Eat More Vs. Eat Less

leanandmean2012

I've been getting mixed reviews on how to continue my weight loss. I focused on eating around 1300-1500 calories a day the first three months. Now my weight loss has slowed alot and I'm wondering whether to up my calories. I upped them for a week then lose 2 lbs. but again, weight is floating about 2lbs around that. Should I not eat back all my exercise calories? Looking for some good advice.

ironanimal

In my experience, as a guy near your own age, I started off at 1650 a day and lost 4lbs in 2 weeks. Awesome, I thought. But then I stalled out and didn't lose any more. I've upped my calories at about 2500 since then and although I haven't weighed in quite a while, have lost a lot of fat from my stomach and neck, and some from my arms and legs - seeing veins coming out on my hands and forearms.

There's a group I'm a part of that specifically deals and advises on this methodology. If you want an invite, I can see what I can do.

AFitJamie

I'm not sure this Is helpful other than to bump your comment back to the top for more people to see, but...

It seems to me that I'm starting to see a bit of a trend on messages here that say ' up your calories and lose more ' which I understand, but taken in isolation I think can lead people far astray. Here are a few thoughts:

I've seen people join MFP and see that they should eat at a deficit, and then something happens to shift in their thinking so that if a 500 cal deficit a day is good, then 1000 is better... Which leads to the obvious extreme that simply not eating would be great... This pulling things to extremes seems to be common. For these people who have created too high of a deficit for too long, we typically hear that their weight loss has slowed - and without diagnostics is hard to say for sure, but may be because their base metabolic rate has slowed down in response to their body receiving so few calories... So essentially their body is fighting them on creating such a high deficit and it isn't a healthy condition. When these people gently increase their calories they often find that their metabolic rate adjusts slowly and they begin to see that maintenance of a gentle deficit gives them better success. This isn't the extreme of 'the more I eat, the more I lose' - if that were even close to rational and true most of us wouldn't be here.

Add to this the weight loss industry creating so many 'diets' and programs the potential for confusion escalates incredibly. Seems there is always 'one simple trick'...

The reality is that our bodies will be maintained on a basic calorie level that is very dependent on your physical make up - particularly weight and amount of muscle mass you carry as well as what you may do for a living and therefore what you may burn (e.g. If you work a heavy factory job vs an office desk job). MFP gives a pretty good starting point for guidance for a lot of people for this starting point - set your weight loss to 0 to see what it expects you to eat in a day ignoring exercise. Then, when you set a weight loss goal, MFP takes off calories from your daily total to create a deficit and as you do exercise, you should eat calories to avoid creating too great a deficit.

The challenge may be determining where your 'maintenance level' is so you create a healthy deficit, but I can certainly say that, in my opinion, eating more is typically an appropriate response if your been very low for a while, or your initial estimate of daily calorie needs is far off. Otherwise, more may not be the answer.... You've been on MFP for a while, so I'm sure you already know this but figure it can't hurt for people who don't as well. The point is that nobody can say eat at xxxx calories, unless they have worked through some details to help you determine a starting point to work from using some guidance tools - there are a ton of TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) sites on the web to help in figuring a number if you are not sure MFP is helping you find a good guidance point.

The basic reality is that you simply need to create a reasonable deficit. Calories in - calories used in a day. Shoot for a 500 calorie a day deficit (in my opinion) to lose a pound a week - people with more weight to lose it seems can maintain a higher deficit, but I'm a 'slow and steady wins' kind of person.

And of course, lots of patience - despite what you may think, men can retain water as well if you eat high salt foods, etc... so a scale may not always be the best indicator - perhaps takes some measurements to also gage your progress. I'm a smaller/shorter guy and I can swing 3-4 pounds in a day or two depending on what I eat.

You are fairly muscular in your pics, depending on what you do for a living, you absolutely may burn a lot of calories in a day and it is possible that your deficit is a bit high, I think it isn't reasonable for someone to attempt to determine your TDEE and say precisely where you need to be focussed, but really you can work this out if you grab a few TDEE calculators on the web and work through where you should be targeting. Use a few of them and see if you can triangulate on where you want to use as a starting point.

As for eating exercise calories, yes you should eat them back to avoid creating too large a deficit - but as many have said, bit seems MFP may overestimate the calories burned, so perhaps a conservative eating back 2/3 -3/4 of them may seem reasonable.

Best of luck!