travbikeman

I too lost this kind of weight in the begining of my lifestyle change in Feb of 2014. It was easy to do once I started eating healthier. Being I was at 537 pounds, I didn't even have to exercise too much to see this kind of loss.

Keep up the great work!

JakiChan

Not with medical monitoring and intervention, as mentioned.

squirtdad

ok a) congrats b) how big was that bag of chips?

Nikon shooter

Youve got less to travel than when you started. Good work.

baron von trail 

It depends. If you weighed 200lbs and lost 40 in two months, it would be something to worry about. If you weighed twice that, then not so much.

KBentley57

Disclaimer: I haven't read the whole thread, so it may have already mentioned. I started at about 230 lbs, and am at about 160 now. When I was serious about weighing food, weighing myself every morning, ect.. I plotted my weight loss and found that over a 6 month or so span, my weight followed an exponential decay with an R^2 > 0.90. What this means is that i lost weight very quickly in the beginning, and slowly the weight loss was lesser each month. I was starting to get discouraged until I figured out what was going on. Moral of the story is weight comes off in large chunks with not so much effort, but only in the beginning. It's still easy to lose, but you must stay increasingly focused as the months go on.

scrming

I started my journey last September 4th... my weight loss graph basically reflects that.. it's definitely not linear! and while the overall trend shows a nice downward trend, it is also filled with some pretty big spikes where my weight jumped up like 10 pounds in a week and of course there are also the dreaded plateaus! I had a plateau of about 8 weeks back in the spring... OMG... that was tough, but I knew I just had to stick with the plan!

Mithrandir

This makes sense. As our weight lowers, our BMR does as well. And we use less energy on the bike too, since we're accelerating less mass.

What was the exponential factor? Like, given: e[SUP]cx[/SUP], what is c? Curious to know what I can expect as the dropoff.


Right now, I've got a 0.95 R[SUP]2[/SUP] using a linear regression with a slope of -0.6693 per day (ie: 20.079 pounds per 30 days) over the last 60 days. So Linear seems to be accurate for the time being, but I'm definitely expecting it to drop lower as my body has a harder time trying to find fat to burn.

scrming

Not true for everyone.... yes, I'm accelerating less mass, but I'm now accelerating faster... that whole F=M x A thingy... and that whole, it doesn't get easier, you just get faster mantra...

Mithrandir

Well there may be more than just Newtonian physics at play. Lower weight = less stress on the body as well, less energy spent cooling you down, pumping blood, etc. Examining the power output of the racers in my club, they easily burn half the calories I do, in spite of going twice as fast. No matter what, my calorie burn is going to decrease as I get more efficient.

EastCoastDHer

BINGO! ....He's correct. Do some research. 20 lbs a month whether you feel good or not IS NOT HEALTHY. You are making more work for your body because it has to make such huge adjustments. It's safer to lose less and live longer. I believe you stated you were not eating carbs, why? You need some healthy carbs, don't be afraid. Without proper nutrients your body will end up feeding off of the muscle it's trying to build. This is not only unhealthy but why put all this work into a better you only to counteract your hard efforts?
I urge you to do some more research and talk to a specialist about your diet needs.

When I started farming I lost 4 pant sizes in 6 months. Eventually I spoke to my naturopath and got some blood work done. I've increased my calorie intake and added a Pre bedtime snack of chocolate and nuts (prescribed. Seriously.)

Mithrandir

It's not no carbs, but it's no sugar and low carbs. Most of my carbs now come from vegetables, and maybe about 150 calories of pasta at night. I do have a cheat day on Fridays where I'll have some fries and a burger sometimes, maybe a battered fish fry.

It seems to be working. I'll ride this wave until I can't anymore, I guess.

scrming

Agree to a point... if you are morbidly obese it can be very easy to lose 20+ pounds a month to start with. But the 20+ pounds a month cannot be sustained... For example I'm 5' 10" and started out at 325 pounds. I lost 56 pounds in the first two months simply but cutting out the junk food (bags of chops from the vending machine at work), not eating fast food for breakfast and lunch and portion control at home. I started out just walking around the block.. so I was losing weight fast!

BUT, if I look at my weight loss over these last 10.5 months and average it out... it turns out to be 2.5 pounds a week...

Personally, I have not cut out any food group other than snack foods and fast food... I still enjoy my pasta and pizza... I just eat a lot more reasonably sized portions... i have a slice a pizza, not A pizza!

bbbean 

Weighing daily will give you the best handle on what's working and what isn't - as long as you understand daily weights are just data points, and are subject to a huge number of influences. You're looking for trends over weeks, not "I ate salad yesterday and weighed 2 lbs less today." Consistent daily weigh ins (first thing in the morning) combined with logging (all) your food and exercise will spell out exactly what's going on.

At least it did for me. 160 lbs down, goal weight maintained for 2 years now. YMMV.

BB

bbbean 

My experience mirrors yours almost to a T. Started at 325, lots LOTS of weight the first few months, but in the long run averaged around 1.5 lbs/week (160 lbs, 2 years).

KBentley57

You know, I wish I still had my data. I was using myfitnesspal to log it all, and it turns out you can only keep data so long. I've seemingly lost my original spreadsheet, so I can't remember what the exponential factor was. Like you said, it was slight, and appeared to be linear at first, and 2/3 of a pound/day in the first time span sounds about right. Give it a little while for some more weight to come off, and I think you'll see the tail of the exponential start to develop.

lane_33

I agree that it's very exponential - the weight drops off more quickly at first and then slows down. I have a spread sheet so I can see it and graph it etc. I'm admittedly an Excel nerd so I built a food and weight tracker in Excel..
I have lost about 60 lbs so far, have another 60 or so to go (I'm only 5'8" so my goal is probably around 120 lbs). It freaks me out to think that I've lost 2x the weight of my bike! (Most of it was before I even got a bike, but still)
I have no idea if 20 lbs per week is healthy, even when I wasn't eating anything except coffee (long story) and walking 3 miles a day I still lost only about 1-1.5 lbs per week. But I started at about 245.

baron von trail 

The first 10% come off easy. The second 10% takes twice as long and requires extra effort: more attention to diet and exercise. The last 10% is a real challenge. In fact, I suggest not even worrying about losing that as much as we should focus on not gaining any of what was lost back.

lane_33

I'm actually finding it easier as time goes on, I don't even really think about it any more except for weighing myself every 1-2 weeks. In fact I spent about 10 years obsessed with diet and exercise, measuring every calorie, and I didn't lose an ounce. It was only when I kind of stopped caring that I lost weight. To each their own, though. I have virtually no appetite now so I don't really worry about gaining weight back either.

Artgeek

Great job, lots of hard work!!

I agree with JakiChan about the gall stone issue, totally speaking from experience. I dropped 40+ pounds in 6 weeks (at a starting weight of 430) and had horrible issues with gall stones stuck in ducts requiring 2 endoscope procedures and an episode of pancreatitis.

Follow up with your doc. Better safe than sorry, especially if you have concern.

JakiChan

I wish I knew why more doctors don't know about/prescribe Actigall to people dropping a bunch of weight...