Eat more lose more

fitoverfortymom

To me "eat more to lose more" means fitting as much food as possible into my allowed calories. For the first 90 days of me on MFP, I kept to 1250 calories per day. This isn't a lot, but you bet your knickers I stretched that out as much as I could. My diary is open, and if you go back to the beginning of September, you'll see how it started to unfold.

I recently bumped up to 1310 per day (reducing my rate of loss from 2lbs to 1.5lbs per week) because I was moving more, feeling more hungry, and consistently losing 2+ lbs per week. I figure more calories will keep me more active and hopefully fall between the 1.5-2lb per week mark.

I still try to eat as much as possible within those calories. It so happens that means a lot of veggies and lean meats and fiberous fruits, but I do have the occasional treat. I have a lot to lose, so I need this to be something I can stick with.

AnnPT77

Research results I've seen showed NEAT difference of a few hundred (like 100-300) calories/day between non-fidgeters and fidgeters. And that's just fidgeting, not other NEAT components, like how energetically one undertakes home chores, for example. I agree that adaptive differences from excess-deficit-caused fatigue likely wouldn't cancel out a 1000 calorie daily deficit, but I think there could be a degree of play in there in the low hundreds of calories. Marry that to some measuring error in exercise and eating, and you could wipe out a 500-calorie one, I think.

And I couldn't agree more with the compliance side of it (and related wishful thinking or self-deception about overages). Quite probably the bigger piece of the puzzle, that.

WinoGelato

Agree with those that said that having a reasonable calorie deficit that is less aggressive can:
1. Be easier to stick with day in and day out, thus enabling a consistent weekly deficit
2. Enable a person to fit in a wider variety of foods (both nutrient dense and some treats) to again promote adherence as well as optimal nutrition
3. Help avoid mental fatigue that comes with severe restriction and that "always on a diet" mentality
4. Provide additional energy to fuel workouts thus further increasing the CO side of the CI<CO side of the equation
5. Keep a person motivated to continue - if I were cutting drastically and lost weight quickly I might be tempted to stop at losing 15 or 20 lbs because eating at a deficit was miserable. With a less aggressive deficit which didn't feel like suffering, it was easy to keep going till I had lost even more than my initial goal weight and focus on other health/fitness aspects after losing >30 lbs.
6. Make the transition to maintenance more manageable to avoid that "I'm no longer on a diet now I can eat whatever I want!" mindset which usually leads to gaining the lost weight back.

These are the things that I found and why losing slowly eating b/w 1600-1900 cals was preferable for me and ultimately made me more successful in the long term than when I was eating 1200-1300 cals and trying to lose as fast as possible...

cerise_noir

DonchelleR1 wrote: »

Belma24everyday wrote: »

I am very confused about how my diet is supposed to be. I was told recently that I must eat more in order to lose more. I don't understand how to do it properly. Can anyone explain this to me?

What I've learned is that if you eat 6 small meals a day that contains about 200 -400 calories each, you are able to lose more weight week by week also just by eating more protein and lesser carbs your able to loose even more!!!!! I suggest you to try it as well.

No, just no, sorry.

1. The frequency of meals does not matter for weight loss. I personally eat 1 meal and 2-3 snacks. Sometimes I just eat many smaller meals, sometimes I eat 3 larger meals. Same loss rate.
2. You're suggesting OP eat 1200-2400 a day divided by 6 meals. Huh? You don't know her TDEE, though. If I ate 1200 a day (while sedentary) I would lose 1lb per week. If I were to eat 2400 a day while sedentary I would gain a little over 1lb-1.5lbs per week.
3. The amount of carbs does not affect weight loss or weight gain.

It is ALL about calorie deficit.

Christine_72

I recently upped my calories (to sedentary maintenance) because i stopped losing and rage quit the diet! Low and behold I've started losing consistently again. If i didn't know better I'd think eating more has enabled weight loss to resume again... However here is the real reason.

