Increased appetite and reduced performance

gelo33

Hi everyone,
I’ve been doing 1 hourly workouts with between 4-10 kg 4 times a week. I am also doing 6 km walks daily at the pace of 10 min per km.
I’ve sustained this the last 3-4 weeks. I am now struggling to eat under 2000 calories per day and my performance on my 1 hourly workouts has gone down.
I was working out previously but the 6km daily is the new addition I’ve implemented in the last 4 weeks. My goal is to lose 14 pounds/ 1 stone / 7 kg. I am 5’3, weight 11stone8 & aged 39.
Help please

AnnPT77

How fast are you losing weight over the past 3-4 weeks?

As a generality, if experiencing increased appetite, decreased performance, or both, I'd guess that you're either under-eating for your optimal needs during weight loss, over-exercising for your current fitness level, or a combination of both.

If you're female, adult, and not in menopause yet, where you are in your menstrual cycle could be a factor: Some women have a stage where appetite spikes for a few days to a week each cycle.

gelo33

AnnPT77 wrote: »

How fast are you losing weight over the past 3-4 weeks?

As a generality, if experiencing increased appetite, decreased performance, or both, I'd guess that you're either under-eating for your optimal needs during weight loss, over-exercising for your current fitness level, or a combination of both.

If you're female, adult, and not in menopause yet, where you are in your menstrual cycle could be a factor: Some women have a stage where appetite spikes for a few days to a week each cycle.

Thank you. I have lost 8 pounds in the 4 weeks. You are right about my cycle playing a part, I notice this during certain points.

I also agree I am probably over exercising for my fitness level and maybe boredom too.I’ve just been reading your comments on threads similar to mine and I’ll take your advice of making changes and assessing over some days. Thanks

AnnPT77

gelo33 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

How fast are you losing weight over the past 3-4 weeks?

As a generality, if experiencing increased appetite, decreased performance, or both, I'd guess that you're either under-eating for your optimal needs during weight loss, over-exercising for your current fitness level, or a combination of both.

If you're female, adult, and not in menopause yet, where you are in your menstrual cycle could be a factor: Some women have a stage where appetite spikes for a few days to a week each cycle.

Thank you. I have lost 8 pounds in the 4 weeks. You are right about my cycle playing a part, I notice this during certain points.

I also agree I am probably over exercising for my fitness level and maybe boredom too.I’ve just been reading your comments on threads similar to mine and I’ll take your advice of making changes and assessing over some days. Thanks

Quite frequently around here, you'll see folks recommending targeting losing 0.5-1% of current weight per week (maximum) with a bias toward the lower end, unless at a weight that is in itself a health threat, plus under close medical supervision for consequences or deficiencies. For you, at 11st8 (162 pounds), that would be a range of 0.8-1.6 pound per week maximum.

There's also a common recommendation that when within about 10 pounds or so of a healthy goal weight, it's a good plan to drop loss rate to half a pound a week.

Another rule of thumb is not to cut more than 20% of your TDEE calories, maybe 25% if very overweight. I can't do the math on that for you, because there's not enough info in your OP to do that.

If you're losing 2 pounds a week on average, whatever you've been eating is about 1000 calories less than what it would take to maintain your current weight, which is almost certainly more than a 20% deficit, since for 1000 to be a 20% deficit, your maintenance calories would need to be 5000 daily on average. While that's not strictly impossible, it would be very, very, very unusual - especially for someone your size.

Frankly, given all of that, it's not surprising that you're hungry and underperforming. I'd strongly suggest that you slow the bus down, eat more, for the sake of limiting health risk if nothing else. That should help with both cravings and performance.

If you add 500 calories daily on average, you'd lose about a pound a week, which would probably be OK for a while since it sounds like you haven't been at this for long. (Being a a big deficit is risky, doing it for a long time multiplies the risk.) Add 750 calories daily on average to lose half a pound a week. That would require more patience, but would be easier and is about as far as most would want to go if the goal is to lose fat but keep reasonable performance/energy level.

Best wishes!

gelo33

AnnPT77 wrote: »

gelo33 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

How fast are you losing weight over the past 3-4 weeks?

As a generality, if experiencing increased appetite, decreased performance, or both, I'd guess that you're either under-eating for your optimal needs during weight loss, over-exercising for your current fitness level, or a combination of both.

If you're female, adult, and not in menopause yet, where you are in your menstrual cycle could be a factor: Some women have a stage where appetite spikes for a few days to a week each cycle.

Thank you. I have lost 8 pounds in the 4 weeks. You are right about my cycle playing a part, I notice this during certain points.

I also agree I am probably over exercising for my fitness level and maybe boredom too.I’ve just been reading your comments on threads similar to mine and I’ll take your advice of making changes and assessing over some days. Thanks

Quite frequently around here, you'll see folks recommending targeting losing 0.5-1% of current weight per week (maximum) with a bias toward the lower end, unless at a weight that is in itself a health threat, plus under close medical supervision for consequences or deficiencies. For you, at 11st8 (162 pounds), that would be a range of 0.8-1.6 pound per week maximum.

There's also a common recommendation that when within about 10 pounds or so of a healthy goal weight, it's a good plan to drop loss rate to half a pound a week.

Another rule of thumb is not to cut more than 20% of your TDEE calories, maybe 25% if very overweight. I can't do the math on that for you, because there's not enough info in your OP to do that.

If you're losing 2 pounds a week on average, whatever you've been eating is about 1000 calories less than what it would take to maintain your current weight, which is almost certainly more than a 20% deficit, since for 1000 to be a 20% deficit, your maintenance calories would need to be 5000 daily on average. While that's not strictly impossible, it would be very, very, very unusual - especially for someone your size.

Frankly, given all of that, it's not surprising that you're hungry and underperforming. I'd strongly suggest that you slow the bus down, eat more, for the sake of limiting health risk if nothing else. That should help with both cravings and performance.

If you add 500 calories daily on average, you'd lose about a pound a week, which would probably be OK for a while since it sounds like you haven't been at this for long. (Being a a big deficit is risky, doing it for a long time multiplies the risk.) Add 750 calories daily on average to lose half a pound a week. That would require more patience, but would be easier and is about as far as most would want to go if the goal is to lose fat but keep reasonable performance/energy level.

Best wishes!

Thank you so much! Very insightful.