MyNetDiary Blog

Four Keys to Losing Weight While Injured

Let’s face it, sometimes injuries happen, especially if we’re new to regular exercise or stepping up our training routine. And though they can be a setback to our exercise regimen, they don’t have to be a setback to our weight loss goal. Here are four keys for keeping our waistline down while an injury lays us up.

1. Assess your injury. Talk with your doctor about the severity of your injury. Is it a mild sprain, a pulled muscle, or something worse? Your doctor can go over your restrictions on movement and help you find out what you can do, instead of leaving you to imagine all the things you can’t do. Perhaps talk with a rehabilitation specialist about a few exercises you can do to help the healing process.

2. Place extra attention on your diet. As we well know, to lose a pound of fat we need to lose 3,500 calories. We lose these calories through consuming fewer calories than our RDI (Reference Daily Intake) and burning them with exercise.

If your exercise routine is limited or stopped while you’re injured, then it follows that your diet will take over a larger share of the workload. We recommend you track your calorie intake diligently while you’re exercising less. With that, make sure your daily activity level is set to your new lifestyle (i.e. Sedentary or Low Active), as an injury can make you less active than your previous everyday life. This will help MyNetDiary calculate an accurate calorie goal for you.

Also, you will likely have to scale back your weight loss goal during an injury. If you were on course to lose two pounds a week, you’ll likely do better to only aim to lose one pound (or less) a week. The important part is that you either lose weight or maintain, and not give up and start gaining back what you’ve already lost.

3. Stay connected. Perhaps you were part of a weekly running group, or you had an exercise buddy at the gym. Don’t shy away from those with whom you’ve been active because suddenly you’re not. If your injuries require a lengthy recovery periods (i.e. months), perhaps you could volunteer at race days to support your friends or take the time to write notes of encouragement to those on the same journey as you are. Consider your role temporarily changed from “player” to “mascot”. Helping others will help you.

4. Worry about today, not tomorrow. Don’t set arbitrary deadlines to be back to full health. You can set goals for yourself, like increasing your endurance and strength, but deadlines can set you back, mentally, if you don’t hit them when you thought you should. Worry about what you can do today to continue losing weight. Even if your injury is similar to one you had in the past, the recovery period can be different, so don’t make a timetable based on the past. If you come back too quickly from an injury you only risk injuring yourself again. Take it day by day.

Why Did I Stop Losing Weight?

This is huge concern for many of you trying to lose weight. It seems like you are doing everything right yet the scale won’t budge. Or worse, you find that your weight has inexplicably gone up despite eating fewer calories than you burn. What gives?

Body Weight Components

Body weight includes the weight of muscle, adipose tissue (body fat), bone, organs and body fluids. Losing or gaining weight is not simply just losing or gaining body fat; it includes other tissues as well. Losing weight safely means losing primarily body fat with minimal loss of muscle and other tissues.

Variation

Body weight can fluctuate up to about 5 lbs (2.3 kg) throughout the day. Anything that can cause a fluctuation in body water or hydration status can also affect body weight. For instance, certain blood pressure medications, the menstrual cycle, illness, profuse sweating, drinking liquids and eating food will all affect body weight. When your weight stalls or increases unexpectedly, is it associated with a change in any of the above factors? A high-salt diet can play havoc with your blood pressure as well as your body weight. Also, try to weigh yourself under the same “conditions” – e.g. after you wake up and use the bathroom – to minimize variation.

Basic Troubleshooting

Most of the time, folks who are not losing weight are simply not creating enough of a calories deficit over time. Recall that you have to create a deficit of 3500 calories to lose 1 lb of weight. To continue to lose weight, you have to continue to create enough of a calories deficit. And that can be a real challenge.

Most of us either underestimate calories intake and/or overestimate calories burned. This results in a lower calories deficit than expected and therefore, a slower rate of weight loss. Try to be as accurate a record keeper as possible and try to track daily.

Training

Aerobic and resistance training can increase muscle mass as well as muscle glycogen deposition. This small increase in water-rich tissue could mask a small decrease in body fat weight. If your waist or clothing size decreases even without a significant decrease in weight, then it could be that your body composition is changing in a beneficial direction. A shrinking waist is something to celebrate – it is associated with better health. However, weight should eventually drop with continued training in the presence of a calories deficit (eating fewer calories than total calories expended).

