Being Big (and Tall)

(Abbreviated version...)

Start weight 223lbs on 1/14/08
Goal weight 201lbs on 3/7/08
BMR is approximately 2200 lbs. Kristen mentioned that she wouldn't go below BMR as daily intake as it's possible your body will enter starvation mode. Where can I find more information on this?

According to FitDay, I burn ~3200 calories including my "lifestyle" of sedentary office work. I go to the gym several times a week which adds 500 calories to that. If I assume 3 days a week, then I'm average 3400 calories burned a day. To lose approximately 3lbs a week, I'd need to sacrifice 10,500 calories or 1500 each day. That would put me at 1900 calories consumed daily, or 300 calories below my BMR!

The obvious conclusion is that my weight loss time table is too aggressive! Others are also shooting for 10%, and because of their current size, that is more like 1.6lbs/week... maybe that is also too aggressive.

EDIT: OK feeling like getting more of the original information inhere... 6'2" by the way, 28 y/o. BMI is around 28 currently - as of 1/29/07 I weigh around 217-218 lbs. Healthy BMI is 194. But how much muscle do I have? How much do you have to have before BMI is "wrong"?

Most doctors say that you shouldn't try to lose more than 2 lbs. per week, so maybe just try to aim for that.

You can go below your BMR and lose weight quickly, but that increases the risk of yo-yo bounces.

And yup, I'm not sure how much muscle you need to have before BMI "healthy ranges" are wrong. The BMI assumes that you have "average" muscle mass, so if you have more than average, I think measuring body fat percentage would probably be more useful than BMI. I don't trust the tape-measure method of body fat measurement. I think that it would be best to use the skin fold measurements or electric resistance (my favorite method because it involves gadgets, my digital scale has one).

Well the thing I don't like about the recommendations, such as 2 lbs. per week, is that it also doesn't seem to take into account your current weight or size. I mean if it's safe for someone that is 4' 11" to possibly lose as much as 2 lbs per week... what about someone that is 6' 6" and 300 lbs?

Anyway, I'm making sure to generally eat whenever I'm hungry, but without exceeding my approximate calorie intake goal, and I'm trying to burn calories frequently... hoping to shoot close to daily now that I'm comfortable with going to the gym multiple days in a row. Tonight I played soccer!

Good point! I recently have been watching shows about people who are "whoa" morbidly obese (500+ lbs.), and some of them were losing 30 lbs. per week! So it would make sense that the more you weigh, the more you can lose per week. You, however, are not that big (I've seen your pics), so you still need to pace yourself.

Awesome that you are exercising every day. That's the most important part for most people. (That's my biggest weight loss weakenss.)

Well I haven't been going every day but I'm trying to change that this week. It seems the past week or so, I've been at a dead end as far and continuing to lose weight. This weekend was pretty bad as far as consumption goes. I didn't track my intake. I did snowboard a little and go to the gym on Sunday, but I ate (and drank) way too much. As of this morning, I'm still at 218lbs, having lost 5lbs overall in 3 weeks.

It's been one month since I started (though according to our competition, we're at the end of week 5), and I have lost 8 lbs. This week I didn't go to the gym at all. I'm also relatively sure that I've lost some muscle mass on this weight loss program, and I definitely feel the need to put more time into weight training, and perhaps less into cardio, but definitely to avoid being too restrictive on my caloric intake.