I log everything, no more little treats that i "forget" to log.
I've ramped up my exercise.
All in all, my diary and food logging is as accurate as I can get it, whereas before i was slacking and omitting things here and there.

Christine_72

Christine_72 wrote: »

I recently upped my calories (to sedentary maintenance) because i stopped losing and rage quit the diet! Low and behold I've started losing consistently again. If i didn't know better I'd think eating more has enabled weight loss to resume again... However here is the real reason.

I log everything, no more little treats that i "forget" to log.
I've ramped up my exercise.
All in all, my diary and food logging is as accurate as I can get it, whereas before i was slacking and omitting things here and there.

I forgot to add my point.. Looking at my diary it appears I'm eating more compared to a few months ago, but in reality I am not.

psuLemon

cwolfman13 wrote: »

psuLemon wrote: »

CattOfTheGarage wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

Eat more to lose more has more to do with dietary adherence than anything...

My suspicion is that you are right. There are too many people coming here saying "I ate more and started to lose faster" for it to be total bunk imo - but I can't accept the idea that it's because of metabolic adaptation. Sure, the metabolism adapts, the body makes savings, but there's no way it can make savings big enough to wipe out a thousand calorie deficit (or more).

What I think is happening is that people are white-knuckling it with a huge deficit, and as a result, body and mind are rebelling. Portions look smaller than they really are, snacks become more tempting and easier to forget, exercise seems harder and longer and if the fitbit tells them they burned 800 calories, they're not going to argue! And then there are the binges, which either get under-logged or (more likely) not logged at all because of shame (understandable, but counterproductive) and are rationalised as "just a weekend treat".

And so the body and brain work together to strong-arm you into eating enough to maintain your weight - because that is the aim of every part of your being apart from the one little outnumbered, outgunned region we call "consciousness". I don't think people are lying at all. I think they're genuinely unaware of this. I think it's a very primal defence mechanism, like locking an insane captain in the brig to stop him sinking the ship.

So then someone says "eat more to lose more" and it sounds weird, but maybe they say something about metabolic adaptation and it seems to make some kind of sense, so you try it. And suddenly your body finds you aren't trying to starve it any more. Sure, you're still in a deficit, but a 500 or 250 calorie deficit is small enough that it doesn't feel like starving. Your body isn't THAT good at judging how much food it needs, the margin of error is pretty high, and after a couple of weeks adapting, this feels like enough, or at least not like a famine.

So the red alert gets cancelled, the captain is unlocked from the brig, all the dirty tricks stop and you find you can actually do this. And in a few weeks, guess what? You're losing weight! And faster than when you were eating "less". It's a miracle!

So how do you do it? Set up myfitnesspal to lose 1lb or half a lb a week, then log all your food and exercise, honestly and as accurately as you can. Don't cut out foods unnecessarily, leave room for treats, do exercise that you enjoy, and repeat. Repeat every day. That's all.

Why I did it, I was following the TDEE method. I started with 1800 calories and bumped to around 2300. I found I was just more consistent. It's possible that I also saw transient increases in expenditure output from exercise and daily activity since I was less tired.

Same...

And to the bolded...I think maintenance is a lot higher than I thought it would be because of this...as I upped calories I had more energy and worked harder and did more and it was this sort of perpetual snowball to about 3,000 calories when I thought maintenance would be more like 2,500 given the rate at which I was losing when I went to maintenance.

That is pretty much where I am at. The largest issue is people talk about deficit size. So thinking in terms of 1000 vs 500 calories is not exactly a correct assumption. Because the driving number is TDEE and that is not static. My TDEE increased when I increase calories because of the aforementioned transient increases in movement, increases to workout intensity and compliance improved due to more volume of food. So while I used to eat 1800 calories, my TDEE was also lower. The increase in calories, helped me increase my TDEE, so the deficit is pretty equal to before but it helped me become more consistent. So I ate more and lost more due to all the factors.