Too much Too fast - Weight loss

paulra93

So...

I’ve lost 7kg or 15lbs in five weeks and the difference is apparent in how I look, but it’s not at it’s peak for sure.

Reason being - I was eating too low calories.
What happened was, I was losing weigh rapidly, but instead of losing maximum amount of fat I was also losing my lean muscle.

While my maintenance Kcal is somewhere around between 3200-3600 considering I go gym 4-5 times a week working with weights and doing cardio every session. Also my work is physical.

While my maintenance Kcal is above 3k, my deficit would be somewhere from 3k to 2.6k.

So that means I would still have to eat quite a lot to lose weight, but what I did I held my calorie intake below 1800kcal a day trying to force the outcome.

Did some research and came out with a new plan: Higher carbs, lower protein and same fat.

So I’ll start new regiment from tomorrow which will look something like that:

Kcal 2650
Protein 225
Carbs 199
Fats 101

Hopefully weight wont drop as quickly and I will get the peak in terms of losing fat rather than lean muscle mass.

Any advice is much appreciated.

aeloine

I won't speak to the macros, but I'll point out that you probably lost a lot of water weight in the beginning, driving up your average weight loss.

DebLaBounty

I think you’re on the right track to increase calories. I lost weight too fast and lost muscle mass, which takes forever to regain!

jseams1234

@aeloine is correct - particularly for men and for anybody who goes from a normal to high carb intake maintenance or bulk to a relatively low carb "diet". You will lose in the first couple of weeks a significant amount of weight - this is just water weight caused by glycogen depletion and not fat.

I'll use myself as an example - I was on a bulk and hit about 240 pounds on Christmas day. I started my cut the day after. In less than a month I had lost over 20 pounds and the count is down to 212 now. That's almost 30 pounds lost in about 5 weeks. A lot of this is water weight. I know this because I have maintained my lifting schedule and my lifts haven't suffered at all. In fact, I've actually slightly increased a few of them. This is my metric to test for muscle loss - how are you determining that you lost muscle? Have you lost a significant amount of strength (not endurance - volume can become an issue for some because of the glycogen loss).

Did your weight loss slow and stabilize at the 5 week mark? How much body fat do you have? The higher your BF % the more aggressive you can be with your cut. You mention that 225 is your *lower* and adjusted protein goal - which is still fairly high even for a cut especially if you aren't extremely lean or muscular to begin with. That high protein intake during those 5 weeks and a proper lifting program with adequate rest should have prevented or severely limited any loss of LBM.

Nothing wrong with slow and steady and your initial target of 1800 might be too much - but I wouldn't freak out quite yet.

btw: I was bulking at 4.5K+ Kcal and I'm cutting at 2200.

TavistockToad

if your maintenance was 3k and your deficit was 3k, you mean you were eating net 0 cals?

paulra93

jseams1234 wrote: »

@aeloine is correct - particularly for men and for anybody who goes from a normal to high carb intake maintenance or bulk to a relatively low carb "diet". You will lose in the first couple of weeks a significant amount of weight - this is just water weight caused by glycogen depletion and not fat.

I'll use myself as an example - I was on a bulk and hit about 240 pounds on Christmas day. I started my cut the day after. In less than a month I had lost over 20 pounds and the count is down to 212 now. That's almost 30 pounds lost in about 5 weeks. A lot of this is water weight. I know this because I have maintained my lifting schedule and my lifts haven't suffered at all. In fact, I've actually slightly increased a few of them. This is my metric to test for muscle loss - how are you determining that you lost muscle? Have you lost a significant amount of strength (not endurance - volume can become an issue for some because of the glycogen loss).

Did your weight loss slow and stabilize at the 5 week mark? How much body fat do you have? The higher your BF % the more aggressive you can be with your cut. You mention that 225 is your *lower* and adjusted protein goal - which is still fairly high even for a cut especially if you aren't extremely lean or muscular to begin with. That high protein intake during those 5 weeks and a proper lifting program with adequate rest should have prevented or severely limited any loss of LBM.

Nothing wrong with slow and steady and your initial target of 1800 might be too much - but I wouldn't freak out quite yet.

btw: I was bulking at 4.5K+ Kcal and I'm cutting at 2200.

I would say fair enough, but! I never was bulking or working at the gym with weights, so it’s hard to say, I assume my carbs were fairly high before the diet as I was eating random *kitten*.

Since my work is physical and I workout quite a lot my kcal deficit sits at a high 2750, maybe even higher.

Going for 35% protein 35%carbs and 30%fat seems like the most optimal way.

Also would like to add that I just recently started using MFP again and checking my MACROS.

First four weeks were steady weight loss of around 4.5kg and this week I made a HUGE drop of 2.1KG in just one weeks. This is why I'm reconsidering my diet.

Thank you !

paulra93

TavistockToad wrote: »

if your maintenance was 3k and your deficit was 3k, you mean you were eating net 0 cals?

My maitanence is around 3400-3600
Deficit sits at 3000 and below.
Was eating no more than 1800.

Cheers.

ConwayJosh

If you're training 4-5x per week then you might find it useful to reduce fat percentage down to 10-20% even as low as 10 is more than enough for health. So that you can consume more carbs for energy for training as well as protein to help protein synthetic response.

paulra93

ConwayJosh wrote: »

If you're training 4-5x per week then you might find it useful to reduce fat percentage down to 10-20% even as low as 10 is more than enough for health. So that you can consume more carbs for energy for training as well as protein to help protein synthetic response.

Thank you, will take in consideration!