I am helping my girlfriend lose weight. Its coming along but is tough at times. So far I’ve got her pretty much off all processed foods, including crackers, chips, etc. We are working on getting her to about 100g of carbs a day, all idealy from good wholesome food. For breakfast she usually has either oatmeal or eggs. Lunch and dinner are often some sort of chicken and veggies, or stir fry beef and veggies.
I think so far the diet thing is getting better, and we working on regular excercise.
One of the questions she always asks me is what does she do after she reaches her ideal weight. She seems to think that unless she eats super healthy all the time she will just balloon back up to her previous weight. I told her that we could gradually reintroduce slightly more carbs and different foods while monitoring her weight to make sure she doesnt gain anything back.
If anyone can help me answer this question that would be great. I am not really quite sure how to answer her.
Well, it depends on what she means by “ideal weight”. I will assume that we’ll just go with a combination of ideal weight combined with ideal body composition. For example, say 125lbs at 15% body fat, or whatever makes her happy. And I hope to God that she doesn’t have just one number in her head (and it’s always a weird one, like 118 or something). If she does, you’ll have to work with her some.
Now, if her definition of ideal weight is to be in perfect, cover model condition, then she’s just going to have to accept that (outside of drugs and winning the genetic lottery) that’s just not going to be a reality. I would love to be 220 with 5% bodyfat, but I would never keep that up for long (if I could ever get there). Being 230-240, healthy, strong, and in good condition (10-15% body fat) is a lot more realistic for a year-round approach.
This also depends on how much weight she has lost and what her lifestyle was like before getting her diet and exercise in line.
But in the end, once you get down to your “ideal weight”, it’s really not impossible to stay in very attractive condition for the rest of the year.
I think it is always a lot harder to get to an ideal weight than to stay at it. And also, the longer you stay at a certain weight the more resistant your body would be to change. I will try to illustrate in a theorem:
(time it took to current weight)
x(total ? %BF)x (time at current weight)
=Resistance to change
I would think this would only apply normal body fat % ranges. Too lean or too fat and change could come fairly easy. It is the stubborn 7% to 15% range that seems to be most sensitive and the theory would apply there most. So if you lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks and have maintained for 3 days then it would be easy to put that weight right back on. In turn, if you lost 10% body fat and took 4 months and have maintained it 6 months then you could probably binge for a while without having major changes.
As for your girlfriend, she should not be so concerned about solely aesthetics but overall health and quality of life. It has happened to a lot of my friends and family that they worry about not ever being able to return to eating the fried sampler and cookie dough ice cream. But you will see that when they start logging results and getting compliments they will begin to pick the carrots out of their salads. We are also creatures of habit so I think our tastes change when we get in the habit of eating right. I never ate vegetables 3 years ago and now I eat several servings a day and can’t get enough of them.
Cravell’s comments were very, very good. I agree that the longer you’ve been at a healthy lean weight, the more dietary indiscretions you can commit without too much damage. But the idea we’re skirting here is that we never reach a final product. There is never a point where we are totally satisfied. You can always make more progress, improve a little more, be a little leaner or stronger or more muscular or whatever.
What I hope is that she can come to love the process, not just the idea of reaching an ideal weight like there’s an end to all this. It never ends. It just becomes a way of life.