First Time Trying to Lose Weight -- Thoughts, Feelings, and Support

Hello! This is my first time making an effort specifically toward weight loss and I'm looking for a space to talk about it. I'm an endurance athlete (cycling) and while in the last few years I've gained a lot of strength, I've also gained ~25 lbs, which means I now go up hill at the speed of a snail on cough syrup. Weight loss is a pretty sensitive subject for women generally and women in endurance sports specifically so I don't have a lot of folks irl to discuss with.
I've just finished my first week of tracking my food, and I've been doing okay hitting my targets (maintaining a deficit 300-500 Cal and 100+g of protein, 70+ g of fat) but I'm worried that long term the 1550 Cal baseline is just too low for me. I still nailed my workout this morning, but I definitely woke hungry and tired today.
Anyone have experience training for endurance sports and losing weight? Race season starts in a couple weeks and I'm worried about performance in races and workouts as the intensity increases alongside a deficit.
Thanks!
5'6"
Current weight: 157 lb
Goal weight: ~138lb

Replies

AnnPT77

I kind of have experience with endurance sports and losing weight, I guess? I do a power-endurance sport, on-water and machine rowing. I started that while I was still overweight/obese, and did run a formal training plan for a while, did compete in both on-water and machine races for several years. By the time of weight loss, I'd pretty much gotten competition out of my system, but was and am still very active in the sport, rowing boats 4-5 days a week in season. I stay active, mostly machine rowing and stationary biking, in the off-season, too.

As context, I'm 5'5", weighing mid-130s pounds now (a little heavier than I'd prefer, but still a healthy weight). My starting weight was 183 (in 2015).

Let's be clear: Everything after this is just my opinion. It's a reasonably experienced opinion, but not a professional opinion. (OK, I do have some coaching education in my sport, including some nutrition-related education; but I'm not a professional coach.)

Honestly, I don't see what's so sensitive about weight loss and endurance sports that we shouldn't talk about it. Some people do stupid things - counter-productive things - to lose weight, and we should for sure talk about THAT (and not do those things, of course). But there are IMO non-stupid options. Both body weight and nutrition/fueling have impacts on performance (and health). Why wouldn't we talk about them?

As someone who values your athletic performance very highly, it will be very important for you to fuel your exercise. If you're eating a straight 1550 and not increasing calorie intake as you increase activity/intensity, your deficit is increasing, and that's not a good thing.

You have relatively little weight to lose. That, plus the fact that you highly value athletic performance, means that if you want to run a calorie deficit to lose weight, that would ideally be a small deficit and slow loss. (Yes, I understand that you want to drop weight quickly to go faster. It's not that simple, if you ask me, because of the performance penalties - and potential lean-mass loss - from losing fast.)

In that context, I think 500 calories is a pretty big deficit. A common rule of thumb around here is to lose no more than 0.5-1% of current bodyweight per week, with a bias toward the lower end of that unless severely obese and under medical supervision for nutritional deficiencies or health complications.

You're not remotely 'severely obese'. At most, you're barely overweight (per BMI) and since you're an athlete, you may not even be actually overweight if you have more muscle mass than average for your size. For you, with the performance goals in the picture on top of that, slower than 0.5% per week would make more sense, IMO - 250 calorie deficit, tops. Yes, that will take time to show up clearly on the scale. Yes, that can be frustrating.

Your protein and fats goals seem reasonable, as minimums. You don't say how old you are. Your photo looks young. (Are you over 18 as the rules here require? NB I'm old, so everyone looks young to me. 😆) You don't say what your training schedule looks like, and don't say clearly whether you're just eating your base goal, or your base goal plus estimated exercise calories. If estimating/eating exercise calories, you don't say how you're estimating those calories. That makes it hard to give you specific advice.

If you're under 30, we'd expect your BMR to be 1500ish or more. (BMR = basal metabolic rate, the number of calories we'd burn flat-out in bed in a coma.) That makes me wonder if that's even a reasonable base goal for you in the first place. I assume you have a life - maybe job, maybe student, probably some home chores, more - and those things burn calories, too, before we even consider training for an endurance sport.

If you're new to this calorie goal . . . well, a short adaptation period is normal. Our pre-existing habits have been ingrained and feel normal. If we then go to deficit calories, some appetite spikes and maybe even energy drops can happen purely because of the habit change. (Not to be insulting, but it's like when we have a pet we feed at 6PM, and they expect dinner at that same time even when daylight savings time puts a different number on the clock.) Our body expects a certain schedule, but if the new practice is reasonable, our body should adjust. For me, it can take up to a couple of weeks, but people vary.

