Hi all! I'm 28, male. I weigh 220 lbs. now and started eating healthy and exercising 4 1/2 weeks ago when I was 225 lbs. I go to the gym 5 days a week where I do a quick 20 minutes strength training and then jog for about 30 min. at 5 mph and walk 30 min. at 3.75 mph. I am a little under 6 ft tall and around 180-185 lbs when I am in really good shape. I have a very athletic build which explains the high weight for my height.

The problem is that I am losing weight a lot slower than I expect to. I used to be able to lose weight fairly quickly when I was younger. I just think I should be losing more than a pound a week. Some people say they lose a lot of weight right away so I have begun to worry. Others have said it takes time to get the metabolism working and I will just get to a point in the near future when it will start melting away.

I would love to hear other peoples opinions or experiences that relate to my issue. Should I worry or be a little more patient and wait a couple more weeks?

Actually this is the proper rate of loss, you've about maxed it out. When you exercise, especially with strength training, you can/should only lose about a pound per week. Any more than that and you wouldn't be adding muscle like you should, and you'd be starving your muscles, and all kinds of funky things can happen in your body. So basically, you are on the proper path. The people who are losing a ton of weight right at first often go through major lifestyle changes and drop alot of water weight. That's all that it is, it's not fat. A pound of fat is about 3,500 calories. When somebody loses 10 pounds in a week, no way can you tell me that they burned an extra 35,000 calories that week. No way. Just think about it, it doesn't make sense. So basically if you didn't have that extra water weight to begin with, you're not going to see any major weight fall off at first. You've skipped straight to burning fat, which is a good thing. I would not change a thing at this point. If you did in fact burn it a little faster when you are younger, I think that statement kind of explains itself - you were younger and your metabolism was sky high and you were probably more active too. I'm 30 myself so I know exactly what you're feeling.

All the herba-whatevers and various other diet pills/products/programs try to convince us that we can lose a bunch of weight fast. Our bodies are not physically capable of dropping several pounds of fat a week. Water and muscle? yes - but not fat. So, keep up a healthy weight loss of no more than 1-2 pounds a week (severly overweight people can lose a slight tad more), and be able to keep it off, while all those taking products and losing more than that experience major rebound weight gain the second they quit taking it. It happens everyday, but everyone thinks it won't happen to them.

So, be proud of that 1 pound a week, and don't buy into the hype.