Losing weight

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Roversyndrome
Roversyndrome Posts: 5 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hey guys, I started dieting in June. Lately I’ve fallen off a bit, I normally eat 1400 cal a day, but sometimes going over to about 1600, and I’m still losing weight... idk if I should be worried or not...

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  • painforpleasure
    painforpleasure Posts: 40 Member
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    I don't think there is a reason to worry. Depending on your activity level and metabolism, it's quite possible that you can lose weight while consuming 1600 calories.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,564 Member
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    No reason to worry.

    If you were eating at 1400 and losing at about the slowest observable rate, half a pound a week, you'd have to add 250 calories to stop losing. (And given that daily weight fluctuations for most of us are in the multi-pound range, half a pound a week usually takes *weeks* to show up clearly in scale-weight observations, as I know from experience.)

    If you were losing a pound a week on average at 1400, then the implication is that your current maintenance calories are 1900 daily, so eating anything less than 1900 would still result in weight loss. And so forth for different previous loss rates.

    As a generality, one would expect eating 200 calories more daily would result in losing weight at roughly 0.4 pounds a week more slowly . . . but if eating a little more perks up energy level and results in more daily movement or more intense exercise sessions, it could have less impact than that.

    All of this is based on the science-based assumption that a pound of body fat represents roughly 3500 calories.
  • Roversyndrome
    Roversyndrome Posts: 5 Member
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    Thank you very much for this! I weighed 210 in June now I am 189, eating around 1400-1500 in a day. I am surprised to still be losing after chocolate and such!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,564 Member
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    Roversyndrome wrote: »
    Thank you very much for this! I weighed 210 in June now I am 189, eating around 1400-1500 in a day. I am surprised to still be losing after chocolate and such!

    I'm eating chocolate, craft beer, cheese, tortilla chips, and more (as part of an overall nutritious diet) at 1850 calories plus exercise calories (so over 2000 most days) and losing very slowly (about a pound a month for almost the last year), at 5'5", currently 126 pounds (upper 130s last October), age 64 (and in year 5 of a healthy weight after 3 decades of previous obesity).

    I admit, I'm mysteriously a good li'l ol' calorie burner, but my point is that there are no magically dangerous foods (except ones we can't moderate), because weight management is all about calories (though nutrition is also important for health if not weight management); and any calorie level that's below our own personal daily calorie burn will result in weight loss (so there's no generic magic number, either).

    I started at about your current weight (I was at 183) in April 2015, and lost around 50 pounds in less than a year, most of it at 1400-1600 plus all exercise calories. At this point, I trust the process.

    Best wishes for continuing weight management success!

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