Slowing the Weight Loss?

Machka9

Have any of you reached a certain point in your weight loss journey where you have increased your daily calories in order to slow the weight loss? You still want to lose weight ... but maybe not as fast as you have been?

I hear people say that a slower weight loss is a more effective weight loss ... that there's a greater chance I'll keep it off if I drop slowly.

But on the other hand, I figure my weight loss will probably slow or plateau at some point anyway so I'm sort of inclined to just go with what I'm doing now.

4legsRbetterthan2

I started out shooting for the two pounds a week, and eventually just settled to the 1lb/week because it was a plan I was more comfortable with and stuck to (I was one of those log for a week take a week off cycling people the first year I was here, no surprise I had little success like that).

I also had a time where I slowed my weight loss intentionally because I wanted to do a half marathon, and as my mileage increased I just found it really hard to be maintaining a deficit too. So I guess I did it to maintain my sanity while focusing on a fitness goal for that period.

"slow" is a relative term, for someone with 10 lbs to lose 0.25 will be their slow, for someone with 300 lbs to lose 3 lbs might be their slow. To me "slow" weight loss is less about loss rate per week and more about losing in a way that allows you to eat enough to maintain LBM, get plenty of nutrients in, and stay HAPPY throughout your journey.

I would think that if you are happy in your current plan and have a general idea of you BMR and don't have your calorie goal set excessively below that then you should be good to go. Also, I am guilty of saying you are more likely to keep it off it you drop slowly, but I guess that is not inherently true. It is just that I associate "fast" loss with fads, detoxes, cleanses, and VLC diets that are just not sustainable. If you are eating in a way you can continue with into maintenance, or at least have a maintenance plan in mind I think that will have more effect on your success keeping it off than loss rate itself.

Machka9

Right now I'm set at a 1 lb/week loss with 1200 calories per day net ... but am losing faster than that. In fact, I've averaged 2.5 lb/week.

When I exercise I am quite comfortable with a net of 1200 calories per day because I eat more than that ... but on a day when I don't exercise or only exercise very lightly (i.e. 2 km walk), I only eat 1200 calories and I'm hungry. Sometimes ravenously hungry.

So while I like the fact that I've dropped to about my halfway point quite quickly ... and would kind of like to drop the rest as quickly, I do wonder if it might be better to try to slow things down a little to reduce the ravenous hunger.

(BTW - I'm not doing any detoxes, cleanses, or any strange diets ... mainly I just exercise quite a bit. )

Machka9

I've raised my calorie limit just a little bit ... from 1200 to 1250. I'll see how that goes.

futuremanda

0.5 lb a week is about 250 cals per day, or 1750 through the week. So if you ARE losing about 2.5 lbs a week, and would be happy with 0.5 lb less, you could eat 250 cals more every day, or load up some split from 1750 onto your rest days.

StaciMarie1974

I did increase my calories, went from aiming for 1 pound a week to aiming for .5 pounds a week. Was not because I 'wanted' to slow my loss, but because I knew I was getting close to my goal and I was ready to start eating more.

lemurcat12

I raised my calories because I had lost some muscle mass, and didn't want to. I'm kind of aiming between a recomp and a .5/week loss which is, frankly, stupid, I need to make up my mind what I'm doing, but I'm not going to aim for more than .5-.75/week loss because I am not interested in risking muscle mass if I can avoid it. However, I'm around 5 lbs from goal and am interested in trying to exercise hard and improve performance more than fat loss at the moment.

My experience was that as I lost it naturally slowed and I naturally found myself needing to eat more to fuel increased activity. I started at net 1250, changed to net 1400 (kept losing at 2 lb/week at first, vs. the 2-3 I had been losing at), and then changed to a TDEE number I think was around 1400 net (I think I let it dip back to 1200 net due to exercise before I increased my calories as noted above)--I think my base now is around 1450 net, when I'm compliant. The losses tapered off as my weight declined.

segacs

Yes, I increased my calories about a month ago, because I was losing weight faster than I'd targeted. I'd been targeting 0.8lbs/week and I was losing more like 1.3lbs/week. My actual TDEE, it turns out, is higher than what the calculators say it should be. So I increased my calories a bit in order to compensate.

I've lost 34 pounds so far and I've got 6 to go to my initial goal (though I'll see if I want to keep going when I get there). I'm at the point now where I want to make sure I'm not going to lose too much muscle mass along with that fat, so I'm fine with taking it real slow, and easing into maintenance.

Machka9

futuremanda wrote: »

0.5 lb a week is about 250 cals per day, or 1750 through the week. So if you ARE losing about 2.5 lbs a week, and would be happy with 0.5 lb less, you could eat 250 cals more every day, or load up some split from 1750 onto your rest days.

I have it set at 0.5 kg/week (approx. 1 lb/week).

I like the fact that I'm losing 2.5 lb/week except that I am so hungry I'm in tears once or twice a week. Once or twice a week, I feel really awful ... sick, dizzy, shaky. I know my blood sugar levels have dropped really low when that happens.

So ... I'm just thinking that if I increase my calories a little bit, especially on those days, I might feel better.