mtbc | Weight loss progress (Reply)

In September 2014 I weighed over 230lb when I started to swim and fast. After a year of that I weighed under 210lb but it seemed to be plateauing there. At the end of last February I still weighed 205lb so I started to also restrict my calories to their present level of 12,500 per week. For many of the weeks that I was actually on my diet (rather than some kind of vacation or trip intervening) I lost over 1½lb per week and now weigh under 170lb. However, in recent weeks I am down to losing ¾lb per week. That is still a good rate and perhaps simply reflects that the less fat mass I have, the less easily more is lost. I have also lost over six inches around my waist which is reassuring regarding the threat of visceral fat stressing my organs.

In August 2011 The Lancet published a series on obesity that included Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweight from the National Institutes of Health: to paraphrase a little,

Every change of energy intake of 10 kcal per day will lead to an eventual bodyweight change of about 1 pound with half of the weight change being achieved in about 1 year and 95% of the weight change in about 3 years.

The above confirms that for constant calorie intake one should expect diminishing weight loss over time. Further, the numbers suggest that, given that I have probably done little over six months' proper dieting, mixed with vacations and similar, I will be able to increase my calorie intake some way without starting to gain weight.

I try to weigh myself approximately monthly: I think that allows sufficient monitoring of progress without the data being dwarfed by irrelevant noise.