Crash Diets

When folks go on crash diets, much of the initial decrease in body weight is actually water, not body fat. With a continued low calories intake (well below one’s BMR), the rate of weight loss slows but there will be a continued increased loss of muscle along with body fat. This is a problem for many reasons (safety and health), but in terms of weight loss, it makes it a little harder to lose weight. A larger drop in muscle means a larger drop in BMR. You will still lose weight, but your maintenance calories, as well as calories for weight loss, will decrease more than expected. You can view your BMR calories in MyNetDiary apps under “My Plan” or under the “Details” tab on the web.

Patience, Grasshopper!

Try to avoid getting too frustrated with a stubborn scale value. If your weight hasn’t changed for a few weeks, then it is time to troubleshoot. If you weigh yourself daily then be prepared to practice patience since normal weight fluctuations could easily mask true weight loss for a short period of time. And finally, if you feel that your body is really fighting the weight loss, then stop and reexamine your target weight, rate of weight loss and target calories. Don’t starve yourself – your body will fight back. In my experience, folks have the most success with a moderate reduction in calories intake combined with a moderate level of exercise. That is, when lifestyle changes are moderate yet sustainable so that over the long haul, the weight comes off and stays off for good.

Have questions or comments about this post? Please feel free to comment on MyNetDiary’s Forum or Facebook page. I would love to hear from you!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD
Consulting Dietitian for MyNetDiary

More Resources

Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary. The Dreaded Weight Plateau.

Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary Blog. Setting a Healthy Target Weight.

Elaine Magee, MPH, RD. Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

Disclaimer: Please note that we cannot provide personalized advice and that the information provided does not constitute medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, please visit a medical professional.

Losing Weight - Step by Step

In every good plan there are steps. If you have chosen to take control of your health, you’ve already taken a step - the step to take action on your idea. You have a positive attitude and self-confidence in your decision. These are needed for the journey ahead. But there may come a time during your journey that the next step isn’t clear and you start to lose your way. Don’t worry, this happens to most, if not all, of us. When it does, look over the following steps to losing weight and remind yourself that what you are doing is important.

See Your Success - Imagine what you will feel like at your target weight. Hear the compliments you’ll receive from your friends and family. Like every professional athlete in his or her field, they have already mentally set a course to success.

Make a Map - While MyNetDiary gives you a number of charts and graphs you can review at the end of the day or week, it may help if you chart out a path to your ultimate goal. If you have a substantial goal, like losing 50 pounds or more, make a plan that breaks it into smaller goals, such as losing 10 pounds at a time.

Keep it Positive - Many of us subconsciously tell ourselves at one point or another that, “We’re just not good enough to do this,” and thoughts like these are destructive. It’s when we have destructive thoughts that we give in to destructive behaviors - like having an extra piece of cake or three scoops of ice cream. Stay positive about the path you are taking.

Be Your Own Best Friend - Yes, friends and family will support us along the way, but know that the words you use to describe yourself (even in no one else hears them!) matter. Much like being your own cheerleader, be a friend to yourself and daily go over everything you did right to get to your goal.

Realize that No One’s Perfect - We will all make mistakes and have small hiccups along the way. This is natural. What is amazing about being human is that we have the capacity to evolve in substantial ways in our lifetime. We can learn from our mistakes and grow into being the person we’ve always wanted to be.

Self-Affirm - Simple self-affirming statements go a long way, especially if you feel like your confidence is waining. Make a short list of ones you can draw upon as needed. Keep them on sticky notes in places you’ll see them or where you’ll need them.

Be a Goal-Tender - It’s very important that you tend to your goals every day. If you believe you can achieve your goals, you will. Check in with yourself as often as you need to make sure you’re on the path to success. You might be surprised how far along you already are!

Don’t Let Your Resolutions Slip Away and Save Money While You’re At It

It’s about this time every year that those beautifully-crafted, well-thought-out resolutions we made back on New Year’s Eve begin to slip and fade into the background. In fact, most experts say that roughly 78% of those who make resolutions fail to keep them, but that doesn’t have to be you.

Sometimes our resolutions fall by the wayside because they are just too big or we’ve created too many of them. Experts say that to increase the chance of success, just pick one resolution and then break it into many smaller goals. We can often trip ourselves up if we focus too heavily on the downside of not achieving our end goal, so by being successful at smaller ones we’re more likely to continue working toward our big one. Researchers have found that if people do the following five things when working on a resolution, there chance of success increases to 50%.

The five keys to improving chances of success are:
1. Break your goal into smaller steps
2. Reward yourself when you achieve one of your small steps
3. Tell your friends about your goals
4. Focus on the benefits of success
5. Keep a diary of your progress (MyNetDiary can help with this one!)

