Eating more and losing weight ......... losing it fast, too fast :S

Beths_Angels

Hopefully someone here would please be nice enough to answer a question for me. Been working towards getting healthy since Feb and its really paid off. I'm 5”4 was obese at 195 pounds but have been working hard and gotten down to 161 pounds. I have been eating 1200 to 1400 cals per day and losing 2 pounds a week. Now my BMI says I'm in the overweight but not obese section I wanted to start upping my cals. I changed my goal to lose around 1 pound a week and slow the weight loss so I didn't have to be as hard on myself. I'm now eating around 1800 cals per day but I've started losing 3 to 4 pounds a week. Can this be normal or should I worry?

mmapags

How long has this rate of loss happened?

Beths_Angels

mmapags wrote: »

How long has this rate of loss happened?

3 weeks so far and I'm down over half a stone. I've called the doctor but they are only giving out appointments if its an emergency cos of the quarantine. At that rate it can't be water plus I think my weight would of gone up the weeks leading up to it.

Edit: Is it worth upping my cals to 2000 and seeing if it levels out that way.

mmapags

And you are logging accurately using a food scale?

PAV8888

Don't be too alarmed, or too surprised. And yes, assuming your logs are accurate, I would increase to 2K with the intention of slowing things down.

Your initial loss (depending on when in February) is coming back at MORE than 2lbs a week. I don't know what you actually logged as intake (what you aimed to eat matters much less than what you ACTUALLY ate), but it seems likely that a 400 Cal increase (500 Cal corresponding to 1lb) won't bring a rate of more than 2lbs down to 1lb or less. If you were eating 1400 and losing at more than 2lbs a week, your maintenance calories were more than 2500

You are also quite likely to become more active and exercise more vigorously (with more energy) as you're feeling good because of your weight loss so far, and fuelling yourself at a higher percentage of what you need to maintain, i.e. your calories out may have increased as compared to before (so even higher than previous which was at least 2500).

However, there exist potential confounding factors: some water weight MAY have been released with a reduction in the stress your body has been under. you may also be "benefiting" from time of month hormonal water weight balancing in terms of using your current loss rates to establish your current calories out.

In general I prefer to make my decisions based on weight trend results as opposed to discrete scale weight results. While weight trend is not ALWAYS more correct than scale weight, MOST of the time it is. You can use an app or web site to establish a multi week trend if the "general" statement of "your TDEE looks like 2500 or MORE" is not precise enough for your needs!

In any case. moving to 2000 at this point seems very conservative if anything. In fact moving to above 2K would also seem reasonable as your current TDEE is clearly above 2500 (as mentioned, potentially appreciably higher than 2500 based on recent losses while a base level of 2500 has been substantiated based on your previous losses)

I mean other than temporary blips as you start to eat a bit more anything below 2500 would still be a deficit... and you can keep adjusting.

yirara

Have you been working out less (or has it become more normal for you), or had your menstruation three weeks ago? Or did anything else change? There's a possibility that part of that is water weight. Fluid retention is totally a thing, and especially for women. Or more regular poops?

cupcakesandproteinshakes

How long have you been at 1800 for? I might suggest an increase of 100 calories a day if the 3 to 4 pound loss per week has been happening for a month. If you increased to 1800 in the past week or so I might weight a few weeks and see if it is a trend which then slows down.