Calorie In/Calorie Out - False?

heavymetal100

Hi,

I lost roughly 25 pounds 3 years ago and went from 220 -> 195 following CICO so it works. But now I've regained all my weight and on the 21st May I decided to do it all over again and get myself looking better and feeling better about myself. My starting weight is: 223

My TDEE is ~2441 Calories. And been following a weekly deficit of 3500 calories - I've weighed myself today and I'm down to: 216 pounds. Brilliant I've lost 7 pounds but on a deficit of 1 pound a week I should have lost 3 maybe 4 pounds? I'm curious to know where I've lost the other weight. Water/Muscle?

I'm eating moderate Carb: 100 - 150g - High fat - Moderate Protein

jemhh

Water weight. Any time you start dieting after a period of unregulated eating you drop several pounds of water weight to start.

NovusDies

Just remember that any water weight you lose you can gain back in part or full so there may be times the scale indicates a "plateau" or a gain even when you have lost fat weight.

VUA21

Weight loss isn't linear. Water retention plays the biggest role in sudden drops and/or gains. The longer you track your weight loss, the easier it is to see that the Xlbs per week averages out and is fairly accurate in the grand scheme.

AnvilHead

Short-term fluctuations due to water/glycogen balance, etc. do absolutely nothing to disprove CICO.

You can be in a known, established caloric deficit and gain several pounds overnight by eating a high sodium meal and/or doing some exercise you're not accustomed to.

cwolfman13

You typically have a significant drop in water weight when you start a diet...it starts to even out. Not to mention, your ~TDEE is just an estimate...we're not working with exact numbers here which seems to invalidate CICO for some people for some reason.

rj0150684

cwolfman13 wrote: »

You typically have a significant drop in water weight when you start a diet...it starts to even out. Not to mention, your ~TDEE is just an estimate...we're not working with exact numbers here which seems to invalidate CICO for some people for some reason.

+1 to this, but not just your TDEE. All of it a big stack of estimates. Even if you’re using a food scale, it’s all just estimates. Error in the scale, error in the entries (does anyone honestly think every 4 ounces of sirloin has the same exact number of calories?). The idea is that some of your estimates might be a little high, some might be a little low, but ideally they sorta balance out. Sometimes they don’t. That said, 3lbs in a few weeks is water.

Unknown

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CarvedTones

Lots of estimates and a little voodoo. But as long as you aren't doing anything to consistently throw it off in one direction, the minor errors usually seem to cancel each other out.

lorrpb

It also depends on the accuracy of your logging.