Hi, I'm new to BFL and have some concerns. Just so you know a little history, I am 35 year old, 5'11", 203lb male, 17.6% body fat. As of Jan 21st, 2011, I weighed in at 305lbs. Over the last 9 1/2 months, I've lost 102lbs on Weight Watchers. I would like to be around 10% body fat. Although Weight Watchers worked very well for me, It really doesn't focus on body fat loss vs muscle loss, so I decided to find a program that was designed to trim the fat (not muscle), tone, and hopefully put on a few lbs of muscle. I did some online research and ran across BFL. BFL seemed to have nothing but good reviews, so I ordered the book, spent a week studying it and got started October 29th. I am now one week in, which brings me to my concern.
On Weight Watchers, I lost 2-2.5 lbs every week for 9 1/2 months consistently. One week into BFL, I lost zero lbs. I did not gain, but I didn't lose. Believe it or not, on BFL I was eating less food per day than on Weight Watchers (other than my cheat day). But I was working out for about 1hr20min per day on Weight Watchers and am only working out for 20 min one day and 45 minutes the next on BFL. I do use a Fat Loss Montitor (Omron HBF-306C) once a week and in my one week of BFL, it indicated I went from 17.8% body fat to 17.6% body fat. After calculations, this indicates I gained about a half pound of muscle, which means I lost about 1/2 pound of fat. Although seeing that I gained muscle was a positive, my understanding is that I should be losing a minimum of a pound a week and even more like 2 pounds. I know this is only my first week, and I'm going to continue into my second week, but I have come too far to see little to no results. If I go a second week with the same results, it will be very discouraging. Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions on why there was no loss?
Well, look at it this way, on WW you might have lost a whole pound of fat, but gained no muscle.
Give it time, I know you will see results.
Want it. Plan it. Do it.
You were probably losing fat and muscle on WW, give this program four weeks (hopefully you took photos) and then see how you feel.
Worse case scenario you can go back to WW which doesn't have a very good history of people actually keeping the weight off one year removed from the program.
Best of luck!
I gotta agree with brez Lifting weights especially the way BFL advocates will change your body from the inside out and using the scale as your main source of progress will not be sufficient being that your are totally trying to change the composition of your body, did you take body measurements as well? That along with pictures would help alot too. Give it a few more weeks train hard, sleep well, eat clean, drink that water. ... good luck
I agree with everyone else. One thing that I've always had to do when following the plan is to ditch the scale and instead become friends with the tape measure. Until you've been on the plan for a few weeks, you probably won't notice a change on the scale because your body composition is changing. And at a minimum, I'd go 2-3 weeks between taking measurements. while you'll see changes weekly, they pale in comparison to what you'll see every 2-3 weeks, and the bigger numbers are just more motivating.
Remember, before you were losing weight... today, you're transforming. Big difference.
Heca: As a veteran bfler my advice is "put the scale away". The scale cannot tell the difference between fat and muscle. If you follow the bfl program you will be losing fat and gaining muscle so your scale weight may change very little. Let your pants and belts be your guide. As we get older (I'm 52), muscle is like GOLD. We want to retain/or gain as much as possible. It is only the fat we want to lose. BFL is a fat loss program not a weight loss program and building lean muscle will cause you to lose bodyfat faster. All the best on your challenge....don't give up!!
fit4life "The dream must be bigger than the pain"
There is so much good, right on advice here right now, you should definitely take heed of it. I would just like to point out that you can lose weight on WW, and maybe even reach the 10% body fat level, but there is no way you can truly re-shape your body without resistance training i.e. weight training. So, if someone starts out with a pear-shaped body, they will become a smaller "pear" if calories are reduced by dieting without proper resistance excercise. You will totally transform your body and your physique by doing BFL and doing it properly.
Heca, I am just beginning my week 6 this week and understand your frustration. Everyone here has given great advice and I can't agree more about the scale being our enemy. I went from eating like crap and drinking no water to eating healthy overnight and drowing in water, struggling on my cardio, basically starting back at a walk to a slight jog, using very low weights as it had been a long time since I picked one up, and in the first week I lost only 3 pounds, but you had the advantage of already eating healthy, etc. So don't get discouraged.
I just received my Omron fat monitor last week and hope to use it as extra motivation so I hear you there, but I would suggest picking up a tape measure for no more than $2 and make sure to measure your chest, arms, waist, calves, hips, shoulders, neck, thights forearms. There is more than meets the eye and the scale with these measurements. You can check out my blog in my profile to see the table I'm keeping, I would suggest you keep it too starting today!
In the 5 complete weeks, I have dropped 13 lbs, but of that according to my bf % is a gain of about 5 lbs lean mass and loss of about 18lbs fat! So give it a chance, at least my 5 weeks :)
My blog - http://flatlinersbodyforlife.blogspot.com/