Starting Out

Hi Everyone,

I just found cc last month.  I punched in my stats and have been following the advice as far as what I should be consuming per day.  I was amazed to lose 15 pounds in the first 5 weeks - awesome!  But now, I've been sitting still for the last 3 weeks.  I've seen people talk about how your body needs to adjust to the new caloric intake and excercise . . . I'm wondering, how long does that adjustment take?

I'm a 40 year old woman, 5'3" and started out at 210.  (195 now)  I've been walking around 5 miles per day and taking in around 1450 cals per day.  Do I need to adjust this?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Hi there - I believe that your weight loss may have slowed or stopped because you are not eating enough.  I am 5'3.5", and started at 208, and I never ate less than 1600, and actually for most of my weight loss have eaten more like 1800-2000.  It depends upon how much you are exercising, but if you are walking 5 miles a day, then you are getting more than 1 hour of exercise per day.  I would suggest increasing your calories to around 1700 to start.  Also, throughout my weight loss I have always had at least one meal per week where I ate whatever I wanted.  It helps keep me from cravings and binges and supposedly helps fend off plateaus.  I just recently had my first real plateau of about 3 weeks, which broke last week for a 3.5 pound weight loss in one week. I started eating a bit more and trying to change things around a bit and it seems to have worked. I have lost about 42 pounds, fyi.