How much of a calorie deficit?

BrunetteRunner87
BrunetteRunner87 Posts: 591 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi everyone
I want to ask what everyone thinks about how much of a calorie deficit per week is optimal.
I started out a couple years ago doing the 1200 calories per day thing. It got me out of the overweight zone and into the healthy zone, so I'm glad, but I don't want to do that anymore (and I don't think I've had that small of an amount of calories for like a year and a half).
I tried the TDEE - 20% thing (well actually it ended up being 15%), but mentally it doesn't work too well for me. I keep just saying I'll make up for extra food later and I dont. I have yo-yo'd between 15 pounds for the past year or so.
What does work for me, I have found, is I wear a fitbit to track my steps and calories burned with regular daily activity and walking around during strength training. I take it off when I exercise and wear a HRM, or just make a low guess for something like swimming or if I don't feel like wearing it that day.
So at the end of the day I have this number of calories burned, and a number of calories eaten. Then the next day I do the same thing. At the end of the week I add up the deficit. Some days I'm over, and some days I'm under.

I'm 5'1", around 129ish (not really sure, threw out the scale a few weeks ago), 26 yo. And a female. I do new rules of lifting 2X per week (or 3 on a really good week), but my focus is training for my first marathon in Oct (really really slowly). I'd like to get back down to 115 or even around 110, or just how I looked at 115.

How much should my calorie deficit be at the end of the week? Should I do the math with 20% TDEE and just make it try to match up? The problem I had with the TDEE is that my activity level varies so much day to day, week to week.

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