Correct activity level?

daisygirl1550

I started last Friday eating 1500 calories and am down 3.4lbs! I am sooooo hungry.

I'm excited but is this normal? Should I increase my calories?

I'm 5'5 256lbs. I set my activity level at slightly active. I walk a half hour at lunch and half hour on treadmill 5 days a week. Is this correct activity level for me.

Thank you so much in advance!

Lietchi

I would suggest keeping your activity level set at what it is now and keep on monitoring your weight over the next few weeks.
It's pretty normal to lose a lot of weight when starting a calorie deficit: part of that is less water weight (from less carbs) and less foods waste in your digestive tract.
After a few weeks, your real weight loss trend will become clearer and whether or not you need to adjust your calories.
Weight fluctuates daily because of many factors besides fat loss, so it's best to look at your weight trend over at least one month or one menstrual cycle.

cwolfman13

It is normal to drop weight pretty quickly when initially starting a diet as you lose a lot of water weight early on. Even more so when carbohydrates are reduced which most people do when dieting, even if they aren't specifically doing a low carb diet. A week is too early to make any kind of meaningful analysis as to what is actually going on. Don't change anything for the moment...let things play out for a couple of weeks and most likely you will see the loss rate settle down.

AnnPT77

Agree with the above, about quick loss in the first week.

About the hunger: Realistically, there can be a couple of weeks of adjustment, through which one may need to kind of tough it out.

However, many people find that they can improve the situation (if it persists) by giving some thought to what they eat, and when they eat it, plus some other surrounding factors. Satiation is quite individual, so no one can give you an exact formula. But you can figure it out, probably improve the situation.

In these first couple of weeks, notice when you're most hungry. If you are hungrier some days than others, what was different? Are you especially hungry at particular times of day, or in particular situations?

You may find that things like a bigger breakfast (or no breakfast, waiting to eat until later) may help you be less hungry. You may find that more protein in your first meal helps. You may find that if (say) you're especially hungry in the mid-afternoon, that a small nutritious snack then will make life easier, carry you through until dinner. Some people find that a glass of water or hot herb tea, or something like that, quells hunger. Some people find that eating more veggies and fruits, less of highly processed foods, helps them feel full.

People can find different things filling: Common ones are protein, fats, high-volume foods (like low-calorie veggies, soups that have lots of water content, etc.), and maybe even specific foods.

Beyond food/eating, other things affect hunger and cravings: Sleep quality/quantity, stress level, exercise type or intensity (even exercise the day before, sometimes), boredom, habits of eating in particular situations.

Sub-par sleep and higher stress cause fatigue, often coming home to roost late in the day, and then the body seeks food for energy. Improving sleep, managing stress can help.

If the problem is bored eating, consider starting a new hobby or resuming an old one. Bonus points if it requires clean hands (needlework, sketching, playing a musical instrument, etc.), or creates dirty hands (painting, carpentry, gardening, etc.).

If there's a habit piece - like eating while watching TV in the evening - then it's usually easier to break an unwanted habit by replacing it with a new and better one. For the TV thing, a TV compatible hobby (like knitting, say) can help; or you might switch to getting up and doing some stretching or marching in place during commercials; or having a cup of low/no calorie hot non-caffeine beverage; etc.

If you can hold out for another week, get through an adjustment, it may not be necessary to increase calories. (You might even see a bit of a scale jump as water weight readjusts in week 2 or 3, so don't panic if you do.) On the other hand, it's always fine to eat a little more, take a slower on-ramp to weight loss. Sustainability is a huge factor in success. As long as you eat below your current weight-maintenance calories, you'll lose weight.

Wishing you success!

heybales

Many people discover they are Lightly Active with a desk job merely from the fact they have family & household work being done evenings & weekends.

Do you have that type of activity - and then the walking on top of it?
Or besides the walking, are pretty much able to hit the couch all evening and weekend?

Agree with idea to see where the weight loss rate falls, but I'll bet that's why you are hungry too - bigger deficit than you think if actually more active than you think.

Great job trying to choose correctly and being concerned.

sbelletti

Those calories seem REALLY low for your height, weight and activity. I don't know your age so I guesstimated 30... With a moderate activity level, your RMR is around 1925 calories and your TDEE is 3270 calories. If you want to start with a big deficit of 1000 calories/day you should be eating around 2270 every day. After you lose about 20-30 lbs, recalculate and adjust from there.

I use fatcalc.com/rwl to run my calculations if you want to do them yourself.

sijomial

"Should I increase my calories? "
- If you think that eating level isn't sustainable, yes.
- If you think you can eat more and make the process of long term weight loss easier, yes.
- Remember it's 1500 + exercise calories.

" I set my activity level at slightly active. I walk a half hour at lunch and half hour on treadmill 5 days a week. Is this correct activity level for me."
- Your deliberate exercise specifically is nothing to do with your activity setting on MyFitnessPal. Think of your daily/weekly movement patterns for all your waking hours because that's what the activity setting is for. Your job, your homelife, all those little bits of movement.

The activity descriptions on here are pretty rubbish and only mention people's work but two people with the same job could have very different total activity across the week or even just the working day.
e.g. I had a desk job but had a lot of steps in my commute, always used the stairs, always walked between offices, on the go when I got home. Very clearly not sedentary despite a sedentary job.

westrich20940

Even if you were sedentary ... I'd guess that your maintenance calories would be ~2000/day (perhaps even higher).

So the best way to start without being hungry all the time is to set your daily calorie goal at a slight deficit from your maintenance. So...maybe subtract like 2-300 calories from that?

So shoot to eat more like 1800 calories per day. That should have you lose consistently slowly and not be hungry all the time. Being hungry is going to lead to not sticking with it most likely, or basically just feeling crappy all the time instead of feeling better and more energized.