Shouldn't I be Losing Something by Now?

Hi all

I'm totally frustrated. I have been following things faithfully since June 10 and I realize that it is only like 2 weeks but Should I not have dropped a pound by now?

My stats say I can eat up to 1703 and if I want to lose faster they will allow 1454.

Here are my calories according to the days:

June 10-1553

June 11-1658

June 12- 993

June 13- 1040

June 14- 1227

June 15-1180

June 16-1147

June 17-1405

June 18-1447

Do you think it's perhaps because I don't exercise? I have a bad disc S5-l1 and bone on bone arthritis in both knees.....I am also drinking 3-4 500 ml bottles of water per day.....Any ideas are welcome :)

Thanks

Sharron

Well five out of those days you listed are pretty low in calories.  You shouldn't eat 1200 or less.  I'm guessing you should be eating arounf 1600 but I can't really say that bc I don't know your stats.  You're calories should definitely be over 1200 and you should have some kind of deficit from what you eat to what you burn.  Also, Are you counting EVERYTHING? When I first started I wasn't counting vegetable oil bc I only used it for cooking but I used hundreds of calories at a time in it and it really made a difference. 

Hello

Yes, I count everything, down to the last pat of butter on the bread. I am 5'7 and presently weigh 310 lbs.

Do you think that by upping my daily intake to 1600 would give better results?

I am thinking that because I am so sedentary that I have a totally screwed up system :(  When I say I don't get exercise I mean I really don't get any exercise. I even have to have a housekeeper come in to help me clean my floors etc. I can do dishes if I sit on a chair and spend most of my time at the computer or in bed.

Because of medications I sleep like 10-11 hours per night. I am thinking I am not burning enough and perhaps I need less calories. I dunno :(

Sharron

Sharron,

2 things I have learned.

You should not eat under 1200 calories a day as your system will go into shock and starvation mode and you will not lose. Actually for you I would not go under 1400 calories a day and 1600 would be better.

The other thing is that we only lose weight if what we eat is less that what we burn !

Sounds simple but there is math I have learned on this site.

You must burn 3500 more calories than you eat a week to burn 1 pound a week. If you beak that down per day that is 500 more calories that you eat each day.

So if you eat 1400 calories a day then the calories burnt meter on CC has to be over 1900 every day.

Is there any way you can get to a pool? You can burn a ton of calories just walking through water.

Fennela

Hi there

According to CC for my height 5'7 and weight 210 my burn count is 2450 and they say to eat between 1703 and lowest 1454. So I see I am below some days. But as I said I sleep alot with the meds and don't get out much.

My brother has a pool, but up here in the cold north Canada it still is too cold to go swimming. I did a trial at our local polydium but the benches to sit and change are much to low for my back and knees.

I will swim more once the pool temp rises at my brothers but that may be a few weeks yet. I had considered buying him a heater for the pool, but 1) I'm not exactly rich and 2) His electric bill would sky rocket and I don't think he would appreciate that.

My so called boyfriend has a pool that needs fixing but that is out because he has rented out his house to friends of his and so he thinks he can live here for nothing! (Another long story) I am praying for someone to come into my life who is a good Christian man who will love me and help me to cope with life.

So I will try and keep it around 1400 cal per day and see if this helps.

Thanks

Sharron

Hello there!

I feel we relate a bit.
When I was quite young, 12 years old, I was diagnosed with patella tendinitis and patella femoral syndrome. These are joint problems in my knees and then hip/thigh area (femoral). What happened was my knee cap slid off the side and became very painful due to the cartilage scraping off on the bone. Same thing was sort of happening with my hips. All my joints were aching like someone triple my age!

When I was 13 I was showing strange signs of other things, and thanks to genes, was told that I was showing very very early signs of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Shortly after, was told that I had asthma.

I went from 98 pounds at 12 years old to 183 at my 8th grade graduation-a one year span. Why? Because I was told that I couldn't run or walk or do many things thanks to all these new problems.

I held onto all that weight for the past 7 years. Last year, on my 20th birthday, I started doing yoga. Mind you, I was not used to exercising at all. I never wanted to break a sweat. I basically wanted to be lazy. Yoga seemed perfect! I could sit on a floor in my own room and do these stretches. I didn't have to pay to go to a gym, I could do it in my own house and privacy, and it gave me this new way of looking at things because I was spending quiet time with myself. Within three days I saw difference in the definition all over my body. I'm not kidding you!

After 10 months of doing basic sit on the floor and stretch yoga, I was 30 pounds lighter. Just from stretching! Then I decided to step it up a bit to some Power Yoga via YouTube, and I dropped 15 pounds that month!

