Increased Calories Increased Weightloss

SaraSaysBeKind

Hi everyone,

This is my first post and as most people are im looking for some feedback.

I'm a 37 year old female, 5"6 and very overweight! I finally decided to give myself a kick up the bum and on the 11th January totally turned my lifestyle around. No alcohol, upped my exercise and logged all my food on MFP.

In 9 weeks I've gone from 18 stone 2 pounds to 16 stone 13 and I'm really proud of myself as I feel fantastic.

I'm following a diet of 1300 calories a day which MFP worked out for me and I can honestly say I've felt fine with this and not felt hungry at any point. I have a treat meal on a Friday evening and that is the only time I eat more than this and even then only by around an extra 300 calories.

Despite the low calorie intake I was surprised I was only loosing just one pound a week. One week I gained 2 pounds...even though I did nothing at all differently (I know everyone says this but I honestly didn't budge off plan)

After a bit of research I found a lot of people were saying that there is such a thing as not eating enough calories. If your not eating sufficient calories it will be harder to lose weight as your body basically goes into starvation mode and clings onto everything you eat as it needs to store energy.

With this information, the last two weeks I've decided to reduce the exercise I was doing rather than increase calories and the last two weeks I've lost 3 pound a week.

I'm guessing there is some truth in that I wasn't eating enough so I'm going to continue with what I've been doing the last two weeks. But rather than reduce my exercise increase my calories slightly. But how much should I increase by?

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

AnnPT77

Yes, if you're losing 3 pounds a week over multiple weeks, it would be a good idea to slow that down, to minimize health risks. Many of us think 0.5-1% of current body weight per week is a sensible maximum. You might be OK at 2 pounds a week for a bit yet, at your current weight.

You can estimate how much more to eat (or how much more to exercise, or whatever), by assuming that a pound of fat is about 3500 calories, so a pound a week is 500 calories per day. (If you need a different amount, just do the arithmetic, i.e., half a pound a week would be 250 calories daily, etc.).

If you are losing at 3 pounds a week, and want to lose 2 pounds a week, eat 500 more calories daily, at the same exercise/activity level, for example. Stick with that for at least one full menstrual cycle, so you can compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles, then adjust again if needed. Does that make sense?

One caution: If you add 500 calories daily all at once, you'll see a scale jump from more food in transit in your digestive system, plus some water retention needed to digest/metabolize the added food. Don't let that freak you out. Neither of those are fat, so not worth worrying about. Things will stabilize again, in something from a few days to a couple of weeks or so, and you should start seeing loss on the scale again.

Best wishes!

speyerj

@SaraSaysBeKind - You are doing great. In 9 weeks you lost 17 pounds. Your plan of 1300 calories a day most days and having a little extra one day seems reasonable. If that is working out to an average of ~800/day calorie deficit, then it seems like your progress so far is right on target.

Losing 1 pound a week is really great and something to be pleased and proud of.

Gaining 2 pounds another week when nothing else has changed is something that happens to everyone. As you said, the following 2 weeks you dropped 3 pounds each week. So, in 3 weeks you lost 4 pounds - 1.3 pounds a week. Also something to be pleased and proud of.

The idea that "If you're not eating sufficient calories it will be harder to lose weight as your body basically goes into starvation mode and clings onto everything you eat as it needs to store energy." is not scientifically supported. But on the other hand, maintaining a deficit of more than 1000 calories a day is generally not effective in the long term. Not because it "wrecks your metabolism" but because it's not sustainable. It's hard on your body. It puts you under stress, makes you unhappy, makes you ravenously hungry and makes you want to abandon your diet. Taken to the extreme it can also have serious health consequences. But from the info you provided, you were eating at a healthy deficit and it felt sustainable.

The week you gained 2 pounds while eating at a deficit - you were still losing fat. You were also retaining water. The two weeks you lost 3 pounds while exercises less than you had the week before - you were still losing fat - and you shed the water that you had retained earlier. Likely, taking an exercise break let your body relax and restore and that helped shed some of the water you were retaining.

If adding a few more calories every day to your diet makes you happier and makes you more likely to sustain it, then do it. If going back to the way you were eating before (1300 calories most days with a 1600 calorie "cheat" day) then do that too. You will lose weight either way. The best way to lose weight is to eat in a way that allows you to stick to plan.

PAV8888

Long term adherence and losing weight by doing things you plan on continuing to do after you lose your weight...that's what you want!

Water weight changes can account both for your perceived increase in weight and for your perceived extra decrease.

Including that part of your perceived extra decrease could be a reduction in water being retained for muscle repair now that you're exercising less