Convinced CICO works after 20 lb loss

cheer4beer

Like many here, I have numerous failed attempts to lose weight under my belt. I tried many fads and a few dangerous things but kept ending up back where I started, often worse. So I finally listened to the tiny voice of logic in my brain that would often get drowned out because of my extreme all or nothing approach. At the end of the day, if I would lose weight by just consuming less calories than I burn, why suffer through another diet?
I wanted to prove to myself that CICO didn’t work. It just couldn’t be that easy. Plus, I would feel like a fool for all of the failed prior attempts. Pride is a dangerous thing. But I got over myself and decided to very closely monitor my results. I decided to get serious about my meal logging by getting a scale. I also got an activity tracker and a heart rate monitor, and really made an effort to have a daily caloric deficit (or surplus) that I had a lot of faith in being accurate. I thought that if I had a high confidence in this number, then surely it would align with what I was seeing on the scale. And guess what – it did! While I’m bummed that I didn’t figure this out 15 years ago, I’m extremely happy to see a logical progression in the right direction all based on CICO. Not some magical process taking place in my body because of the [insert fad diet] I was on. Yay, science!
I did create a spreadsheet that I used for March and thought it may be beneficial to share. Daily, I would enter the remaining calories from the day before (red or green number), then add 1000 to that number (since I am on 2 lbs a week – adjust accordingly if yours is different to 750,500,or 250). I would then add my weight for that day. It’s best if you weigh same time and under same circumstance each day. For me it was first thing in morning. If anything, it may provide a sanity-check to see how tight your logging is if you are seeing a huge difference on the scale vs what MFP is telling you. It’s not fancy by any means but anyone is welcome to copy it. You’ll notice that the graph shows many fluctuations with the actuals compared to the calculated values. There are many reasons for this but overall there is only a 2.08% variance, so I’ll call that a win. Here's a link to the spreadsheet. Feel free to copy if you'd like to test yourself.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dU7c9gcFNLmmxqMOMrLDJeffaSN8yl58f9rqlgbuXow/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=1379187866

sbl1881

Great spreadsheet! Can you explain the surplus calorie calculation? I've been looking for a way to predict future weight aside from where I think it should be

I've set my calories to 1,450/day. My TDEE is 1,850. If I only eat 1,400, would my surplus be 50 and add 1,000 to that, or is there another number I'm missing?

cheer4beer

I just used the remaining number that shows up in my app in red or green in my diary, then the total deficit column adds 1000 cals to that since I'm on 2 lbs per week loss.

cheer4beer

And I'm just using BMR, not TDEE.

GMAC2016

Love the avatar pic