Is my new diet plan enough for me to lose weight?

KayTeh24

Hi all!

Finally at a point in my life that I feel I need to take steps to become abit healthier and lighter (both in both and mind, haha!)

For reference, I'm 5ft 2 (and a half), and currently 95kg. I have just started a calorie deficit diet 1300kcal a day, along with 5,000 steps a day. Is this enough for me to lose weight?
I feel this is something I can actually stick to after abit of planning.
My goal weight is about 70-75kg.

Anyone in similar boat who has found this has worked? Any good filling snack ideas welcome

sijomial

All you need to lose weight is a sustained calorie deficit over time and at your weight 1300 is definitely a substantial deficit.

Sustainability over an extended period of time is the key and picking a low calorie allowance doesn't help with that, put a lot of thought into your calorie goal. There's a big trade off in going for fast rates of loss.

When you are planning also plan for when things get tough - so many people give up completely rather than have a way of managing those tough times. (Diet breaks or switching to maintenance or switching to a smaller deficit for a while for example.)

westrich20940

Only stat you haven't give is your age....but at your current weight, I'm sure 1300 cal/day is likely too low for you.

This is likely to not be sustainable. So I'd highly suggest choosing a much smaller deficit from your maintenance level calories. I'd suggest using a TDEE calculator and then choose a daily calorie goal that is lower than your TDEE but higher than your BMR.

cmriverside

When you sign up to Myfitnesspal it asks you for a weight loss rate. It also suggests "lose one pound per week." I will reiterate that suggestion.

On days you do purposeful exercise, add that to the Exercise tab and eat more.
Here, this is from Myfitnesspal and is helpful:
https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-


Set your Goals realistically but not so aggressively. That's what the first two posters are saying. 1300 is really low and it's going to be increasingly difficult to stick with, and you may end up binging and/or giving up. You may make it work for a while - just be ready to adjust. A slower more sustainable weight loss rate will make it tolerable and attainable. Success is better than failure.

kshama2001

Today I learned that I can highlight a number in kg and the equivalent in pounds will display!

With 44-55 pounds to lose, I wanted to make sure you've selected no more than 1.5 pounds per week as your weekly weight loss goal. As others have said, 1 pound per week would likely be a more sustainable choice.

PixieKazza

Hi, I'm shorter than you, and find it a struggle tbh. You need to know what your average daily calorie use is, then eat around 500 cals less than that to aim for 1lb per week. My normal calorie usage is around 1500 per day, or 1000 if I am very lazy. I have to walk around 12000 steps per day, plus some extra exercise to get up to 1800/2000 cals used per day, so I can aim for calories in at 1200. I use my FitBit to measure calories used.

AnnPT77

PixieKazza wrote: »

Hi, I'm shorter than you, and find it a struggle tbh. You need to know what your average daily calorie use is, then eat around 500 cals less than that to aim for 1lb per week. My normal calorie usage is around 1500 per day, or 1000 if I am very lazy. I have to walk around 12000 steps per day, plus some extra exercise to get up to 1800/2000 cals used per day, so I can aim for calories in at 1200. I use my FitBit to measure calories used.

You must be very petite, then! Or maybe very unusual in some other way. A TDEE calculator suggests that 1000 calories per day would be (one example) a 4'7" (140cm) 80 pound (36.3kg) 75 y/o sedentary woman. Regardless, sympathies: That would be very difficult.

It's quite unlikely that OP needs to eat as few as 1300 calories to lose weight at a reasonable rate, since we know she's 5'2" (157.5cm) and 95kg (292.4 pounds). Without exercise, just a normal sedentary life - desk job, normal home chores, no exercise - she'd probably maintain at close to 2000 calories**, maybe more, since she doesn't appear elderly in her profile photo. (Maybe 30s, if that? Hard to tell, with the photo filters these days, though.)

At 5'5" (165cm) and mid-150s pounds (70kg), age 59, I was able to lose at a quite fast rate, eating 1400-1600 calories plus all carefully-estimated exercise calories, though I admit I'm mysteriously a good li'l ol' calorie burner.

I totally agree with you that it would benefit her to estimate her calorie needs to maintain her current weight. Knowing that number gives us more flexibility: We're pretty sure that if we eat below that, we'll be losing fat, even if we decide to eat above our weight loss calorie goal for some reason (extra hungry, tired, special social event, etc.).

One minor quibble: Fitness trackers like Fitbit, Garmin, etc., don't actually measure calorie burn, they just estimate it using statistics, similar in that sense to what MFP does. The difference is that the trackers provide a more personalized estimate, since they have more data available to them to make the estimate. (I know you may realize that, may just have written casually.)

FWIW, because I'm statistically unusual, my good brand/model tracker - one that others here have said is accurate for them - estimates my calorie needs much lower than reality. In fact, it's low by roughly the same percentage as MFP's estimate for me. That's as compared with 7+ years of foods/bodyweight logging experience.

I mention that because surprisingly many people do think these devices measure calories, or will be highly accurate for everyone. They'll be close for most people, because they rely on averages from research studies, and most people are statistically close to average. For those who aren't, the reasons may not be obvious.

** I used this pretty decent TDEE calculator to get that rough estimate, noting that it averages in exercise calories rather than handling them separately as the MFP built-in calculator expects us to do:

https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

PixieKazza

You must be very petite, then! Or maybe very unusual in some other way. A TDEE calculator suggests that 1000 calories per day would be (one example) a 4'7" (140cm) 80 pound (36.3kg) 75 y/o sedentary woman. Regardless, sympathies: That would be very difficult.

I am! 4"10'. Thanks for the TDEE link, hopefully the OP finds it useful too. I put my stats in and tbf they weren't far off my original cals estimate per day. BMR = 1176 TDEE = 1676, and I included my exercise rates. I do find it hard to lose weight, because it's so easy for me to go over my calories eating what, for most people, is a 'normal' diet. Add in a couple of gins / wine or beer and snacks and BOOM!