Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

4 months out into maintenance. I'm up a little over 1 pound above my maintenance ceiling, but this is all good. It is showing that the feedback system is working. I've been in this spot a few times before on maintenance and sank back down to my maintenance floor.

My bad old habits have creeped back in a bit, but the daily feedback has kept them from getting out of control and undoing my good results and efforts as happened in the past.


Starting Weight: 2007 January 18th: 223.8 lbs
Goal Weight: 178 lbs


Goal: Maintain this weight loss for 1 year


2008 January 19th: 177.89 lbs
2008 February 19th: 176.09 lbs
2008 March 19th: 176.82 lbs
2008 April 19th 175.63 lbs
2008 May 19th 179.22 lbs

Cool! Congrats! How much did you lose in total?

48 lbs over the course of 1 year.

Wow.That is awesome.

I have helped my daughter's teacher lose about 25 pounds since Jan 1st.

What do you feel a doable weight loss goal would be for someone in a years time. Besides yourself, what have you seen on average and what have you seen when people get gung ho and go 100%.

The more diet conseling I do I see that people need numbers to shoot for when they have a whole lot of weight to lose. I could counsel them until I'm blue in the face about plateaus, muscle weighs more than fat, etc. etc... they want to see that number on the scale go down as quickly as possible.

I've also seen that people that are the most impatient with their weight loss goals and struggle the most also have the most unrealistic goals. Even though she's happy and I've shown her she's lost 5 lbs a month she still feels like its going to take forever. What do you feel is possible?

I can only tell you what worked for me and why it worked for me.

Everybody's psychology is different and that is what you are battling with your clients. Once psychology is account for it is just a matter of using more energy than you take in and sticking with that

I chose to try to lose about 1 pound a week because:

- I've read for years that people who choose to lose no more than 1 - 2 pounds a week keep the weight off longer, lose less muscle, and look tighter when they get to their goal. Fewer problems with loose skin if you go slow.

- Losing faster would have meant less food and would have been more uncomfortable. By being comfortable I could forget about the diet for most of my day. That made the time pass fast.

Following the Hackers Diet helped me pbecause everyday I could see the results of my habits(http://beforewisdom.com/blog/?p=255). I knew that the "little indiscretion" would show up the next morning on the scale. I also knew if I stuck to the plan that I would see results the next day on my trend line. That kept me feeling like small efforts were futile and kept me motivated.

I also found this article to a huge benefit to me psychologically because I now knew what to make of daily scale readings. This article kept me from getting psyched out like I did with earlier attempts at calorie counting:

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/?p=262

thanks!

I am always looking for different little things to tell them or give them when they get discouraged about that number, so I love what you said about the loose skin part. I think that analogy will work with at least two of my clients who get frustrated when the number on the scale doesen't creep down fast enough for them.

Good article too. Nothing I didn't already know, but I do love how all the different reasons are summed up nicely in one article. I bookmarked it and may put it on my website. Thanks again!

If you google around you can find pictures of people with loose skin to add to the effect.