Once you've been following the same routine for 4-6 weeks, or a full menstrual cycle assuming you have those, your actual average weekly weight loss rate tells you more about your calorie needs than any calorie calculator. If it were me, at your size, I'd be looking for maybe 2 pounds or slower total loss (looking at trend lines) over the total length that kind of multi-week span - half a pound or less per week. Honestly, given how weird water retention can be, it might even take longer than that to get a reasonable trend line, with an appropriately gradual fat loss rate. k

One week isn't really long enough IMO to get a clear reading on calorie needs, because there may still be habit/adaptation issues, and the first week or two can deliver really weird (unrepresentative) scale results.

I'd say you have two choices at this point:

Respond to the "tired and hungry", bump up your base calorie goal by 200-250ish calories, and restart the clock on the multi-week calorie needs experiment.
Stick out the current routine and see if adaptation happens, and get the personalized calorie needs feedback a little sooner.

More about the "feeling hungry" part: You can also experiment with timing of meals, snacks, nutrients, sleep practices, etc., within your current (or adjusted) calorie goal. Sometimes that makes a difference. For me, timing some nutrients around workouts helped with the energy level, and with cravings. Exact things to do will be individual, because people vary. For me, timing some carbs before workouts if I hadn't had a meal recently - or during workouts if > an hour - helped. Timing some protein after workouts helped. But that's just me. You can experiment.

If you said more about how active your non-exercise life is, what your training schedule looks like, whether you eat exercise calories and how you estimate them, folks here might have more detailed advice, me included.

Best wishes!

ZaiBikes

Thanks for the feedback! I have enough people in my life (and especially those who have been in sport for a while) with a history of disordered eating and that I try to be careful about how I talk about food and weight loss.
I am in my early thirties—definitely noticed some metabolism changes in the last couple years.
I absolutely adjust my calories for exercise. I do hard workouts on the bike M,W,F, and an easy ride Saturday. I try to add in a short gym workout Mondays, but this is a developing habit. I ride with a power meter so I have a pretty good estimate of calories burned. Right now those workouts are between 650-800 calories.

As far as typical fueling:

Per recommendations elsewhere, I try to pre-load my bike workouts with carbs, so I shift my carb budget the day before to dinner so I have a little extra in my system
Immediately before riding, I eat some quick carbs (pancakes w/ maple syrup, a muffin, or dates and orange juice if I haven't prepped anything) (150-200 Cal) (skip on rest days)
I have a high-carb mix to drink on the bike (100g carb, 400 Cal) and I usually drink most if not all (skip on rest days)
After riding, I drink a 4:1 carb to protein recovery drink (220 Cal) (skip on rest days)
Breakfast is usually a baked egg, cottage cheese, vegetable, and potato casserole (~300 Cal)
at my desk job, usually have second breakfast of 1 cup greek yogurt, 1 cup frozen blueberries (190 Cal)
Lunch is leftovers from dinner, varies but some mix of protein, vegetables, and carbs
Afternoon snack is usually vegetable and quinoa bowl, or veggies and hummus, or apples and peanut butter (skip on rest days)
Dinner, again, varies, but generally chicken or fish, lots of vegetables, and a little bit of carbs.

I've been trying to add in more fruit as I noticed it's been missing from my diet.

Looking more closely, I think the 1550 baseline puts me closer to a 250 Calorie deficit per day, which definitely sounds more sustainable.

AnnPT77

OK, it sounds like you have a good overall structure.

Depending on how you use the power meter results, be aware whether the calorie value you're adding for the workout session is gross calories (including BMR/RMR) or net calories. The (hours x average watts x 3.6) formula should be net, which is ideal. You don't say how long or intense your bike workouts are, but 650-800 is a fairly big number, which is why I'm wondering. (I'm not saying it's wrong, let alone impossible.)

I guess I'd suggest you stick with your current routine for at least another week or two, and see if your body adapts (without big energy drain) to that routine. If you seem to be losing weight fast after the first couple of weeks, and start feeling weak or fatigued for no other obvious reasons after you've given your body some time to adapt to the new routine, I'd suggest increasing calories a bit and restarting the experiment clock (calendar? 😉).

If sleep quality or quantity can be improved, that might be worth a little intention, too. Calorie deficit is a stress, intense training is a stress, stress is cumulative: Rest and recovery need to be a priority in that kind of context. We aren't superhuman.

