Concerned husband seeking advice. Possible metabolism issue? Something else I'm not understanding?

[Ottawa]

I am a concerned husband looking for advice from others who may have insight. Details about past diet strategies are at bottom of this post if you want to skip down to there.

My wife desperately wants to lose 10-15 pounds and is very committed to a balanced diet and exercise, but she really seems to have something strange about her metabolism or something that is preventing her from losing the weight. We own a high quality food scale and she has been planning all her meals with attention paid to macros, calories per meal, and even nutrient timing. We have even had me do all the weighing before on the food scale to see if somehow she was weighing things differently. She is also enjoys running.

I am asking the internet for advice because despite measuring food, counting calories, and trying numerous different approaches to weight loss...her body seems to refuse to lose weight despite her relatively realistic goal to just lose 10-15 pounds.

The one exception is on a starvation diet...this did make her lose weight. However, I really do not want to believe that the only way she can lose weight is to never eat over 1000 calories again. But I am at a loss currently because that is the literally only thing that has ever worked for her to lose any significant weight.

To be clear, I am not pressuring her to lose weight at all...in fact I honestly wish she was just happy with her weight as is because of how much stress is causes her and because I think she looks good already. However, she is unhappy with her weight and is committed to losing weight, so I support her decision in that she really wants this change for herself. Below are the details:

Background
30 year old female
Height: 5'5"
Weight: Currently Flucuates between 131-144 on sometimes with 6+ pound changes in 24 hours. Current weight as of today: 135.
Goal: To weigh 120-125 lbs and to stay there.

Weight loss programs tried in the past year:
Light cardio and weightlifting at 1200 calories per day: Running 2 miles per day 3 days per week and light weight training twice a week for 8 weeks straight. Starting weight: 135, ending weight 8 weeks later: 134.

Starvation diet: Eating 600-800 calories per day for 5 weeks. Light circuit training for 20 minutes 3 days per week. Starting weight: 139, ending weight 6 weeks later: 128. Caveat: As soon as she raised her calories back to only 1200 calories a day she went back to weighing 136.

Heavy cardio plan: 1900 calories per day, running 6 miles per day at 9 minute/mile pace 5 days a week for 12 weeks. As always, every item of food weighed on food scale. Macros: 25% protein, 45% carbs, 30% fat. Starting weight: 133, Ending weight 12 weeks later: 132. How is this possible with that much cardio?

 

[allcdnboy1]

The body is stubborn. It can take quite a bit of work to start losing weight. The longer that someone is at a particular weight, the harder it can be to break out of it ... it's good and bad. It's why people don't generally gain weight except over long periods of time. Most people can completely pig out every once in awhile and have no long term changes. You can put on 10 pounds on weekend, but going back to normal eating, the body will burn it right off in a week (usually a couple days).

Definitely don't do starvation diets. They don't work long term because it's not healthy. The biggest problem is the basics to a metabolism. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. However, in starvation mode, your body starts to canabolize your muscle. So, when you stop starving yourself, you metabolism is slower then before. So, you gain weight faster and then repeat the cycle. Gets harder and harder to keep the weight off because you have mo muscle.

However, a modification of a starvation diet is fasting, which is healthy and has a lot of proven long term benefits. The basics is don't eat between 8pm - noon the next day. Eat normal between those periods, ideally having your workout between meals or shortly after the last meal. You need the calories for exercise, so if you are in fasting mode, you run into the same problem as starvation. You can do it however you like ... you can do it every day, or 3 days a week. Up to you. Obviously, do some research before doing it.

While it is implied by most of the above, weight training is more important than cardio for exercise. Cardio helps, but is very slow. If weight loss is important, than she should be doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) for "cardio". It maximizes weight loss, minimizes muscle loss and takes less time. But, the rest of the time should be dedicated to weight training. Not only does it help burn muscle, but she will be much happier with how she looks in the mirror (Google skinny-fat). Without muscle, doesn't matter how skinny you are, you will always think you have fat to lose.

Lastly, the problem may the scale. She may have good muscle tone already, so the fact that she is focusing in the scale is in her head, not in the mirror. By that, I mean 132 lbs is not heavy. If she likes running that much, she might have dense quads and is at a good weight. Her body doesn't want to lose any more weight because she's already at a really good weight for her muscle / fat ratio. That means she's at the bottom end of where her body wants her to be, so getting below that is going to be extremely difficult.

My advice: toss the scale. Put it away for awhile. Use the mirror as results. If she wants numbers to work with, measure hips, waist, arms, legs, etc. Those are the numbers that really matter, as the scale masks weight loss and muscle gain. It doesn't tell you how much fat you have [to lose].

 

[Dr Wright]

If the math does not add up, something is missing from the equation. Look for the missing variable. Are you sure all calories are accounted for, including in liquids?