It might sound ridiculous, but in all honesty it's that easy. I would highly recommend you try yoga. You don't need to take a class or anything. I started with Iyengar Yoga. BKS Iyengar designed books about Yoga that show you pose by pose on each page with a very detailed description. He describes what each muscle in your body should be doing for one pose, which in my opinion is unlike many types of yoga. Each pose is stretching your FULL body in a different way every time. I think that's why the full body transformation came so far from such simple stretches.

I can now go jogging and do all these things I couldn't do before. The simple fact is that you can use your knees more and more the less and less weight is resting on top of them. It's an excellent feeling to have my knees back!

I have no doubt that the same can happen for you. I think it's a matter of finding the secrets and hearing the true stories about other people in similar situations. Whatever you do, you have to start easy and be patient. I am one of those I WANT INSTANT RESULTS! sort of people. I tried everything I thought would work, and yoga was the last thing I tried and the only thing that worked for me. I didn't even change my diet when I first started doing it.  To this day I'm still doing it, and STILL losing weight, though yoga did encourage me to change my diet (strangely). I'm now 137, and some of that is even muscle now! Yoga is a full body transformer. Not only that, it's more beneficial to your brain (believe it or not!) than for your body. It's a win win situation.  I do hope you try it out. If you start you won't need anyone to wish you good luck. It's that kind of a blessing.

Namaste!

Thanks for the encouragement Grassdress. I did yoga years ago when I was like 16 and enjoyed it very much then. Life got complicated around then and I never found the time to take it up again. Although I cannot get on the floor I am sure there are some stretches I can do sitting on the bed. I will definitely check it out again as it has been such a long time.

Thanks again

Sharron

I find it kind of funny that yoga is often a part of people's life for a bit, a happily remembered part, and then disappears only to wait around to reappear!

May I ask, since you say you are sitting on a bed, are you able to extend your legs out fully? And about the disc, is it upper or lower back?

I would gladly recommend some positions to you that I think may be beneficial if you would like?

Hi there

I can't fully extend the legs flat because of the pressure on the knees. Lower back S5 L1 Disc is degenerated. My shoulders are starting to get arthritis also which is a bummer because I love to play music but that is even getting difficult. Guess it's all apart of growing older. I'm 53 already...it came very quickly.

Thanks again

Sharron

Sharon,

I don't have anything of wisdom to add.  Just heartfelt good wishes to you.  I know there is more freedom, youth, and health available to you.  I've only dropped 15 pounds so far of the 50 I need to lose, but it's like unlocking a cage bit by bit and coming out younger, healthier, saner.  I've totally screwed my metabolism up through the years so weight loss for me has been very slow, like 3 pounds a month or less, but I have persevered because the changes I'm making in my life are good ones that I want to keep, not just for weight loss. 

Any movement you can manage at all will make a HUGE difference.  Stick with your yoga advisor there.  Sounds like a great place to start.  Don't give up on completely transforming your life, one choice at a time.  A lot of aches and pains I wanted to blame on my age have started to disappear with weight loss.  Don't give up, no matter what.  Don't give up.

Is there a public pool you could use? Swimming and aqua-jogging or walking are great low impact exercises. Cycling and the eliptical are too, but I can appreciate that these may be difficult for you with your back pain.

I have arthritis in my hips, knees and wrists, and I have chronic upper back and neck pain due to an accident a few years ago. I find that the right kinds of exercise actually minimise the pain, not create it.

Many people find that being overweight is actually part of the problem - it puts so much more stress on your joints. So you may find that your mobility and ability to exercise increases as you lose weight.

I second what others have said about sticking to the 1400-1600 a day diet plan. Keep that water intake up too.

You might like to check out these links - maybe they have some useful information.

http://arthritis.about.com/od/exercise/Exerci se_and_Arthritis_Exercises_for_Arthritis_and_ Fibromyalgia.htm

http://www.thirdage.com/arthritis/exercise-fo r-arthritis-sufferers

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/06/01/t ai.chi.improves.pain.arthritis.sufferers

http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/g reat-exercises-for-arthritis-sufferers-376979 .html

Good luck!

Hi again!

There are energy channels that run through the body up each side, left and right.
They often go from your pinky finger down underneath your arm to your armpit, down the side of the body to the lower back, then down the back of the butt to the inner thigh, then to behind the knee and down the back of the calf, to the middle of the foot, and usually out the pinky toe. I would encourage you to follow these points on your body and learn how to pay close attention to stretching or massaging each one and the muscles that lie underneath each of those parts of the body.

