Deficit Question

SaintsGal

Hi all,

I am wondering if my calorie deficit is ok? I am currently aiming for around 700 - 800 calorie deficit (this already includes my 500 calorie deficit set by MFP).

The other 200 calories I make up through exercise (I usually burn around 300 - 400 calories per workout) and aim to eat back 100 - 200 of these exercise calories.

I am eating anywhere between 1500 and 1800 on workout days, - netting between 1200 and 1400 on workout days - and 1300 - 1500 calories on non workout days.

Does this sound like a sensible approach?
x

dlwyatt82

What your Net Calories are is meaningless to us unless we know what your original calorie target was. In general, though, 700-800 calories should be a reasonable deficit.

geekyjock76

If you are just starting your cut, the first few days (4) can host a large deficit up to 45% below TDEE. After those 4 days, you'll absolutely need to shrink the deficit to around 25%, which would be considered moderate to avoid excessive decline of hormonal and metabolic function. Set a maximum number of weeks to allow for reduction of body fat - say 16 weeks on a moderate deficit. The larger the deficit, the shorter the diet term ought to be.

But we'd need to know what your TDEE is to determine what classification such a deficit would be.

SaintsGal

My original calorie goal is 1570 (including the 500 calories deducted by MFP) x

geekyjock76

With that info, then your predicted TDEE, or maintenance range is around 2070 calories per day. Thus, if you set a calorie restriction deficit of 500, and you are burning another 200-300 calories through exercise, you are producing a total deficit of 700-800 calories, as you reported.

2070-700=1370 (34% deficit below maintenance); 2070-800=1270 (39% deficit below maintenance).

That's considered a large deficit, so I'd curtail the diet duration in weeks to under 12 to keep your hormones and metabolic function from becoming too depressed. After, take a "diet break" and slowly up calories back to predicted maintenance (recalculate based on updated stats) for a few weeks and hold for at least 2 weeks. Then you can repeat another 12 week or less period to cut again.