Help! Am I not eating enough or too much?

kekiert2915

Hello,

I hope someone can help!

I've been trying to lose weight for a couple of years. I'm at the top of my healthy BMI and just want to shed a few kilos to feel better. No matter what I do—calorie restriction, intense exercise—my weight and size stay the same.

A dietitian advised me to eat 1,500–2,000 kcal/day regardless of exercise. Initially, I lost 3kg and dropped a size, but for the past three weeks, my weight loss has stalled.

According to my Garmin, my average calorie burn from exercise is 580 kcal/day. Am I eating too much or too little?

It’s frustrating because losing 5kg shouldn't be this hard, especially with my activity level. I eat healthy, homemade meals daily but feel like I've hit a wall.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

totameafox

Being at a healthy weight, your weight loss is going to be slower because you don't have as much weight to lose. I would set your goal to a quarter of a kilo per week and enjoy life (a 250 calorie deficit each day). Stressing yourself over it is only going to make the process worse. You will weigh something your entire life. Not to mention that our bodies normally fluctuate in weight. so being closer to goal, it may take longer for it to reflect in the scale.

tomcustombuilder

No loss = No weekly/monthly calorie deficit.
1500 to 2000 cal is a really big gap. You need to be more precise on what you’re eating and drinking.

Calculate what you’ve been taking in and lower that. Your initial loss after dropping calories is usually water so that was expected

stick with a more exact amount for 4 to 6 weeks and then at that point, you’ll have a really good going on and you can from there

AnnPT77

Not enough information.

What does Garmin estimate your total calorie burn for a full day is, active + resting? It's still an estimate, not a measurement, let alone a Certain Truth, but it's the more relevant estimate here.

Eat 275 calories less than that number daily on average, expect to lose about a quarter kilo per week.

Follow that for 4-6 weeks, or one full menstrual cycle if you have those. At that point, calculate your average weekly weight loss over that whole time period. If necessary, adjust you calorie goal based on those results. Use that same 275 calories per day is a quarter kilo per week estimate to adjust.

Eating homemade food doesn't cause weight loss. Heck, even eating healthy food isn't doesn't directly cause weight loss, though it's a very good idea for other reasons. Exercise doesn't directly cause weight loss, either.

What IS actually necessary? Actually eating fewer calories on average than you actually burn in any/all ways. That's true whether you count the calories or not.

kekiert2915

Thanks for your replies. I think the advice to eat between 1500-2000kcal a day was so I don't go mad counting calories all the time. But I do anyway.

My average daily calories from Garmin (resting + exercise) from last 4 week are 2550kcal/day and annual 2245/day. My daily calorie consumption is approx 2000kcal in the last 2 weeks.

When I was on 1200kcal/day I couldn't loose any weight at all that's why I went for a professional advice to a dietician. And her advice was to increase to 1.5-2k kcal.

I only mentioned that I eat homemade and healthy meals so you don't think that I live on heavily processed foods.

I hope that with all the additional information someone will be able to advise. Thanks!

yakkystuff

OP Quote snip

A dietitian advised me to eat 1,500–2,000 kcal/day regardless of exercise. Initially, I lost 3kg and dropped a size, but for the past three weeks, my weight loss has stalled.

End quote notes

Just a thought, if it applies, fwiw,

3 weeks is not long enough if there is a hormone cycle, at 3 weeks could be in the highest retention week of the cycle before it drops excess. The lowest point is often about days 3 to 4 when cycle restarts. I would compare those month to month... IF... if you have stayed relatively consistent with food and movement through the whole cycle.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48525652#Comment_48525652

The overall timeline's still a little unclear to me.

If you were eating at 1200 and switched to 2000 two weeks ago, I'd advise you to go for at least 2-4 more weeks at 2000, or one whole menstrual cycle if that applies to you (so you can compare body weight at the same relative point in at least 2 different cycles).

If you're actually burning 2500-ish calories on average and actually eating 2000-ish calories on average, you would expect about a pound a week weight loss averaged over a many-multi-week time period like that if you happen to have average calorie needs for your demographic (because the Garmin's estimate, though quite nuanced, is still just based on averages of similar people, and you're an individual - individuals can differ from average).

As an aside, I have a Garmin, too . . . actually, I've had two different models of them, ones that estimate pretty close for some other people who've commented about them here on MFP. They're consistently off by 25-30% in estimating my calorie needs, as compared with 9+ years of quite careful calorie logging through loss then maintenance. That's hundreds of calories daily. It's rare for that to happen, but possible. Trackers aren't delivering gospel truth, just estimates, and the estimates can be either high or low.

See, that's the thing. All of this is just estimates and approximations. They can be close enough to be workable, but we need to reality test them averaging over multiple weeks to iron out some of the approximation. Tweaking plans before getting that very valuable reality test's result is just going to result in unreliable data. Be consistent on average, be patient, and you'll get more valuable insight.

In particular, if your switch from 1200 to 2000 is recent (like 2 weeks), keep in mind that you'd expect a meaningless scale jump because eating more food means more waste on average in the digestive tract on the way to the exit, and possibly more water retention to digest the added food especially if carbs or salt/sodium increased (even if still a reasonable and healthy amount of carbs/sodium). Neither of those things is fat regain, so if that's some of what's causing a scale stall - water and waste masking continuing gradual fat loss - the answer is to wait it out, because it will sort itself out over time.

Honestly, I think over-reacting to water retention and waste fluctuations causes waaay too many people either to give up the effort because they think they're gaining, or to cut-cut-cut calories every time a meaningless scale jump happens until they hit calories so low that they can't keep it up. Hang in there for at least 4-6 weeks or one full cycle when you change eating or activity in some significant way, then adjust if necessary based on average weekly results over the whole time. That's a better strategy for true long-term success.

Best wishes!