What happens when the body gets sick in an area is that there is a lack of energy being sent there, whether it is through circulation problems, sitting in one spot for too long, not sitting up straight, sleeping wrong, or whatever. The smallest thing can create an energy blockage. Once an area remains blocked  or in pain for a certain amount of time, the areas around it become affected.

The spine is an awful place to have a problem, and I am very sorry to hear about that. However, I would REALLY encourage you to understand these energy channels. Your lower back controls many things about your body. This is logic, but let me just say this in case you don't fully understand. I have an Eastern medicine approach 

What kind of an energy blockage can become of a lower back problem? Well first of all, your mobility. Your lower back affects your backside and control of your legs, all the way down to your feet. Your lower back is also near your stomach, affecting your organs. Your organs affect your hormones, which affect your brain directly. Your foods may process differently than they did before. You may develop chemical imbalances that often times have you in moods that you never used to see as a part of yourself. The health of your organs and brain activity in turn affect your heart.

Because something as sudden as an injury often consumes your thoughts, we don't focus on all the things that this injury will create for us. We don't prepare, because we aren't sure what to prepare for. I think the most important thing here is that a lower back injury affects the brain, directly through the way your organs produce the chemicals going there. From experience, I lost motivation to seriously better myself because I felt that I honestly just COULDN'T. The doctors said because of my knees and hips that I shouldn't walk or run. And if I can't do those, how can I lose weight? But I was only 13 and I wasn't ready to be that way for the rest of my life if I could help it.

You are 53, but don't just be prepared for things to continue the way they are. You have still MUCH MUCH life ahead of you. The title of this "Shouldn't I be losing weight by now" means that you are trying. You are trying what you think has worked for other people, and it's not doing what you hoped for. I know this feeling. That is because of our spirit. Our spirit is far developed, healthy and happy, but physically we don't feel we are reflecting the brilliance we feel we hold within, spiritually. This is honestly a blessing. It means our bodies don't take crap for an answer. It means we have to try the most bizarre options in order to achieve success, and that is because we are bizarre people. A doctor can't hand everyone the same medicine and make everyone better, just as the same techniques for weight loss won't work on everyone the same. I spent years of my teens throwing my food up if I ate any food at all, and believe it or not, I got fatter. We are those special people.

Yoga is not mysticism or some secret hocus pocus, yoga is an ancient self healing. It allows you to get to know your body by learning what muscles are where and how to focus on each muscle one at a time, send breath to the area, which in turn detoxifies your body and those muscles. It elongates each muscle to be able to use that muscle and part of your body to it's full potential. Yoga is more well known for elongating the spine, bringing the spine back to alignment to be used again. The ancient yogis knew that the spine is the center, the core of your being. Along the spine are your organs, which control your brain. They knew this! Not only that, but your heart! And at the top is your head. All the value is within the spine.

I recommended yoga because all this information lies behind the single act. Often without realizing, we can become disillusioned by an injury, and I think yoga is the simplest and most effective, all in the same. The easiest thing to do, and by far the most affective-for your body, your bones, your spine, your tendons, heart, and brain.

I asked about your legs because the tendons and muscles behind your legs pinch up all the way from  your feet to your low back if the energy channel is blocked. Someone touched my knee once and I started crying, and that's when they told me I needed to take stretching more seriously. Start by simple touching your body, poking it and feeling the muscles behind your legs. Then hold your arms out straight, making yourself into a T, and put your hands up as if you were holding traffic up from both sides. You will feel all the way from your fingers to your armpits the flow of energy I am talking about. I spend hours sometimes poking myself all over. There is a form of massage where the person giving the massage pokes and presses you all over, and it's called Resistance Therapy or something like that. It was done to me once. It increases circulation to every area touched or pokes. It makes the body thing something is wrong with that area and sends endorphins to the area. So in reality, you haven't acquired a new injury, and now energy is rushing throughout your whole body making you feel better and better and better.

Boy I can talk, hm?

I hope some of this helps. I am a firm believer that our body never shuts down.

BKS Iyengar began doing yoga at a very late age after a car accident, and now you can find pictures of him in his eighties looking like he's 40 years old with bright shiny wrinkle free skin in the most outstandingly flexible poses.

Be inspired! I have faith in all! Your spirit is shining through your eyes in your photo. I know you're special and I know you know it, too.

http://www.yogacolumn.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2008/10/iyengar_bks.jpg

A female that is 5' 7 and 310 pounds will lose about 1 pound a week if eating 2050 so don't worry about going over on your calories, that might be what it is is you eatting too little.  A lot of us use Phord.com/cc to caluclate how much we shoudl eat/burn to lose weight. 

The websites are great. Thanks so much. I will definitely try to do some of these exercises. I did go swimming today...chilly 68 degree water but I was desperate to get some exercise going.

