Why would weight loss be slower near one's ideal weight?

7elizamae

I occasionally see someone saying, "when you're near your goal/ideal weight, weight loss will be very slow."

Why would that be? Given that a calorie deficit is what one needs to lose weight, why would it matter whether one weighed 198 or 138?

AmI missing something here?

DeguelloTex

I think it's mostly because it is harder to maintain the same deficit when you weigh less and your calorie requirements are lower.

BigT555

its more that it should be slow.
as you get closer to your goal weight you obviously have less fat to lose, so there is more of a chance that the weight loss will come from muscle. also since your tdee lowers as you get lighter there is less room for error in calculating your food intake and calorie burns

MeganAnne89

its more that it should be slow.
as you get closer to your goal weight you obviously have less fat to lose, so there is more of a chance that the weight loss will come from muscle. also since your tdee lowers as you get lighter there is less room for error in calculating your food intake and calorie burns

^This.

It took me a few months just to lose six pounds. I went from like, 127 to 121. It took that long because at that weight it wouldn't be healthy for me to eat at such a large deficit, so the weight was coming off slower.

Meerataila

If you weigh 200 pounds, you burn more calories just sitting around than a 120 pound person does just sitting around. Hence, you need less food at 120, yet there is a floor which you should not drop below for the sake of your mental and physical health.

Let us say that floor is the lowest MFP allows, which is 1200 per day, which is too low for most people, but for someone sedentary and short might be okay.

At 200 pounds I probably burned 1800 calories just sitting on my butt, so if I ate 1200 every day, I had a daily deficit of 600 calories.

At 120 pounds I burn less than 1500 sitting around on my butt all day, meaning I have a deficit of less than 300. Hence, I lose weight slower than before.

WalkingAlong

I think it's mostly measurement error. According to studies of food logging accuracy you're probably eating at least 30% more than you're logging. You can lose on 30% overlogging until your TDEE matches your intake or is close. At that point, something thinks they're eating at a decent deficit and not losing, but they're afraid to eat less (despite eating near TDEE in reality) because their own totals look low (despite not being low).

So they think they're in starvation mode and decry how 'steep deficits didn't work for them'. :laugh: