I have hit a plataue

Question
Hi, I am a 36 year old mother and wife. I weigh 114 and I am 5'3. I have always been very active and eat basically what I want. We do avoid soda and fried foods eating them only on rare occassions. I start my workout with 20 min. on the eliptical then 40 min of lifting super setting each set with a set of abs then I finish my workout with 20 min. of walking uphill six days a week. I have never counted calories before but I am starting today. My goal is to eat 1200 a day to see if I will start to lose weight again. I only want to lose five pounds and maintain that. I am trying to insure that my bone density and muscle mass will continue to be high so that as I age I can continue to be strong and active. Do you think that I will reach my goal with my new calorie counting in place?

Answer
Jody,

It sounds like you are very fit and aware of how to exercise and eat so I won't go into that.

I would be very careful counting calories and trying to hit 1200. If you don't get enough calories your body actually becomes more efficient at storing fat. It goes into a kind of 'pseudo-starvation' mode and starts to drive calories to fat storage, especially if you don't get enough fat in your diet (poly- and mono-unsaturated). Exercising counters this by forcing your body to drive calories to muscle - still 1200 is not enough for your active lifestyle.

It is not unusual to gain a little bit of weight as we age, some even argue it is beneficial. I'm talking about a few pounds, which seems to be where you are at. Obviously gaining 10s of pounds around the gut is not good - but you don't seem to have this problem.

I can't, in good consciousness, advise you to cut your calories and lose weight. Even if you reach your weight loss goal it is not good for your overall health. From your statements on maintaining bones density and strength it seems that overall health is more important to you. You can't always equate how much you weight with how healthy you are.

This is probably not the advice you wanted but in my opinion you seem healthy and on track to stay that way for many years to come.

Hope this helps.

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