Eating more to lose fat?

Hello

I am a 37 year old female, height 5f 7- all my life at 128-130lbs but due to taking an antidepressant for 1 year, I gained 10 lbs and then some and am currently up to 143lbs. I came off the antidepressant this January but my weight hasn’t budged. So I kept eating less and less to about1000 calories a day and started working out like crazy (cardio).
Then I even gained 3 lbs and I became even more desperate.

My doctor wanted to put me on Phentermine since I seem to not be able to loose an ounce but I didn’t want that so I signed up for a trainer and now we lift heavy weights 3 times a week combined with HIIT training.

The weird thing is that he wants me to eat MORE to lose weight. What????
I am so scared doing this but over 3 weeks I went from 1000 calories to 1400 calories (track everything on fitness pal, macros are 40 p, 30 f, 30 c).
I have not gained any weight nor lost any...

What am I supposed to do? I feel I am never going to lose the 10 lbs...

Replies

  • bcwagneripad1
    bcwagneripad1 Posts: 9 Member
    I know I am at a healthy weight range but me personally I am not happy with how I look at that weight and I am the person to live with myself. I get that all the time..why 10lbs?

    I do measure everything on a kitchen scale that I consume so I am very accurate on the daily intake..

    What happens if I eat even more than 1400 calories? Won’t I gain even more weight? I had a eating disorder when I was younger so weight and food has always been a sore subject.

    Trainer says I should start losing once my body realizes it is not starving anymore .. is that true?
  • PJFinSJ
    PJFinSJ Posts: 10 Member
    When I started working with a trainer, he told me to eat more and I was also afraid. Being on diets my whole life, I was always thinking "eat less, eat less" to lose weight. But then I had my RMR (resting metabolic rate) measured and my trainer was right on. I started eating more, felt better, and started to lose weight again. If you are strength training, you need to eat enough calories to fuel your body and enable you to build muscle (to increase that RMR!)
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,262 Member
    When you reduce calories, you tend to reduce your NEAT (non-exercise activity) calorie expenditure without thinking about it. The extent to which this happens varies but some people's NEAT decreases far enough to outweigh increases in exercise and decreases in calories eaten. I would suggest eating in a small deficit while lifting with your trainer and doing 2-3 days of cardio per week. I'd start out at 1750 calories for a month and see how that goes.
  • Asher_Ethan
    Asher_Ethan Posts: 2,430 Member
    Eating more to lose fat? If we're being technical - when you lose weight slowly and have a progressive lifting program you're going to lose more fat than muscle. Where as if you lose weight rapidly fast- you're going to lose fat and muscle (and its hard to get that muscle back!)
    So technically.... Yes, you can eat more to lose fat.
  • bcwagneripad1
    bcwagneripad1 Posts: 9 Member
    Doctor suggested to take Phentermine to “speed “ up my metabolism after I told him I can’t loose weight on 1000 calories. I am from Europe and live here now in the US. I never heard of Phentermine before but when I googled it I was like “ hell no, I am not taking that”- they took that off the market in my home country Germany. You can get a heart attack on that.

    Have an appointment to measure my BMR... will the result be my normal BMR at 1000 cals or what it actually should be?
    Never had this done before..


  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    Doctor suggested to take Phentermine to “speed “ up my metabolism after I told him I can’t loose weight on 1000 calories. I am from Europe and live here now in the US. I never heard of Phentermine before but when I googled it I was like “ hell no, I am not taking that”- they took that off the market in my home country Germany. You can get a heart attack on that.

    Have an appointment to measure my BMR... will the result be my normal BMR at 1000 cals or what it actually should be?
    Never had this done before..


    Mine was 1350 when measured about 18 months ago. The guy who did it said I came in high compared to other women my size/age. It gives me a good baseline, but I don’t take it as absolute gospel. I’m 5’3 and about 115. I’ll see when I have it redone. Kinda interested in how the tests come in over time.

    And I’m glad you decide on not taking the Phentermine. It was really irresponsible of your doc to offer you that with your stats and based on the information he had. Maybe find a new one. You deserve better.
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
    Doctor suggested to take Phentermine to “speed “ up my metabolism after I told him I can’t loose weight on 1000 calories. I am from Europe and live here now in the US. I never heard of Phentermine before but when I googled it I was like “ hell no, I am not taking that”- they took that off the market in my home country Germany. You can get a heart attack on that.

    Have an appointment to measure my BMR... will the result be my normal BMR at 1000 cals or what it actually should be?
    Never had this done before..


