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Does a Higher Calorie Allowance Make Managing Weight Loss Easier or Harder?

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  • ddsb1111
    ddsb1111 Posts: 1,051 Member
    edited April 6

    @robertw486 Just circling back to this thread and saw your response, along with your question about whether I ever started a business thread. Honestly… I’m not sure! But now I’m curious too. If I didn’t, I’d love to see it myself.

    And yep, that was definitely me!

    IMG_3052.jpeg
  • ddsb1111
    ddsb1111 Posts: 1,051 Member

    It was really fun to re-read this thread. Over the past month, I’ve been focused on building habits that truly align with my goals and the way I want to live. That’s meant making some trade offs like less income or slower business growth, but the emotional benefits have been undeniable.

    I’ve been more active, spending more time with my family, sleeping better, and overall just feeling happier. I didn’t even tell my husband I was doing this, and he’s commented several times, saying things like, “You seem different, what’s changed?

    It’s clear he’s noticing a more relaxed, carefree version of me. And honestly, I’m noticing it too. This experience has been a complete game changer.

    How does this tie into the post? Well, a big part of feeling better for me was tackling the constant “food noise.” Yes, I’m one of those people, it was taking up way too much mental space. So, as part of this reset (typically don’t love that word, but I digress), I decided to talk to someone about it and was prescribed a low dose of semaglutide.

    Even though the dose is small and hasn’t caused major weight loss, the real win has been feeling normal. That mental quiet has been one of the biggest reliefs.

    I’m not sure how long I’ll use it, maybe just occasionally when it starts to feel overwhelming again. We’ll see. And yes, I know this might be a hot take, especially since I’m within 10 pounds of my goal weight. But for me, it was never really about the number. It was about getting some peace from the constant thinking. And for the first time in a while, I feel like I can enjoy things I used to say no to because now I can fit them in without stress or guilt. It might seem small, but it’s those little shifts that have made the biggest difference for me. Do I wish this were the case? No. But am I having the first “break” from the feeling of dieting since I was 9 years old? Yes. And that’s been really nice.

    Feel free to ask questions, disagree, or share your own experience. I’m open to all of it.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 37,121 Member

    I feel like an often underappreciated part of all of this - weight, nutrition, health, fitness plus things in totally other realms - is good overall life balance, both as a cause of problems, and a piece of the solution.

    Don't get me wrong: I completely understand that for some people, balance is very, very far out of reach no matter what they personally can do, whether because of poverty, illness/injury/disability (self, family or interdependent others), or something else. That is seriously unfortunate, and my heart goes out to them.

    But to the extent the luckier among us do have control or at least influence over our life balance, I think recognizing an out-of-balance situation and trying to improve that is a good intervention. It can foster better probability of goal accomplishment even in not-obviously-related areas.

    I feel like that might be related to what you're describing in your most recent post, @ddsb1111. Not sure. And yeah, sometimes medications or similar interventions are part of the most viable, productive path.

    Another "don't get me wrong": I'm no paragon or model in this respect. I've given waaaay too much to my job in the past, and to other things in my life; done stupid things that alienated good people from me,; abused my health; and more. I'm wrangling with some stuff still, even though - objectively viewed - I have most of the advantages and privileges I'd need in order to do better.

  • rockyhi512
    rockyhi512 Posts: 50 Member

    I am someone who eats about 1600 calories a day give or take 100. I try to log in all my calories as best as I can figure them out. I may miss some of the fats I use to cook. I know that as long as I stay below 1900 cal I will lose weight, though not as fast. MFP suggests I should have a calorie intake of about 1300. That is too low for me in that I cannot make proper meals for myself to feel satisfied. I love to cook and enjoy good food. Snacking is limited to visiting other people, enjoying food that they make and special occasions. My friends are aware of my dietary plans and are not offended when I say no thank you. Others will prewarn me about what they want to serve so that I can limit my earlier calorie intake. Knowing that I can safely eat a higher amount of calories makes it less stressful. I have found when I eat 1200 to 1300 calories I plateau faster and my body feels like it doesn't want to release lbs. I used to be of the old school thinking I should be eating around 1300 cal, but then a friend introduced me to Curves and their diet plan. I was skeptical that I could lose weight eating an average of 1650, but I did and with less struggle.

    I am currently doing High protein Low carbs, dabbling in keto and occasionally some intermitting fasting (16:8). I started in February 250 lbs, currently down to 210 with a goal of 175ish to 180 by end of November. After achieving this goal it will be maintenance and finding that balance or sweet spot which should be around 2100. I only know that I will have to track.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 37,121 Member

    Counterbalancing that, though, is some research suggesting that exercising more leads to doing less in daily life, so there's little or no net calorie gain. I think that's usually called "compensation", like "exercise compensation" or "compensatory behavior". There's some reasonable research suggesting that's true at the population level, but I'm skeptical that it's entirely true at the individual level. (Elite athletes in my sport burn a lot more calories than I do, for example. ;) ) Also, the degree of compensation may vary from one person to the next, too; and I strongly suspect that compensation varies depending on how taxing the extra activity is based on an individual's current fitness level.

    I hope OP will still consider this on-topic, not sure.

