Managing Expectations around Weight Loss

I overheard a conversation today in Starbucks where a woman was exclaiming she’d lost 7 pounds in a week on her diet…but she was ordering a Mocha and a pumpkin scone.

When it comes to diet and weight loss, people don’t seem to want to discuss how it actually works. Yes, I know that saying “consume less calories than you burn” is kind of trite, and most people don’t want to think about it in that way, but understanding some of the “science” of it is very helpful to staying on the path.

Here’s something I don’t hear much about which I know scientifically to be a fact (you can look it up!).

1. When you are consuming less calories than you burn, your body will start to burn fat
2. When you are restricting calories/burning fat, you eliminate more fluid (water weight) from your system than when your calories consumed vs. calories burned is balanced.

It is the water weight that accounts for most of the 7 pounds showing up on scales during crash diets. If you consume 500 calories less than you burn every day for a week, the scale may show seven pounds difference. While your overall mass has indeed changed by seven pounds in this instance, you’ve actually only shed a pound of fat. It’s a good way to shed a pound of fat though and if you do the exact same thing for 20 weeks, you will lose 20 real pounds of fat.

It’s a healthy way to go about it - simply by some combination of exercise and reducing intake that leads to a total net calories burned of 500 more than you consumed.

But, if you stabilize to consume as many calories as you burn (as I expect the woman in Starbucks was doing by ordering a mocha and a scone) you will quickly gain six of these pounds back as you never “really” lost them to begin with.

I believe understanding all of this and preparing for it is important. People see they “gained 6 pounds” when they weren’t really taking in more calories than they were burning, and get frustrated and sometimes give up. Understanding how it all works can help you prepare for the longer-term as well as help with managing how you feel about the results you see on the scale.

By the way, I'm not against the every now and then Mocha and Scone combo. I just used to order them every day (venti, with whipped cream!). Those days are gone and I lost my weight (~80 pounds) and have kept it off for going on 4 years. I try to lay off the mochas pretty much altogether, but I have had the pumpkin scone twice in the last month or so -- it did not disappoint.

Fatblogging after the fact

from time to time (fortunately VERY infrequently) somebody will come across this picture on the net and send it to me. It's circa 2002:

Sadly, i went on to gain about another 20 pounds before i decided to get rid of the chub (and the hair), but it's stayed off for 3 years now...

How To Lose 80 Pounds and Keep it Off

Robert Seidman © June 7, 2007

Around this time in 2003, a little over 4 years ago I was tipping the scales at 250. By this time in 2004 I weighed about 170 (and still do). I get a lot of questions on “how did you do it?” The tactical part of this equation is the only easy part of the equation: I ate less and I exercised more. Or, if you asked my friend Bill G. how I did it he would say, “He walked TWELVE MILES A DAY FOR TWO YEARS!!”

More like 10 miles, but again, that’s tactical. The tactical part of the equation is the only easy part to explain. Here’s what’s not at all easy to quantify: how and why I made it so important to me.

THAT is the secret of how to lose 80 pounds and keep it off – make it really, really important to yourself, make it one of your highest, if not your highest priority. It has to mean something to you, it has to be important enough for you to deal with and confront. That’s the fraud of the diet sensation that is our nation. The books, plans, programs, all focus on the tactical. But if you don’t make changing how you live your life a high priority those plans aren’t sustainable.

I got swept up by various diets myself, and would often lose 20-50 pounds only to gain it back (and then some, sometimes). Why? My priorities and my reasons were all wrong.

When I was a fat man and had no success at losing weight did I want to be thinner? Of course I did! But I hadn't actually made a choice and a commitment to radically change the way I myself operated. Diets are great for losing weight, but what happens when you've lost the weight?

What seemed to happen with me, in those times where I really hadn't made that commitment was when I'd lose weight at first I'd receive a lot of positive feedback. But after you lose 25 pounds or whatever, people stop telling you how fabulous you are and that reinforcing feedback is gone.

I think for most people that’s the kiss of death. It can be circumvented, but only if you make it a personal choice that losing weight and keeping it off is important to you. Without actually making that choice, it’s hard to sustain any diet or major change to your lifestyle.

Make it matter. If you do, the tactical gets incredibly easy. Unfortunately packaging up the diets is way easier than packaging up the "making it matter". More people need to talk about that if we really want to heal our fat ass nation.