Confused -1200 calorie or use BMR/TDEE

katecampisi

hi all,

I am a 40 yo female. 5"4 and 59 kilos. Over the past 4 months I have lost 5 kilos with good clean high protein diet, weight training and cardio-more focus on weights. I have built muscle and re-shaped areas quite well. Clothes are loose everywhere and my butt is the best its ever been! Lol. On weekend I dont track-I don't binge as such but I drink a fair amount of vino and enjoy eating out. I am a nurse so my job is active. I easily get to 10 k steps a day. Even with the excess cals on weekends I do feel my progress has been kind of slow. My Tdee thing says I should eat 2000 cals a day to loose. This confuses me! I think its way too much to loose BUT im wondering if with weight training my body is hanging onto fat because it feels its in a starvation mode? After a weekend of eating bread etc I still loose weight and have heaps more energy on Monday. Im just wondering if women with my similiar stats eat at 1200 or above with good results? Im happy with the progress but as I say if it was faster it would be nice! But its a marathon not a sprint right?!

DemoraFairy

Firstly I can say you're not in starvation mode - your body holding on to fat isn't how it works. This explains starvation mode really well: http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/starvation-mode/ (basically, when you get to a point when you're actually starving to death, if for some reason you're not in hospital, you will experience effects like your body temperature lowering, your heart rate slowing, hair falling out, etc. which your body does to burn less calories, which means your TDEE goes down. You will still lose weight if you eat in a deficit at this point.)

When you say your progress has been slow, how slow do you consider slow? At your weight you should be aiming for about 0.5lbs/week. You should be able to lose on more than 1200, so if you are losing at about half a pound a week at the moment, I would guess that either your weekends are putting you move over than you think (it's very easy to go over without binging, I know I do it a lot!), or you're not actually eating 1200 a day - how accurate is your logging? Do you weigh everything, or use measuring cups/estimate portions?

SueInAz

Starvation mode, as you're using the term, is a myth. It doesn't work that way or no one would ever die of starvation.

@DemoraFairy made some good points. Logging on the weekends will help keep you on track and if you're not using a kitchen scale to verify portion sizes it would be a good idea at this point.

WinoGelato

Agree with those above about Starvation Mode, and the fact that you aren't tracking on the weekends you really don't know what your average intake is. You could be averaging 1500 or more if you are significantly over on the weekend.

You asked for some personal experiences - I am also 40, 5'2, and am currently maintaining around 123 +/- 2 lbs. My calorie goal is set to 1750 net, (I like a little bit of a buffer) but I eat closer to 2000-2100 and according to my FitBit my TDEE is about 2100-2200. I lost weight netting anywhere from 1500-1650 cals/day.