Is my calorie deficit ok? 7lbs week 1

IRONJERWOOD

Hey guys, so just finished my first 10 days using MFP and I've lost 7lbs
This is the first time I've ever tried weight loss and although I cant see any changes yet, the scales obviously do. I'm not feeling hungry throughout the day and I'm only eating between 12pm-8pm

Should I expect this loss to slow down? I've selected the highest loss being 2lbs a week and I'm still up to 600 calories short of my target, but I don't feel hungry and actually feel better than I ever have, I've never eaten clean before... Is it safe to be in an almost 1500 calorie deficit?

sollyn23l2

IRONJERWOOD wrote: »

Hey guys, so just finished my first 10 days using MFP and I've lost 7lbs
This is the first time I've ever tried weight loss and although I cant see any changes yet, the scales obviously do. I'm not feeling hungry throughout the day and I'm only eating between 12pm-8pm

Should I expect this loss to slow down? I've selected the highest loss being 2lbs a week and I'm still up to 600 calories short of my target, but I don't feel hungry and actually feel better than I ever have, I've never eaten clean before... Is it safe to be in an almost 1500 calorie deficit?

You could afford to eat some more calories if you wanted. No, don't expect the 7 lb/ wk loss to continue. Aim for 1-2 lbs per week.

yirara

The first week can be fast in some people because of waterweight loss and adding less weight in food to your intestines. But your net calories are extremely low for a man. Your net calories should reach your calorie goal. Running a far too big calorie deficit might mean you'll lose a ton of muscle mass, and this might catch up with you in the end, you binge, you get unhappy, you give up. So please, if this massive loss continues then eat more.

IRONJERWOOD

yirara wrote: »

The first week can be fast in some people because of waterweight loss and adding less weight in food to your intestines. But your net calories are extremely low for a man. Your net calories should reach your calorie goal. Running a far too big calorie deficit might mean you'll lose a ton of muscle mass, and this might catch up with you in the end, you binge, you get unhappy, you give up. So please, if this massive loss continues then eat more.

Not sure if this makes a difference to your post but I am very much over weight

6ft 2 - 20 stone 11 lbs

yirara

IRONJERWOOD wrote: »

yirara wrote: »

The first week can be fast in some people because of waterweight loss and adding less weight in food to your intestines. But your net calories are extremely low for a man. Your net calories should reach your calorie goal. Running a far too big calorie deficit might mean you'll lose a ton of muscle mass, and this might catch up with you in the end, you binge, you get unhappy, you give up. So please, if this massive loss continues then eat more.

Not sure if this makes a difference to your post but I am very much over weight

6ft 2 - 20 stone 11 lbs

Not really. Ok, you're overweight and have some excess energy to use instead of food, but you don't seem to be morbidly obese. I think the body can only use this much energy from fat deposits and then starts munching on muscles. Let me play with a calorie calculator if I find one quickly, and that uses UK units... nope, need to convert it... so looks like your TDEE for a fairly sedentary lifestyle is around 3000 calories per day.

If you shoot for a 2lbs weightloss goal per week then your calorie goal per day would be 2000 calories per day. (2lbs of fat = 7000 calories divided by 7 days minus the TDEE of 3000).

Looking at the last plot you posted you seem to have eaten about 1500 net calories per day (thus sedentary calories and exercise together) and lost 7lbs in one week. This doesn't add up. If you are sedentary then you might have lost 3 true lbs of fat and 4lbs of water/wast weight, which does sound a lot more realistic. It's steep, but probably still ok for a bit. If you're not sedentary though then you might be undereating by quite a bit more, which is possibly more worrisome. Why not keep it up for a bit more and see what your weight is doing. If weight loss remains so rapid then I would certainly eat a bit more.

Note: there's a possibility that your weight loss might 'stall' for a week or two now. Some people lose a huge amount of weight at first, mostly waterweight, and then the body recalibrates this: water weight might go up again, but weight down, resulting on no or little change on the scale while bodyfat is continuing to go down. Don't get discouraged by that. Weight constantly fluctuates due to all sorts of internal and external factors that have nothing to do with bodyfat. Think of it as the ebb and flood of your body, just a lot more unpredictable

springlering62

@yirara

….the ebb and flow……


like a tide. That is sheer genius for a description.

Props.

Rockmama1111

Nice first week! A great motivator.

Eat when you get hungry though. You will. It’s hard to keep up a big deficit for long. As others have said, a slower weight loss will be so much more pleasant and you’ll be much more likely to stick to it.

melissaaridgeway

When I first started, I dropped 11lbs my first week.

Actually pretty much every time I've started a "diet", the week 1-2 weightloss is unrealistically high. It's normal for my body to drop this "fake" weight. Not everyone sees a huge drop this first week and that could be normal for their body. It's just water weightloss as others have said.

Since that first week, my loss has slowed to about 2lbs a week. You do need to eat your calories though, so please make sure you eat what you are slotted to eat through the app.

Good luck on your journey.

Retroguy2000

Your first week will include a lot of water weight.

Your net calories at 1500-2000 according to your diary there is an estimate. Your calorie tracking may not be perfect, and exercise calories may not be estimated correctly either. For your TDEE estimate, your choice of Sedentary or Active or whatever changes the base multiplier by hundreds of calories, which is an estimate of your daily non-exercise activity.

So therefore it's hard to say yet what your actual TDEE and deficit is at the moment. Keep at it, and track the results. The weight loss after the first week will be a more realistic estimate of your calorie deficit than the first week.

I would encourage you to aim for the 2,000 MFP has recommended and not go below. And get plenty of protein to help protect your muscle mass. At least 200g daily for now. That would be 40%. As your weight goes down, that can come down a bit too. Also, if you aren't already doing it then I recommend resistance training. Twice a week full body for now would be great for you. That will also help protect your existing muscle.

PAV8888

As most of us who get to MFP with a good 100lbs to lose you are looking at a multi year endeavor.
This is not an "I'll diet for a few weeks and get on with the rest of my life" thing.
It is an "I want to change my life" thing.
Really.
If you're not willing to embrace the concept of making some changes you will reduce your chances of long term success. BUT

Accepting change doesn't mean that everything has to be overhauled in one day. Or changed for the sake of changing. A bunch of small things added to one another easily end up to big changes after a while.

Consistency of effort. Long term compliance. These are good buzzwords to keep in mind. Large deficits and fast losses... making things harder than they have to be? Not much of a win out of that, imho.

In the beginning you can tolerate larger deficits than you will be able to later. But there is also little benefit to reducing calories too low. As an active 172cm 49yo I spent a year losing at a rate of 1.5lbs a week while consuming just over 2500 Calories a day on average.

examine.com has a suggested protein calculator and a lot of articles on protein. I would certainly aim for more protein than the RDA (actually 2x the RDA would be what I would aim for) but that may be closer to 150/160 than 200g for you at an eyeball