Beginning calorie deficit when you're used to eating a lot

PAV8888

Sounds like an excellent start.

Since you mentioned

pink_mint wrote: »

If I had started at 1,600 calories thinking I just obey MFP calculator or what I "should" be eating to lose, I would have quit and concluded there's something wrong with me by now.

that the suggested calories that MFP spits back are the results of your inputs and CHOICES.

You are the one specifying your activity level (usually people select sedentary and they often aren't. sometimes people over-estimate their exercise calories and eat back too many;but, more often, for fear of over-estimating they eat none or under-eat their exercise calories and lose faster than appropriate for them.

Additionally, you don't HAVE to choose to lose 2lbs a week to lose weight. The 2lb or bust myth is the same as you saying that unless I lose 104lbs a year I can't lose weight!

Oh? So losing 50lbs or losing 70lbs instead of 104lbs would not come in handy, and wouldn't count as effective weight loss for you, right?

Adherence and consistently pointing in the right direction is much more important than trying to get there faster and giving up because "all my hard work is not paying off with the results I expect". The problem there is not the lack of payoff, it is that the process is not seeking sustainability and failing to account for and accept the blips that will inevitably happen.

Furthermore, seeking sustainability means you're more likely to experiment with long term choices you feel you will be able to continue into maintenance instead of losing weight one way and hoping to maintain the loss doing things in a different way.

So yes, your start sounds excellent and even if you don't see equally fast results over the next few weeks nothing stops you from either choosing slower progress or making further adjustments as time goes on. By the way, 4lbs in 2 weeks IS fast results but you need at least 4-6 weeks of results--and may I suggest a weight trend app or web site too--before you have an actual handle on your actual rate of loss.

A reminder that while 2lbs a week is "safe" it is not necessarily optimal for everyone. It IS more suitable to someone who is morbidly obese as opposed to someone who is just overweight. I prefer to view deficits as a percentage of TDEE and consider 20% an aggressive deficit for someone who is overweight or normal weight (moving this up to 25% for someone who is obese).

I also noticed that you're tracking without a scale. Nothing wrong with that. Just remember that it might make your results a bit less consistent, or, conversely, prompt you to over-restrict.

I enjoyed using a scale because it gave me the option to include as much as I could afford into my day while still meeting my goals and worrying less about any body weight scale variability given that my logging was solid! My goal being weight loss, not penance, meant that achieving the loss as pleasantly as possible was a win in my books!

cherys

I can tell you how I did it, because I'm in week four and honestly have found it so much easier than I thought I would. Start by making a list of all the really low calorie foods that you love and use these as the basis of the bulk of your meals. This is easy if you love vegetables and berries etc. For now, swap fatty foods for low fat varieties as they have fewer calories for the same bulk. Do the same with sugar - ditch sugary varieties for low sugar. Cook in ways that require no extra fat. Look for lower calorie versions of what you love

So for breakfast I will have 100g of low fat greek yoghurt or skyr sprinkled with 35g of low sugar granola and then bulked out with lots of fresh or frozen berries.

The other day I was craving red meat. We had some gourmet burgers in the freezer but they were 330 cals each and 22% fat. Instead I bought some 5% fat lean mince, added finely chopped onion and egg, seasoning, stirred them together, made them into beefburger patties and grilled them on a sheet of baking parchment. Each one was 150 calories. They were delicious. With a big leafy salad and some tomatoes, two burgers some in at around 350 calories for a main meal. You can add a bowl of home popped corn (just pop it in a pan, no oil, then add salt and paprika) if you want some padding.

I find cutting out white flour helped reduce my appetite overnight as it stopped the cravings. That's worth trying as an experiment. It won't work for everyone, but if you are over eating every day, are there times when you are bingeing in response to a craving rather than actual hunger? I find the two really easy to identify now, Cravings are like an incessant voice saying 'I'm starving and must eat something carby absolutely immediately, in high volume.' Real hunger is a feeling in the stomach that signals food is needed but it can wait for half an hour or more. Not having felt it for years, I quite like the feeling of real hunger. It feels healthy.

earlnabby

pink_mint wrote: »

So when you're used to eating 4,000 or so calories a day, how do you ease into a calorie deficit? I know I was eating this much because I started this current weight loss endeavor by being very honest with myself and tracking my intake on a normal day where I wasn't trying to be "good".

I know what MFP says I should be eating to lose weight. But how realistic and sustainable is it to just all of a sudden drop a full 2,000 per day? This is not about specific numbers per se. I'm just wondering about a calorie range when starting out in a place where you're used to eating so far above what your recommended calorie budget is for weight loss.

Do you just cut your calories so drastically and suffer through it until you get used to it? Or lower them in stages, even though you won't be in an actual deficit at first?

Any thoughts appreciated!

I started by concentrating more on WHEN I ate, rather than what. I am a grazer so I set out specific meal times (3 meals plus 2 snacks) to eat instead of allowing myself to eat whenever. I tried to make those meals out of more meal-type food instead of snack type food (for example: a sandwich, piece of fruit, and container of yogurt for lunch instead of unlimited chips and salsa). Once I had the schedule down, I started lowering my calories to the target MFP set for me. Turns out I already lowered them by half just by eating meals instead of eating what I wanted, when I wanted it. It took me about 3 weeks to get into a groove at my calorie target but was a reasonably painless process.

It is good that you already started tracking, even the high calorie count. You can look at past days and see where you can just cut down a little or things you can cut out easily. The first thing people tend to change is beverages. Do you drink full sugar soda? Switch to diet. Fancy high sugar/high fat coffee drinks? Switch to black or a splash of cream and a small amount of sweetener. Juice? Eat whole fruit instead. Do you eat a huge mound of pasta? Eat less pasta but make the sauce heartier with more meat and veggies.

Small changes you start making right now will make a bigger difference in the long run than drastic changes right now. You will learn new habits and your weight loss will be more sustainable.

If there is something you cannot moderate (for me it is peanut butter and finger food like chips or cookies), cut it out for now. Later you may be able to have it in the house but be honest with yourself.

cherrylou123

Do it little by little 😊😊😊.. Let your body adjust to its demand

Example when you are eating rice 3 cups in 1 meal.. Make it 2. 5 then when your body has adjusted already make it lesser again.. Do it until you can eat only 1 cup of rice a day 😉.. Do the same for all other food especially for the unhealthy foods.. Eat more on veggies for snack (they make you feel full especially the green) and the protein rich food for meal, they help you build muscle 💪😊

pink_mint

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I am not even sure if I was binging when eating 4k calories a day. For me personally, I really think it was a reaction, a very hard pendulum swing after I stopped my lengthy keto experience. It's almost like I needed a length of time to feel like I'm allowed to eat what I want after feeling so extremely deprived for so long on keto. So for some people, eating that much may just be habits built over time, but I think at least part of it was somewhat healing from disordered eating patterns for me. But now of course I'm ready to reverse the weight gain in a sustainable way (def not keto).

Anyway I don't know if it's just me but eating that much (4k calories a day or more) is not hard and didn't even feel like I was stuffing myself. There are a number of value meals at major fast food establishments that are 2,000 calories just for that one meal. Sonic even has a single milkshake that exceeds 2,000 cals. The food environment we live in, here in the US at least, just makes it so easy and seamless to overeat.

I've noticed so far that tracking food intake is good to make sure you don't eat too much, but also that you're eat enough! Wanting to lose weight and not tracking can lead to a binge-restrict cycle. It's not that hard to get into actually.