yo dieters".

That doesn't mean they're doing something wrong during the periods
when they're losing. If you do everything right for a few months and
lose a bunch of weight, and then for some mental reason go off the
wagon and gain it back, that doesn't mean they were somehow losing it
wrong. Maybe they didn't have the right attitude about it, but their
dieting method may have been perfect.

I think the fear of yo-yo dieting often leads to the "don't diet, just
balance and moderate" belief. I was just talking to a seriously
overweight friend of mine yesterday, and she was repeating the usual:
"I'm just trying to eat smaller portions....extreme diets never last
(and 'no potatoes, rice, or bread' qualifies as extreme to everyone
but us)....humans aren't designed to eat a lot of meat.....you need
all the food groups [whatever those are today] to be healthy....."
All the same old tenets of the faith.

Without being too preachy or mean, I tried to fill her in on a few
things and gave her some links, because she's intelligent and likes to
read. But it was a good example of someone who's bought into the idea
that "extreme" diets -- those that restrict particular foods -- are
counter-productive in the long run -- maybe even more so if they work
especially well.

:: I suspect "fast" weight loss is most unsustainable when it's caused
:: by starvation. If you get enough protein and calories to feed your
:: LBM and avoid hunger, there's no reason that should stop working and
:: go the other direction.

Do you think that hunger or the lack of it is an indication that
you're getting enough protein and calories to feed your LBM?

No, that's why I put an "and" in there. I make sure to feed my LBM
because I don't want to lose lean mass or starve important systems. I
also avoid hunger because it can lead to cravings and cheating,
especially if it hits me when I'm around tempting high-carb foods.
Granted, the cravings aren't *nearly* as intense when I've been
low-carb for a while, but they still exist, and they're worse when I'm
hungry.

You talk about this as if it's a math problem or something. There
very definite is a reason why the speed at which you lose the weight
should affect whether you gain it back. And the reason is
psychological.

Absolutely, and that's why it depends on the person, so you can't say
X pounds/week is too fast. Personally, I think the fact that I lost
20 pounds in my first month way back when I first started LC (while
eating about 3000 calories/day) made me complacent. I didn't gain it
back, but I got lazy and stopped losing, because on some level I
thought, "Hey, this is easy! I don't need to be in any hurry, 'cause
I can start again tomorrow and lose the rest in a couple months! Give
me a slice of that pie!"

There are *all kinds* of ways for a human being to screw up. We're
pretty innovative that way. But when we screw up, that doesn't
invalidate the successes that went before.



--
Aaron -- 285/235/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz

"Scared money always loses."

On May 8, 12:34 am, "FOB" wrote:
A 13 kg (30 pounds) loss is not in the range of weight loss that causes
flaps of skin or requires surgery, it takes a whole lot more weight than
that. Stretch marks happen not when you are losing but when you are
gaining. Also, how old is the OP, in her pictures she looks quite young,
that makes a big difference in skin resiliency.

Roger Zoul wrote:
| XiaoZhen wrote:

||| Just basing on my personal experience and what I know and seen,
||| losing weight slowly have its benefits.
|||
||| I lost 13 kgs over a 1 and 1/2 year period. That's slow, by a lot
||| of people's standard. but I do not have loose flaps of skin or
||| stretch marks.
||| There is no need to go for plastic surgery.
|
| How do you know this is the result of losing weight slowly? It could
| be that you didn't have much to lose and you have fairly elastic
| skin....

Yes I know 13 kgs weight loss is not a lot. Most slightly overweight
people need to lose around that amount and find it difficult.
Furthermore, I am not as young as I look. ( Age amongst the text in
blog.) Anyway I am at that age which is most difficult for women to
lose weight quickly.

On May 8, 8:23 am, Aaron Baugher wrote:
Absolutely, and that's why it depends on the person, so you can't say
X pounds/week is too fast. Personally, I think the fact that I lost
20 pounds in my first month way back when I first started LC (while
eating about 3000 calories/day) made me complacent. I didn't gain it
back, but I got lazy and stopped losing, because on some level I
thought, "Hey, this is easy! I don't need to be in any hurry, 'cause
I can start again tomorrow and lose the rest in a couple months! Give
me a slice of that pie!


Sometimes, I feel the same way. I turn to dark chocolates instead.

On Apr 23, 11:57 am, Doug Freyburger wrote:

2) Compared to their starting expectations it often seems like
every dieter in history has lost slowly. Figure out an objective
way to judge what is fast and what is slow in loss (4 per month
ends up the roll-over point the longer you try to gather data)
but you still see new folks losing several times that amount
complaining that they are losing slowly. In the end this means
the problem is consistently about the expectations not about
the actual results.

I think this is a MAJOR point. People think they're losing slowly
when they're not. We see that all the time here, posts from folks
saying, "I've been on induction two weeks and have only lost 10 lbs!
Why isn't it working?"

When you start thinking of it over the long haul, you get ideas like
Roger put forth... losing a lb a week is 50 lbs/year, 100 lbs in 2
years, etc. The thing is, when you are really thinking about it over
the long-term, if you REALLY plan to low-carb for life, it becomes
reasonable to think about where you'll be a year or two from now.

Whereas when you want to think about where you'll be in a month,
that's short-term thinking. It may well be the "diet" mentality if it
consists primarily of short-term thinking.

I think those of us with medical issues have it easier in a weird
way. Barbara's post summed it up for me as a diabetic. I *have* to
low-carb for life, else there won't be much life. Fast or slow weight
loss isn't relevant in the context of doing it forever.