    I'm quoting my own PP on this thread to comment further. I've been reading a bit more about compensation. As noted above, loosely speaking that's the idea that when people exercise more, they may tend to burn fewer calories in other ways, possibly because they move less in daily life (NEAT) terms. There's still a lot of recent research about the mechanisms behind this, so that part is unclear to me.

    Here's a piece I didn't mention before because I hadn't read about it, though it isn't super surprising: The effect does vary between individuals. Some research is comparing what they call "compensators" to "noncompensators". In reality, it seems to be a continuum, not two strictly separated extremes.

    At the "noncompensator" end of the scale are people who, when they exercise, increase their TDEE more substantially close to the number of calories burned during exercise. At the "compensator" end of the scale are people who don't get as big a net gain in TDEE when they increase exercise calories, because calorie expenditure seems to decrease elsewhere.

    Here's a graph from one small study (n = 29) showing the range of individuals who participated in that study.

    1-s2.0-S2589004224010642-gr2_lrg.jpg

    Exercise-related energy compensation (ExEC) expressed as (A) Absolute ExEC (kcals/day) and (B) Percent ExEC. Black indicates energy compensation, and orange bars indicate no energy compensation.

    (That's the caption from the research publication.)

    Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004224010642

    Notice that in this graph, in the left-hand side showing absolute calories, the full range of experience varies through a range of a whopping thousand-ish calories daily, between the most extreme compensator and most extreme non-compensator. That's in a context where the individuals' baseline TDEEs average in in the 2400s to 2900s, so a pretty big impact.

    Somewhere in this thread, OP asked about possible explanations behind "doing everything right but not losing weight" experiences. Possibly this effect is one piece of the puzzle, in some cases? I don't know.

    FWIW, it's also unclear to me whether compensation is lifelong invariant for an individual, i.e., once a compensator always a compensator, vs. something that may change over an individual's lifespan.

    Let me be explicit, though: When I say aspects of this are unclear to me, that's mostly a comment on my current level of ignorance. I'm sure these factors are better understood by experts than by me, lots better . . . but I don't have a sense of how settled some aspects are among experts, either. There seem to be some ongoing disputes about details, at least.

  • rsccore
    rsccore Posts: 29 Member
    edited June 29

    It is pretty well established in research that people who have lost significant weight and kept it off for years are quite physically active. Indeed, their TDEE at a normal weight is roughly equal to the TDEE they started with. And the recommendations from all fitness/health orgs, like the ACSM et all, follow this approach. That once you lose the weight to increase increase your activity to an hour of more of moderate to vigorous activity per day, to halt weight regain. By example, 10k steps is 90 minutes of brisk walking, 630 minutes a week of moderate activity. And it depends on your own circumstances.

    I personally followed the same approach after losing 95 lbs and becoming moderately active (again) and since then just eat (no counting) and have not gained weight. It was a somewhat easy decision since I was active and lean my whole youth and most of my 20s, before the desk job. And it was apparent that the 2300 calories I was maintaining 255 lbs on and being sedentary was the same 2300 calories I would maintain 160 lbs on and being moderately active. Albeit, not quite the disordered mess it was at 255 lbs and sedentary due to dopamine issues.

    A lot of people confuse these messages with losing weight, but losing weight, especially a significant amount, is a very different state. First and foremost you must be restrictive with food, but it is easier to do this when you have fat backing you up for energy. And while being more active can help significantly during weight loss, it isn't a requirement. You can lose weight just through restrictive eating. Also, if you just exercise without restricting intake, you tend to eat back your activity calories. Nonetheless, there are many ways to maintain a deficit and lose weight. Keto, paleo, low carb, etc, have all shown positive results in that first phase.

    But later on in the diet and certainly after, it is very important to be more active and raise your TDEE back up so that you do not have to be in a restrictive state forever. That is where the "fad" diets fail, to keep the weight off, and you simply repeat the cycle all over.

    And this is the critical issuse we face. It can be very hard to change one's lifestyle and be intentionally that active, even if in the past under different circumstances one was naturally that active and never had a smidgen of an issue with weight. Personally, I can just say that it seemed a lot harder before beccoming moderately active again than it is after. Now it is pretty normal and physically not a hurdle at all, but I must still maintain the routine via discipline. Before the desk job, when my life was naturally that active, I didn't have to do anything. But, as long as I do maintain a moderately active life, at least I don't have to do anything on the food side, like calorie count. You still eat healthy and practice good habits, but calories wise, normal eating and satiety take car of that on its own.

  • ddsb1111
    ddsb1111 Posts: 1,051 Member
    edited July 2
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48667795#Comment_48667795

    +💯

    I’ll add that when I weighed more and started losing weight, my calorie needs decreased, but not by a significant amount. The increase in my NEAT balanced it out because I had more energy overall and felt motivated to move more due to an improved mood, so my calorie expenditure stayed fairly consistent.

    Also, I’ve always been a natural fidgeter, and although I can’t prove it, it seems like this is just how some of us are throughout our lives. That said, major lifestyle changes, like working at a desk for 20 years, can definitely influence this tendency, ie- the more you move, the more you want to move. The less you move, the less you want to move.

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