Curious about calorie deficit

samu0034

Hello everyone,

I found MyFitnessPal awhile back, and have been using it a little less religiously than I should, but I'm trying to get serious about it now. However, it has proven very helpful for me to just keep track of what I'm eating, and try to keep it reasonable. With the help of a (mostly) responsible diet and quite a lot of exercise I've lost about 30 lbs in the past year, but that's really just the beginning for me. So, to get to the point...

I'm 6'1", about 330 lbs. right now. It's been a long time since I last had a body fat analysis, but I've almost certainly added muscle mass since then, so realistically a healthy body weight for me is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 230 lbs (15% body fat), so I'm generally a pretty big guy. Realistically though, if I can get down to about ~250 lbs. I'd be pretty ecstatic. Because I'm a cheapskate, I'm reluctant to actually employ the services of a nutritionist, so I'm here to ask the advice of any particularly knowledgeable people in the community.

According to MFP, my daily calorie allotment is 2200 calories right now. I ride my bike to/from work, which is ~45 minute round-trip (~440 calories). I try to go to the gym for cardio each weekday, and do about 25 minutes on an elliptical trainer (440-540 calories). So in that sense, I have an allotment of about 3100-3200 calories per day. I try to keep my intake to around the recommended 2200 calories, and am therefore running a 900-1000 calorie per day deficit. I've read elsewhere that 1000 calorie per day deficits are really only recommended for grossly overweight people under the observation of a doctor. The reason is that a calorie deficit that large has the potential to really throw your metabolism out of whack. To the questions...

1) Have people here experienced, or have legit knowledge, that really large calorie deficits do throw your body out of whack?
2) How large a calorie deficit should I be aiming for in order to keep up about a 2 lbs. per week weight loss?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

now_or_never12

You'll want a 1000 calorie deficit each day for a 2lb per week loss... however, our bodies don't follow simple math so you may not always see 2lb losses (you may see less, you may see more, you may stay the same even with the calorie counting and exercise).

The larger you are the larger a deficit you can withstand for a short while.

joeystilley

i am extremely active i am towards the end of my weight loss goal right now but i ran around 1000 calorie under some days maybe a little more.. what keeps me the same weight is around 3000 to 3500// i eat between 1800 to 2200.. some days i may drop down to 14 or 1500.. i couple of times i have noticed i was really weak but those days i just ate a little more around 2500 i think 1 day i ate about 5000 because i was feeling extremely weak but i hit between 2 to 3 lbs a week weight loss. in about 2 months time i only felt weak about 3 days.. so i guess to answer your question it worked for me.. and i never eat my calories back that i burn.

vklebanova

I think that depends on how you feel. Your body is a good indicator regardless of size. Are you always hungry? If so, you should eat more. Your body will tell you when it's in starvation mode.

mcarter99

A 1000 calorie deficit is not really large and does not throw your body out of whack. It's the standard recommended max for people in general. So if you're very large it's not aggressive at all. Keep it.