    BMR - basal metabolic rate. "Normal" is based on your height, weight, age, gender, etc. Again, look this up on line before your appointment to see what an average range looks like. This is not the same as TDEE, which will be higher.
  • Nony_Mouse
    Nony_Mouse Posts: 5,646 Member
    Hello

    I am a 37 year old female, height 5f 7- all my life at 128-130lbs but due to taking an antidepressant for 1 year, I gained 10 lbs and then some and am currently up to 143lbs. I came off the antidepressant this January but my weight hasn’t budged. So I kept eating less and less to about1000 calories a day and started working out like crazy (cardio).
    Then I even gained 3 lbs and I became even more desperate.

    My doctor wanted to put me on Phentermine since I seem to not be able to loose an ounce but I didn’t want that so I signed up for a trainer and now we lift heavy weights 3 times a week combined with HIIT training.

    The weird thing is that he wants me to eat MORE to lose weight. What????
    I am so scared doing this but over 3 weeks I went from 1000 calories to 1400 calories (track everything on fitness pal, macros are 40 p, 30 f, 30 c).
    I have not gained any weight nor lost any...

    What am I supposed to do? I feel I am never going to lose the 10 lbs...

    Did you just start the heavy lifting three weeks ago also? If so, you're likely retaining fluid for muscle repair. That will shift as you get used to the new workouts.

    You may also want to consider doing a controlled diet break, eating at maintenance for a couple of weeks. Have a read of these two links for what happens when you under eat and over-exercise, and why diet breaks are a good idea:

    https://bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html/

    https://bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-full-diet-break.html/

    And check out this thread (pertinent info in the first post, you don't need to read all fifty billion pages, though lots of other good stuff throughout the thread): https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks#latest
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,724 Member
    This is a somewhat complicated issue. It would take a lot of back and forth questions before I could form an opinion about you personally - like how long you were at various calorie levels without losing, what types of exercise you started/stopped alongside that eating, whether your daily non-exercise routine changed, what the macro composition of your eating was at certain times, and more.

    Let's keep it simple.

    Sometimes, people who yo-yo weight repeatedly on extreme diets will end up with a lower total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), which is all-day calorie burn from all sources. One mechanism for this is that they run extreme calorie deficits with mostly cardio exercise and often insufficient protein, then stop exercising altogether and eat bunches of carby fatty stuff (still inadequate protein). Each weight loss is partly fat and partly lean tissue, and each regain is mainly fat. Over time, the resulting body composition leaves them with both a slightly lower resting calorie burn (RMR/BMR) and less daily activity (because less fit/strong) which also means less calorie burn, so lowered TDEE. The second mechanism is that during extreme calorie deficits, they get fatigued and do less in daily life. When that inactivity becomes persistent habit, the result is a still lower TDEE.

    Abstractly, if you eat fewer calories than the number you burned on day one of your "diet", and do that for 180 days, you lose weight. In a practical sense, if you eat fewer calories so get fatigued/weak and move less/rest more, you burn fewer calories and lose weight slower than you'd expect, with your energy level, activity and calorie burn slowly but progressively declining over time. Day 180 calorie burn is materially lower than day 1 calorie burn, in that scenario.

    It's not likely one will burn so many fewer calories that it wipes out a good-sized calorie deficit, but if you combine a slowed loss rate with factors that increase water retention, the slow fat loss rate can be masked on the scale by water retention. Things that can increase water retention include stress, inflammation, eating relatively more carbs/sodium than usual (even if not "too many"), new exercise requiring muscle repair, and more. This kind of nonsense can get worse if also doing exhausting/stressful forms of exercise (weight training with inadequate rest days, true HIIT cardio too often, etc.).

    Add impatience to that mix (like giving up after 2 weeks and getting more extreme), and you get posts that say "low metabolism" "can't lose weight" "about to give up".

    Usually, if people are not losing weight on low calories, and they've stuck with it consistently for 6+ weeks, there's a mesurement/estimation problem: Overestimating activity, or underestimating intake. That's by far the commonest explanation.

    It is possible, though, that your "sweet spot" for weight loss, calorie-wise, is not the lowest calorie level you can force yourself to endure. If that crazy-low level leaves you undernourished, fatigued and dragging (thus burning fewer calories all day long, maybe sleeping more besides), a more effective calorie level could be at a higher point that gives you better nutrition, more energy and keeps you more active.

    No matter what, losing the last 10 pounds usually requires more meticulous tracking, and should take quite a while, as 0.5lb/week is the maximum reasonable loss rate.