Different type of calorie struggle

BobbyGosbee

Ok so to be as succinct as possible. I am 40/M, 6’, 280lbs. I am a couple months into lifting regularly for the first time in my life and loving it. I have a lot of fat I want to get rid of but I also want to gain muscle. I have calculated my TDEE to be 3200 calories a day and I am trying to get a successful body recomposition going so I am going against all my instincts and have my calorie deficit be around 300 instead of the 1000 I wanted.

Here is the part I struggle with. How the hell do I eat 2900 calories a day and it actually work for me. Aside from changing my macros to 40% protein with fat25% and carbs%35, when I log my food I feel like I am eating around that much when I’m not trying to eat appropriately which is what got me where I am in the first place. It hurts my head to think I should be eating this much food and lose weight. I guess I’m just looking for opinions or success stories doing something similar

tomcustombuilder

At your weight you need a bigger deficit. I’d go for A deficit of 750-1000 for now. Work up to it if that makes it easier, a small deficit and you’ll be dieting down forever and possibly just be at maintenance calories if your counting/ tracking is not accurate.

Shoot for muscle maintenance instead of muscle gain for now. You need to concentrate on Fatloss.

Use grams of macros instead of ratios. As your calories come down you’ll want to keep protein high.

Retroguy2000

2900 calories is quite a lot of food if you are eating high protein meals. You were probably eating more than that, on average, before your recent changes. Some fast food, some ice cream, a packet of cookies, etc. etc. that stuff adds up real fast.

@tomcustombuilder and I both recommended in your other recent thread not to recomp, since you have so much fat to lose. Assuming your goal weight is 200 pounds or maybe less, that's 80+ pounds to lose, and your starting goal is 0.6 per week, which will be at least 2.5 years of recomp. You didn't reply to that advice so I guess you really want to go this route.

If you went with a larger deficit to start with, focusing on fat loss first, by all means do some strength training along the way to retain as much current muscle as possible, then later on consider recomp, that would probably save you at least a year.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10882598/switched-from-lower-sets-and-higher-weight-to-lower-weight-and-more-sets-and-i-m-exhausted

PAV8888

Well.... when I was 280 I was 48yo, and quite a bit shorter at 172.25cm (just under 5ft 8"). I got to MFP about 40-45lbs lighter. And had a back-estimated TDEE of 3255 while averaging 17970 steps... that's just above MFP's very active.

So your TDEE is not impossible.

Were you a college athlete / do you have some other reason to believe that your BMI of 38 is incorrectly pointing out to Class III obesity, i.e. that you're merely a little bit overweight because of extra muscle mass?

If yes, a recomp may be necessary to preserve lean mass. However, if you look up various studies regarding muscle building you will see that given sufficient fat reserves (which on paper you appear to have) the energy to both preserve and even synthesize new muscle is currently available to you. Even at a substantial deficit.

From a person who normally advocates choosing a slower route and avoiding aggressive deficits, I think that deficit eating to lose one to one and a half lbs a week for now will serve you just as well in your athletic performance and will not hinder your muscle building while improving your health and feeling of increased strength.

As to the rest of it... it is amazing how many items go "un-remarked" even when we log... and when we don't log it we seldom have a true picture.

If you've cleaned up your eating recently and are trying to eat 3000 Cal with white fish and broccoli, well, the answer is you should be eating closer to how you intend to continue to eat after your weight loss!

Best of luck. But I would not fear an initial deficit. Your work outs are more of an influence on your end results than whether the deficit is 250 or 750.... at least till you're considerably leaner.

That said I will also tell you that I "know" an MFP friend who for more than five years has been going to the gym training for a few hours a day and eating at a very small deficit. Far from being obese she is literally awesome in terms of musculature and can probably pick me up and put me down several times without lifting an eyebrow (even if she has perfect lashes). She didn't want to be a "small" girl, and she isn't. Her BMI would probably place her in the high overweight range and it IS all muscle.

That level of commitment usually goes hand in hand with further goals such as competitions and such. it is debatable whether she is doing something better for her health than other MFP friends who LOOK just as defined but at a lower BMI. They lack the same degree of raw strength but derive other benefits (speed, agility, endurance, less of a toll on their system).

neanderthin

Yeah, as cool a recomp diet sounds, it's really a fine tuning technique that tries to basically reduce fat mass while simultaneously increasing muscle mass while trying to maintain their overall weight, hence the term. Normally eating in excess on workout days then in a deficit otherwise and generally maintaining what would be close to maintenance calories. Your setting yourself up for frustration here and as you say, you have a lot of fat to lose and I suggest based on that that you wait until it's warranted, or you've earned it.

Counting calories, is well, an imprecise discipline simply based on the error already inherent in labeling for example, incorrect data bases and the sheer precision needed to easily be 10% out which for you is 300 calories which would erase your deficit. Saying that, most people are out more than 10% on average so again your setting yourself up for failure or more frustration.

Be more aggressive in reducing your calories IMO is the way fwd. It facilitates a stronger bond to commitment and goal seeking when you see results. There is no glory in defeat and to initially get it wrong through not quite understanding how to get it done properly can really mess people up, and so I suggest you rethink your plan, again just my opinion.