Also, good news/bad news: Recent research suggests that metabolism stays pretty constant from our 20s until around 60, after which it declines slowly. There's a lot going on in our lives that affects our calorie needs, but a decline at 30-something in a generally healthy person probably isn't metabolism per se.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8370708/

It's not impossible for an individual to have metabolic declines due to things like health conditions or extreme (or repeated yo-yo) weight loss. But generically, if calorie needs decline as early as one's 30s, the more probable reasons are subtle changes in lifestyle and daily life activity level, which can account for hundreds of calories daily.

nossmf

Ann covered pretty well the caloric side of the equation, so let's talk about the more big-picture idea of in-season vs off-season goals. From your statement about "race season starts in a couple weeks," your schedule sounds like a lot of pro athletes: part of the year competing, the rest of the year preparing.

I'll just focus on football players, with which I am most familiar. Immediately following the end of one season, they focus on recovering fully from the rigors and stresses of playing, then at some point they transition to physically preparing for the next season: lifting weights to get stronger, running sprints to get faster, gaining or losing weight as appropriate for their position, etc. When it gets close to the start of the next season they shift focus to include football-specific drills and practices. Once the season begins, their whole focus is only on the next game: they still lift and run, but now it's just to maintain what they have already developed, not to improve per se; every ounce of energy and body recovery needs to be reserved for competition.

In a similar vein, you are preparing for race season, which is only weeks away. To compare yourself to the football analogy, you are now in "maintain the body, prepare the mind" mode. Trying to lose a bunch of weight is more appropriate for the off-season after the last race of the year; that's the time to lift hard, lose the weight. Right now, your focus should be meet-prep, not weight-loss. Slow and steady drop can be fine, but certainly not fast, as Ann said.

*****

As a side note, one of your pre-ride snacks you listed was "pancakes & maple syrup" for under 200 calories. Is this a single pancake, or little tiny ones? Not sure I'd have the self-control to eat so little once I got started! lol

ZaiBikes

Thanks for all the advice! I will stick with the current plan and see what happens. My target race is not until August, so I have time to take it slowly. I'm not racing as much this year since my wedding in the fall will take up most of my PTO and travel money.

To @AnnPT77 's point: yes, that is a calc of the calories solely from exercise, based on the assumption of 25% efficiency of the body processing to output, so kJ out is roughly equal to kCal burned. My 1 hr workout Wednesday was 640 kCal and a 90 minute endurance ride clocks in around 800. (These are indoor rides, so the work is sustained)

@nossmf I hear you about the off-season, but due to depression and other factors, I took my off-season a little too off this year. Fortunately the race season is long. My training races start in a couple weeks but "points season" doesn't start until June, my target race for the year is in August, and we'll see if I have energy after the wedding for cyclocross racing in October/November. And yes—the pancakes are small ;).

Right now I think my top challenges are—as Ann mentioned—the adjustment period to a deficit, figuring out the threshold for hunger cues, and timing my meals and macros appropriately. I'll keep an eye on compliance in my workouts for fatigue symptoms, and my fiancee is ready to call me out if I start getting too cranky or spaced out.

yamtorro

First of all, it’s great that you’re approaching this in a structured way instead of rushing into it. A 300–500 calorie deficit with solid protein intake is already a very reasonable starting point.

Also, as an endurance athlete, your situation is a bit different from someone just trying to lose weight casually. Performance matters just as much as body composition, especially with race season coming up.

The fact that you’re already waking up hungry and a bit tired after just a week is actually a useful signal. It doesn’t necessarily mean something is “wrong,” but it might mean that your current intake is close to the edge of what your body can sustain alongside your training load.

One thing that often helps in endurance sports is thinking less in terms of a fixed daily calorie target and more in terms of fueling around your training.

For example, keeping your deficit smaller on harder training days (or even eating at maintenance on key sessions) and slightly lower on rest or lighter days. That way you protect performance while still creating a weekly deficit overall.

Another thing to keep in mind is that aggressive fat loss and peak performance rarely happen at the same time. Especially close to race season, many athletes shift their focus slightly toward maintaining performance and letting fat loss happen more gradually.

You’ve already built strength and consistency, which is a big advantage. At this point, it’s more about fine-tuning rather than pushing harder.

Also, don’t ignore those early signals like fatigue and hunger. In endurance training, underfueling can creep up quickly and impact recovery, performance, and even mood.

You’re on the right track — it might just be a matter of adjusting the deficit slightly so it supports both your goals instead of working against them.