I'm half a pound away from my target, having lost 43.5lbs. Read an interesting article on MFP which makes sense to me so I'm putting it to the floor of maintainers to see whether it affected you....?
The article says that us hoomans have a glycogen store of up to 5lbs, depending upon our start weight and that we will lose that when we first start reducing our calorie intake.... rather like a "first reserve" - and this is why we usually lose a lot in our first week or two of dieting. We are not depleting our fat stores, but our little glycogen store first (and the associated water that it needs to function)
So when you hit the target weight you've set yourself and start increasing your calorie intake to go onto maintenance, your body says "Phew... at last, I can start to build my safety-net glycogen store again" - and you find you've gained a few pounds again in your first week. So then you see the scales and reduce your intake AGAIN - and thus the see-saw starts. The article recommends you lose around 5lb UNDER the target you've set yourself (providing you don't have an ED!!) so that you then have that buffer for when you start maintaining... and that you won't panic when the scales go up in the first few days as once your glycogen store has re-built, your body will then happily go into maintenance mode, providing you're not consuming too many extra calories, of course!
Now, I can understand this theory - it makes perfect sense to me - but I just wondered whether any of you found this to be the case and how you dealt with it, please?
Thanks
The article says that us hoomans have a glycogen store of up to 5lbs, depending upon our start weight and that we will lose that when we first start reducing our calorie intake.... rather like a "first reserve" - and this is why we usually lose a lot in our first week or two of dieting. We are not depleting our fat stores, but our little glycogen store first (and the associated water that it needs to function)
So when you hit the target weight you've set yourself and start increasing your calorie intake to go onto maintenance, your body says "Phew... at last, I can start to build my safety-net glycogen store again" - and you find you've gained a few pounds again in your first week. So then you see the scales and reduce your intake AGAIN - and thus the see-saw starts. The article recommends you lose around 5lb UNDER the target you've set yourself (providing you don't have an ED!!) so that you then have that buffer for when you start maintaining... and that you won't panic when the scales go up in the first few days as once your glycogen store has re-built, your body will then happily go into maintenance mode, providing you're not consuming too many extra calories, of course!
Now, I can understand this theory - it makes perfect sense to me - but I just wondered whether any of you found this to be the case and how you dealt with it, please?
Thanks