So how many of you went out and joined a gym at the beginning of January? There were lots of special deals going then to get people to sign up. But joining a gym is a big commitment. Did you have a plan in place for what your workout routine would be, which classes you were going to take, for how long and at what time you would be at the gym each day? To some it may be overwhelming to be part of a gym and have too many choices for how to exercise. So here’s an idea for breaking your resolution (and workouts) into smaller, more manageable pieces and saving money while you’re at it.

The rising popularity of “daily deal” services can benefit those who are working to lose weight, be healthier and increase their exercise time. Instead of being committed to a gym, perhaps taking a variety of select fitness classes can help you stay committed to being active, while also providing a freshness to your workouts and letting you sample multiple class styles so you can find which one(s) you like the best.

For instance, most of these new “daily deal” sites feature discounted punch cards for yoga classes, Pilates, spinning, cross-fit, bootcamps, etc. If you buy a punch card and you know you only have to take six or so classes, you may be more inclined to make room in your schedule to take all of them, thereby maximizing your investment. Additionally, since you’re saving about 50%-90% off the costs of the classes, you’ll have more room in your budget to try different ones.

And in keeping with the strategy of rewarding yourself for completing the small steps toward your resolution, most of these “daily deal” sites also feature deals for massages, fine dining, wine tastings, weekend getaways, etc. Who wouldn’t like a full-body massage as a reward for losing 5, 10 or 20 pounds?

Here’s a rundown of some of the more popular “daily deal” sites:

Groupon
Available in many states and cities, Groupon offers its subscribers the ability to customize the types of deals they’re shown, choosing among specific categories in Health and Beauty, Food and Drink, Retail and Services, Activities and Events. Groupon will also let you track specific businesses, alerting you when a deal for one of your favorite local hang-outs comes up.

LivingSocial
Most notably recognized for its recent Amazon.com deal of paying $10 for a $20 Amazon Gift Card (they sold over one million!), LivingSocial is present many cities across the U.S. and even offers a “Family Edition,” with deals aimed at those with kids. Plus, they offer a promotion for when you buy a deal and then you get three of your friends to buy the same deal, yours is free. Why not have your friends join you for a night-out in celebration of achieving one of your milestones?

Seize the Deal
Though not as widespread as Groupon or LivingSocial, Seize the Deal seems to thrive in smaller towns and cities across the U.S. (where the “daily deal” giants are not), and the site often features great deals for non-corporate businesses at smaller dollar amounts. Seize the Deal is continuing to grow, and it may be in your neighborhood before you know it. They also let you suggest a business if it’s not already featured.

Eating In Might Lead to Thin

Preparing your meals at home may offer some cost-cutting advantages over eating out, but there are also several good reasons to believe that cooking more meals in your kitchen can trim your waistline too.

Americans eat out 4-5 meals a week on average, according to Katie Bogue, Registered Dietitian and former director of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Regional Nutritional Network in California. A slice of pizza here, a burger there, all of it adds inches under our belts over time. As a nation, about 45 million people eat out at restaurants each day (Ironically, this is the same number of Americans who belong to a gym!).

When people eat out, they generally consume 50 percent more calories, fat and sodium than had they cooked at home. And portions at restaurants are 5-6 times the recommended size published by MyPyramid.gov.

By preparing more meals at home, people have more control over what goes on their plates. You can give yourself more nutrient-rich vegetables than typically come on a protein-stacked restaurant dish. And you can cook enough food for yourself and your family so there’s leftovers for lunch throughout the week. Given that a common recommendation for weight control is to eat smaller, more frequent meals (every 3-4 hours), those who go out to a restaurant are often stuck over-indulging themselves because they haven’t planned or packed a snack and may have to go 5-6 hours until their next meal.

Another incidental waist-trimming benefit of home cooking is the extra time you give yourself. Factor in getting yourself ready to go out, traveling to/from the restaurant, waiting for your table, waiting for your order, waiting for your check, and you have spent a lot of time you could have used for exercise. Try creating a new family routine of taking a post-dinner 20-30 minute walk together.

And people who pack their lunches for work have greater flexibility in their day. They can choose to eat at their desk and then go for a lunchtime walk, or head to a nearby park for some fresh air. And since you can easily pack your lunch from the previous night’s leftovers, you waste no time in the morning trying to come up with a healthy meal.

To help you get in the practice of at-home cooking, spend about 45 minutes every Sunday planning a menu for the upcoming week. This planning will save you time shopping at the grocery store and may help prevent stocking your shelves with some last-minute, tempting sugary snacks.

So how often do you eat out? Are you in that “average” category?