Is it CICO or not?

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  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,454 Member
    edited June 2021
    naomi9271 wrote: »
    This has been a very interesting discussion to read. What it sounds to me if I understand correctly is that your body will help answer where your weight should be. So if you start getting hungry more often, not just before meals, that’s a possible indicator that %BF is about where your body wants it, give or take, and then is a good time to consider the switch to maintenance?

    Sorry for intruding, but I’ve been wondering if I have 1 or -1 or 5 or 7 pounds left to lose, so I’m very interested in this topic. Haven’t been hungry yet, probably sitting around high 20’s or a bit less in BF%, female, so that’d make sense.

    How do you know your body fat percentage? When I was talking about 20-21, I meant my BMI index number.

    https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm

    I had a lot of hunger between 22-20 on the BMI scale when I was trying to eat at a deficit. Those are the numbers to which I was referring.

    I've been at 20-21 for years and I'm able to maintain just fine at my weight, it's when I try to cut calories that the horse runs for the barn, :lol:
  • naomi9271
    naomi9271 Posts: 127 Member
    edited June 2021
    How do you know you r body fat percentage? When I was talking about 20-21, I meant my BMI index number.

    https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm

    I had a lot of hunger between 22-20 on the BMI scale. Those are the numbers to which I was referring.

    I am guesstimating the %BF from pictures and body part measurements. BMI doesn’t work well for me (big bones so it overestimates).
    Yes, I did see you were using BMI, but does it not measure that indirectly for the population average?

    That’s extremely helpful. I will be on the lookout for horse running :smile: …and just stop when it starts getting difficult (I’m fine with it if that happens any time from here forward, and that’s better than having some arbitrary number that means nothing as a goal)
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    naomi9271 wrote: »
    This has been a very interesting discussion to read. What it sounds to me if I understand correctly is that your body will help answer where your weight should be. So if you start getting hungry more often, not just before meals, that’s a possible indicator that %BF is about where your body wants it, give or take, and then is a good time to consider the switch to maintenance?

    First it would be great if everyone was that great at reading the body's indicators for hungry or not - most are on MFP trying to lose because they are not, and it's really a foreign language that if you don't know, you can easily misread.

    Second the body doesn't give indicators anyway regarding healthy weight or BF% levels in the sense of reading them.
    Longer term health indicators being bad when BF% has been higher for long periods of time sure, but that again is using brain not stomach to know that.
    Now, the body can get to point it feels threatened with level of weight and body fat and you'll have a fight on your hands attempting to keep losing as it adapts.
    Sadly the other direction has a little initial adapting but then it's ready to settle in and add fat.

    Several hormones can make you feel hungry that don't have any bearing on current levels of say body fat being healthy or not, but rather the change from prior level and it may not even be a healthy level yet.
  • naomi9271
    naomi9271 Posts: 127 Member
    Heybales and ccrdragon,
    You both make very good points, and I thank both of you for taking the time to respond. I’ve got a BMI of 24 currently, FWIW, and more-than-average muscle.

    It’s just such an inexact science…BMI is marginally helpful, #BF is largely a guess, and just arrgh trying to figure out where you should actually be! I know at 9lbs down from here I’m too skinny or at least look too skinny as my hip bones start to show…so that’s at least some kind of guideline.

    Again, thank you for your responses and thank you for your help!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    naomi9271 wrote: »
    Heybales and ccrdragon,
    You both make very good points, and I thank both of you for taking the time to respond. I’ve got a BMI of 24 currently, FWIW, and more-than-average muscle.

    It’s just such an inexact science…BMI is marginally helpful, #BF is largely a guess, and just arrgh trying to figure out where you should actually be! I know at 9lbs down from here I’m too skinny or at least look too skinny as my hip bones start to show…so that’s at least some kind of guideline.

    Again, thank you for your responses and thank you for your help!

    FWIW, this is one way in which slowing loss rate way down, as I knew I was getting close to goal weight, was really helpful: I felt like it gave me more time to assess whether I'd reached where I wanted to be, with multiple criteria (how I felt, looked, appetite, calorie needs, etc.). That slow loss *may* also be enough less stress on the body, to be useful in other ways.

    But IMO all of this stuff is really individual, a complicated interaction of individual physiology and psychology, habits and preferences.
  • naomi9271
    naomi9271 Posts: 127 Member
    Thank you Ann…
    The plan that I started out with is to lose down to a nice round number, which is 4lbs away and 5lbs over looking a bit too skinny. That will give me a 10lb range within which I both fit my clothes and am fine with myself. Two weeks ago, I added back a few hundred calories to try to slow the rate of descent, and I think I’ll do that again and see what happens.

    I am back at a size I’d been hovering around for many years pre-COVID. I’m much more interested now in improving my diet and overall health and fitness.

    Took me forever to write this, cause I was sorting all this out while taking on board everything you guys said….and realizing I might be being a bit obsessive about getting everything exactly right, when that’s not really the point.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    naomi9271 wrote: »
    Thank you Ann…
    The plan that I started out with is to lose down to a nice round number, which is 4lbs away and 5lbs over looking a bit too skinny. That will give me a 10lb range within which I both fit my clothes and am fine with myself. Two weeks ago, I added back a few hundred calories to try to slow the rate of descent, and I think I’ll do that again and see what happens.

    I am back at a size I’d been hovering around for many years pre-COVID. I’m much more interested now in improving my diet and overall health and fitness.

    Took me forever to write this, cause I was sorting all this out while taking on board everything you guys said….and realizing I might be being a bit obsessive about getting everything exactly right, when that’s not really the point.

    That's a great insight!

    Not sure if it's true for you, but sometimes people have a tendency, I think, to see these goal decisions as final, at least at first. But they're not. We can change our minds. We need not be perfect in some pure and eternal sense.

    If a particular weight is too hard to maintain (has too low a calorie level, triggers hunger/cravings, whatever), we can decide to intentionally regain a managed amount, and maintain there instead; or add activity (daily life or exercise to earn more calories, or whatever). On the opposite side, we can hold at a particular weight for a while, decide we'd like to lose a bit more fat via calorie reduction, and do that.

    Clearly, to reach where you are now, you've developed some decent skills with the tools of managing your bodyweight. If you want to at some future point, you can use those tools to lose or regain, as well as to maintain.

    Your current plan, slowing down loss, sort of coasting into maintenance, focusing more on health and fitness: That sounds pretty smart, IMO.

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