And the Results are in

It’s been a week since I started my weight loss journey. Thus, it’s time to step on that terrifying bathroom scale. I decided to weigh myself in this morning and, shockingly, I weighed 189 lbs! My starting weight was 192 lbs which means that I lost 3 lbs this week. This translates into a loss of 1.6% of my body weight. Notice that this is a tiny bit above the expected loss of 1 to 1.5% of my body weight per week. This is because when we start controlling calories and eating healthy and balanced, we lose “water” weight as well as fat weight. Consequently, this week’s 3-pound weight loss does not entirely equate to a fat loss of 3 lbs. Most of it was fat loss but keep in mind that there will always be some “water” loss at the beginning of any weight loss program. So please don’t be disappointed if a few weeks into your weight loss you start to lose less weight. If you still lose between 1 and 1.5% of your body weight, you’re on the right track. Next week, I’ll try to follow my own advice and try to not be disappointed if I lose less than 3 lbs.

Speaking of results, I found this interesting survey about the success rate of several diet programs. To give you a bit of background, this survey was published a few years back but a similar survey today would produce similar results. Also, here’s the brief explanation accompanying the survey to put things into context:

“The [survey] is based on 2,000 responses to our 2001 Annual Questionnaire about experiences with weight-loss programs between January 1998 and April 2001. We included all respondents regardless of BMI. The success rate is the proportion of people who weighted at least 10% less than their starting weight six months after finishing the entire program. The currently accepted definition of weight-loss success is losing at least 10% of one’s top weight and keeping it off for a year. Some readers reported on more than one method.” – Time, Sept 2, 2002 (Time (3-month))

Without further ado, here’s the survey. The success rates are the respective percentages in brackets.

1. Program at local hospital or university (37%)
2. Weight Watchers (29%)
3. Jenny Craig (26%)
4. Program at church/community centre (25%)
5. Other chain-diet programs (22%)
6. Program at health/fitness club (17%)
      Average success rate = 26%

Let's Talk Calories

Even though I am not following any particular diet, I do watch my caloric intake – at least most of the time. Since most of you are also trying to lose weight, I thought it might be a good idea to share with all of you how you can figure out how many calories you need to have daily in order to lose weight. So let’s start with the very basic idea that the amount of calories that you spend has to be greater than the amount of calories that go into your body when losing weight. If you have extra weight, it is because we had too many calories that did not get spent so our body stored this excess of calories as fat. In order to lose the weight, we need to empty this storage of calories (a.k.a. fat). A way to do is by eating fewer calories so that our body will be forced to take some calories from our own storage so that we have enough energy for all body functions. Another way is by working out to burn some calories. The key idea here is to spend those stored calories.

Now, the question here is: how many calories should I be eating so that I lose weight? To answer this question you first need to know how much weight you want to be losing per week. As I mentioned before, I’m trying to lose about 1-1.5% of my body weight every week. Let’s say 1% to keep it simple. This means that I want to lose about 1.92 lbs per week since I weigh 192lbs. Now, a key piece of information here is that you need to spend 3500 calories to burn one pound of body fat. Thus, I would need to be spending 6720 calories (1.92 × 3500) from my body storage per week to lose that much weight.

We now know how many calories we should be spending, but how many are we allow to eat then? To answer this question, let’s first calculate how many calories need to come from our fat storage every day to achieve our weekly weight loss goal. If I need to spend 6720 calories weekly, then that would equate to a 960-calorie daily deficit. Now, let’s look at the estimated energy requirements (EER) tables:

Using the tables, find your age and match it to your level of activity to find out how many calories you should be having per day. Once you have this number, subtract the calories that you need to spend on a daily basis. In my case, I would need 1900 calories per day according to the table so that means that I should be having 940 (1900 - 960 = 940) calories per day in order to achieve my weekly weight loss goal. However, adults and teens should never have less than 1200 calories per day. Thus, I need to make a bit of an adjustment to my daily caloric intake. I will have my 1200 calories per day but I need to burn the rest by working out. In other words, I need to burn 260 (1200 - 940 = 260) calories at the gym every day. This way, I would use up from my storage all the 960 calories needed to lose 1.92 lbs per week, in my case. The point here is that you need to get rid of all the daily calories you calculated above either through diet or by working out. A combination of both is usually the best idea.

If you subtracted the number of calories that you need to spend daily from your estimated energy requirement and it was greater than 1200 or 1200 on the dot, stick to that. However, make sure that you re-visit your calculations for your caloric daily intake on a regular basis because all these numbers will keep changing as your weight changes.

Time to Set Some Goals

As I mentioned before, I need to lose 72lbs. I was thinking that setting the personal goal of losing all this weight by the end the year was probably a good idea. After all, I don't want to make the same New Year's resolution next year. However, I wanted to know if this was a reasonable goal. So, I went through some of my class notes looking for anything related to weight loss and came accross a few recommendations:

1. Set REALISTIC goals. In other words, don't try to lose 72lbs in a month. It just won't happen and you'll just feel dissapointed and frustrated.

2. Try to lose no more than 20% of your body weight within a year. I don't know about all of you out there, but sounds quite achievable. That would mean I should be trying to lose about 38.4 lbs in a whole year. The main idea of setting such an achievable goal is that it is, well, achievable. This type of goal is reccomended for people who have been yo-yo dieting for a long time like myself. The reason being that yo-yo dieting is a cycle. You diet to the extreme (crash dieting) as an attempt to achieve unrealistic goals. Then, you obviuosly don't achieve such unrealist goals and, as a result, feel like a failure so you eat because dieting didn't work after all. This 10% weigh loss goal helps break the cycle. This means that you are very likely to lose 10% of your body weight in a year and probably even more. Thus, you feel like you successfully accomplished your goal and this feeling pushes you to keep going. Self-motivation is the key idea here.

3. Lose between 1-1.5% of your body weight per week. I think I like this one. That would mean that I should be losing between 1.9 and 2.9lbs per week. However, keep in mind that as you start weighing less, you should start losing less and less weight per week.

4. Keep the weight off for a year following weight loss. I don't think I'm going to make the goal of keeping the weight off before actually losing it but I wanted to post this recommendation for all you out there who have already lost the weight. In fact, keeping the weight off for a whole year decreases your chances of gaining it back by 50%. Yes, 50%!

Ok, so I think I will set recommendation 2 and 3 as goals for myself. How does that sound?

By the way, I am horribly sore from yesterday's and this morning's workout, but I guess it is a good kind of pain, right?