QuestionHi!
My friend and I are trying to lose weight together.
She is taking meal replacements for breakfast (she only had toast anyway) and lunch,and a eating suppeer. I am cutting my calories by the same amount par day but still having three meals and increasing my cardio by running three days a week.
Its been a month and she has lost seven pounds and I have lost two. Whats with that?
I have noticed that one the days (and there are several every month) that I stay to work late,then come home to bed without supper, the next morning my belly has noticeably shrunk!
Do we have different metabolic types or something? We have similar ancestry(Irish) and body types (small) and are both late 40's
Maybe I would benefit by having a slimfast at SUPPER instead of lunch?
AnswerSue-
Slimfast is terrible stuff. Use the Slimfast Low Carb or Atkins shakes. Most of the other shakes have so much sugar that you'll just end up hungry in an hour.
Anyway, the basic math of weight loss is 3,500 calories equals one pound. There are lots of tricks to burn more calories, feel less hungry, etc, but you can't change the 3,500 calories. You need to burn more calories than you eat. If you eat less than your friend, but you also burn less than her, then you'll lose less. How much you burn depends on height, weight, muscle mass, genes, activity, and lots of other things. You can estimate, but you can never really know for sure what you burn. What you CAN know is what you take in. I'd strongly recommend that you start counting calories for real. Measure everything. Do NOT "eyeball" portions. Be realistic about your fruits, especially. If you don't know how much you ate, overestimate. Studies show that most people who track their calories tend to underestimate their portion sizes by about a third, so don't fall into that trap. Try www.fitday.com or www.sparkpeople.com if you want to do it all online.
And most of all, keep running! It won't really help you lose weight (an average woman has to jog for FIVE HOURS to burn off one Dairy Queen Blizzard), but it WILL help you keep off what you lose.
Good luck!
Melissa
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