Starting to see the light, but would love input....

IveLanded

Ok....

I started my weight loss journey in January. I'm 5'6", weghed 186, and I'm a 35 year old mom. Under the supervision of a personal trainer and nutritionist, I started by cutting my calories down to a net of 1200 a day and I worked out for at least an hour a day, 6 days a week.

I've lost a little over 30lbs but hit a plateau situation a few weeks ago that made me rethink my diet.

A few weeks ago I plateu'd......BUT I lost another pant size and I started having a lot more noticable muscle definition. A week or so go I noticed that I was just generally hungrier than normal (so I snacked more.....healthier snacks but still). I also was pretty lax in my "no cheat days" rule and had a couple big fat cheat days...........and after all that I have lost another couple pounds. I broke the plateau with going over calories fairly often for two weeks.

That with the previous getting smaller has made me rethink the whole "eat more to lose" idea.....my guess (and tell me if I'm off my rocker) is that I've created enough muscle in my body to basically raise my metabolism. ????

SO I'm thinking "oh I should up my calories". In plugging in my numbers, my TDEE is almost 2800!!!!!!!Adjusting, if I'm reading all this right, I should be eating around 2400. Which is over 1000 more than I am used to eating!!!!

I'm honestly thinking about just upping it to around 1500. I want to maintain a weight loss of about 1lb a week for 10 more lbs, but I'm also doing more strength work now to work on muscle definition.

I would love to hear thoughts on this.

rebekahgo

i think that if you are going to do it, you should REALLY do it. get to 2400, however quickly or slowly as you would like (but i recommend quickly so your body only has to adjust once). reset your macros to 40/30/30% carbs/fat/protein. toss out the scale. buy a tape measure. get busy getting ripped , aka, lifting heavy.

upping to 1500 isn't gonna get you anywhere, honestly. that's probably not even getting you to BMR.

come on. go all in. i dare ya

ebaymommy

I'm a 34 year old mom, 5'5" and maintaining at 120lbs eating 2200-2700/day. I wear a BMF (bodymedia fit) and am in training for a marathon so I work out a lot but YES you can absolutely eat more and lose weight.

I was trying to eat around 1300-1400/day and it wasn't working for me at all. I was totally stuck at 125lbs. Starting in January I increased my calories a bit at a time 100-200/day for a week or so, then upped again until I was eating 1800-1900/day. Over the course of a few weeks I dropped down to about 123lbs. Then in February I got my BMF and it was showing me that I burn about 2200 on a rest day and anywhere from 2700-3800 on workout days. Holy cow was I shocked! When I got my BMF I started eating at a deficit (200-300 calories a day) based to my burn for the day. It worked and I lost 3 more pounds bringing me down to 120.

With my marathon being only 5.5 weeks away I'm switched to eating at maintenance because I need the fuel for my workouts.

If you only have about 10lbs more to lose then 1lb a week is too big of a deficit. 1/2lb a week would be much more realistic, those last few pounds come off sloooooooowly and it's best to eat at a very small deficit so you are losing fat and preserving as much lean muscle as possible. I would recommend that you up your calories a bit at a time like I explained that i did until you are eating and a small (10-15%) deficit off your TDEE.

ANewLucia

LOL, yep according to the Scooby calc
BMR 1603
TDEE 2765
cut 2350

That cut includes your exercise cals so you would eat that every single day. On high burn days you wouldn't have to eat back unless you burn over 747 cals.

It seems like a lot, and you can adjust up slowly, but you should never eat below your BMR for sure on any day. Maybe try bumping to 1800 and eat back exercise cals above 200 burned so you net your BMR so you can get used to eating and as you plateau, bump up 100 cals at a time until you hit your cut value.

Lucia

IveLanded

I already noticed that after the initial 25lbs-ish, the weight started coming off REEEEEALLY slowly. I'm ok with that and these "last 10" are really just a guestimate of where I assume I'll end up. It's based mostly on where I was after I had my first kid, and I looked pretty good. I supposed I could potentially get into the 130s but I don't know what my weight will be like with more muscle....I was never an athlete before!

I guess the part that worries me is slamming all those calories on when I've gone for almost 5 months at 1200. I think I definitely need to add, but figuring out how much and how fast is scary. Plugging into MFP, it gives me around 1550 a day for the 1lb a week weight loss.

grimm1974

I can give you some of my recent personal experience. I also found out I needed to add over 1000 calories to my plan. I wasn't even eating the 1780 calories that I was suppose to before. Just before posting this, I looked at my net over the past 90 days. I think I hit my BMR number twice during that 90 day period (and we are talking about netting. Just eating). A large amount of the time I was netting 900-1200 calories. I have a BMR of 2400 calories. I hit a plateau like a brickwall. I've been gradually increasing calories for the past 3-4 weeks. Over the past 2 days, I have finally added enough to net over my BMR. Its a tough thing to do, but I think you just have to jump into it and trust the numbers. Expect an initial weight flux, or simply hide the scale for a month. I hit one of those fluctuations initially, but it went back down. I've increased my calories even more in the past couple of days, so there may or may not be another one. The way I finally convinced myself to do it is by just plugging the numbers into MFP. It told my that if I used those numbers I would gain 0.3lbs a week. If I tried it a month and it didn't work, then I should only gain 1.2lbs. I dedicated myself to this method for 2 months. If it doesn't work for me, then no huge gain. If it does work, I have smoother sailing for the next 60+ pounds I'm planning to lose. Though now, I tend to think less about the bounds and more about the body fat %.