The yoga also sounds like a good idea. I did order a DVD and it finally came in. It is actually Tai Chi in a chair but it will be a start to get the muscles stretching a little. As I stretch more I will also incorporate some  yoga stretches in there.

I will try and not go below the 1550 and keep to the higher end so I don't starve my body and with the incorporated exercise, even though it is gentle hopefully I will start to see some results. Either way, I am determined to get healthier whether the weight comes off as quickly as I like or not. I will continue to tweak at it until I get results.

You have all been so generous with your time and suggestions and I truly do appreciate it all. You are wonderful people. May the Lord bless you all.

Thanks again

Sharron

Brr! Wow, you sure were determined, well done! Sharron I have huge respect for you, trying to become healthy in the face of such obstacles. Taking things slowly, you can overcome them with time, effort, patience, determination and humour. Keep at it! :)

PS grassdress - I agree that Eastern Medicine approaches are very beneficial. I love how they address the problem from the causes within the body, rather than simply medicating the immediate symptoms.

Sharron, I'm so pleased that you went swimming and that you are stretching.  I hope you will make it a Daily Habit, just like brushing your teeth.  Also, glucosamine is a lifesaver for your joints.  Start taking the recommended daily dosage if you don't already.  It will take a couple of months to notice a real difference, but it works!

Almost 20 years ago, when I injured my right knee and had arthoscopic surgery, the orthopedist told me that my knees were wearing out.  I should not go up and down steps.  I should not do any type of exercise to stress them.  Then, about three years ago I started having back problems.  My lower back would go into spasms at the slightest provocation.  I can honestly say that exercise is what overcame both of these problems.   I started to define myself by what I could do rather than by what was wrong with me.  I started walking, then hiking, then doing exercises to build up the muscles around my knees and in my back, and then I started exercising my whole body.  I walk up and down stairs for exercise now, and I climb mountains every weekend.  My knees are not great, and I can't subject them to high impact without consequences, but they can do simply amazing things as long as I am careful.. They carry me for many miles up and down hills.  My back pain is gone.  Doctors are not always right. If I had listened to them, I would probably weigh at least 50 pounds more.

Sometimes we just have to put up with some discomfort to get where we want to go.  I'm not saying you should try to tolerate excruciating pain, but discomfort is okay.  I experience varying degrees of discomfort every day when I exercise and push myself to get stronger.  It makes me grit my teeth and force myself to continue, but I willingly put up with it. Tell yourself that you can tolerate the discomfort of a stretch or a movement for a certain number of seconds, like 10 or 15.  Every day you will have less discomfort and be able to do it for a longer time.

No, it is not easy.  But it is possible.  You can do it.  Try new things.  Figure out a way to get on the floor and then pull yourself back up without your boyfriend's help.  I know you can find a way!  Maybe you can use the side of your bed for support. 

Good luck and may you find your inner strength.

Hi moonduster

Thanks for the tips. I did try Glucosamine and it wasn't working so I went to Glucosamine with Chondrotin but it still didn't do me any good. I suppose it works for some and not for others. I cannot take any type of pain killers because of problems with my stomach so I have been learning to tough it out as best as I can.  If I listened to the doctors I would be in a wheelchair but I am too stubborn for that. I try and walk as much as I can. I did buy one of those walkers on wheels with the seat on them. I just need to get the repair shop to get the breaks done on them and then I am going to try walking around the block for starters.

I live on the second floor in my apartment building. It was a mistake, I was supposed to get ground floor by the doctors orders but they gave me this by mistake. I have 17 steps I must walk up and down each day to get out and I always make it a point to get out every day, even if it is just to go for a drive. Now I can go swimming now that the better weather is here in Montreal. I am hoping that this (swimming) will help to firm the muscles a little to make things a little more easier. But I do push  myself even though the pain is a constant companion. I don't want to end up sitting at home doing nothing and lose any muscle I have. I am hoping with walking once I get the walker fixed and swimming plus using this DVD I got through Ebay will help me to start exercising slowly but progressively more each week.

I was very discouraged when they gave me pills for my nervous breakdown and I gained 60 lbs.  I was heavy enough already and it seemed hopeless to try anything. But I had a strep infection a few weeks ago and lost 6 lbs. So I proved to myself that obviously weight will come off if I try hard enough. That is why I started with Weight Watchers (I had been there before and lost 40 lbs. bringing to 185 then) I knew I could probably do it with help and finding this site is a God send.

Thanks so much for your support. Hopefully one day soon I will be able to go for hikes and enjoy the beauty of nature once again.

Sharron