Upping calories and changing metabolism??

alanfogarty

Hi,
So weight loss has slowed down for me recently and I no this is natural and all that but I think I was under eating at about 1200 calls a day and exercising also.

I upped my calls last week and there was a slight increase in weight loss. I think i need to up it again this week. i was just wondering have any of you had an issue like this and how long it took to get the metabolism to come back to speed??

I would have been under eating for about 4 weeks. I no it wasn't clever but the pounds where coming of so I wasn't going to interfere.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks, Alan

Ps just want to thank cmirun for her advice already in relation to this

cmeiron

Yay for a restart!

I'm happy to hear you're thinking about this more

I really suggest that you do some measurements to get a better sense of where you should set your caloric goals. Have you looked at this post?

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12

The first post is a bit long, but take the time to read it, and follow the directions in there for calculating your BMR and TDEE; these will give you a much better estimate of where you should be setting your intake goals.

Why not try it and post the results here?

When you up your cals you might see a temporary stall or even a tiny gain in the few weeks after restarting, but then you should start going back in the right direction again

alanfogarty

Thanks cmirun,

No I hadn't seen that post. I'm going to have a good read of it tomorrow and see what I come p with from it.

Thanks again

EvanKeel

I'd try seeing what your TDEE is based on this calculator: http://www.fitnessfrog.com/calculators/tdee-calculator.html

take 20% off that and use that as your goal for 4-6 weeks and see what happens.

EDIT: note that since that calculator takes exercise activity into account, there would be no need to eat back exercise calories.

tameko2

What others have said, but a few other things.

1200 is too low for almost any healthy and active person under the age of 60, although if you are very very obese it can be fine for a while.

Heck my 5'3" 67 year old mother (who doesn't do much deliberate exercise but is overall a pretty active person) probably eats around 1800 daily.

And its especially too low for men, who usually have higher LBM than women (due to the hormonal differences which cause you to retain and build more muscle than women do).

And re: my own story.

I was eating around 1500 and walking every day when I hit a stall. I didn't think anything of it at first, because 3 weeks is NOT a plateau, but I'd also been using a heart rate monitor for a long time. And what I noticed was, I started having walks where my perceived exertion would be very high (panting, sweating) but my heart rate would barely go up.

At the time I could get up to a very fast walk at high exertion and see my heart rate shoot over 140 - and then suddenly my HR wouldn't go over 122 despite feeling like I was doing the same level of effort, and I'd get exhausted quickly.

I hadn't been eating exercise cals at that point, so I finally started listening to what people always say on here and eating them back - that extra 250 made a huge difference and made me realize how low my energy had been in ALL aspects of my day, not just my exercise.

Fastforward, I started doing some resistance training and jogging with a personal trainer, and I started having crappy workouts (feelings of exhaustion, in ability to lift amounts I'd previously had no issue with) and being RAVENOUSLY BINGE-EATINGLY STARVING the day after a workout. Upped my calories some more to about 1850. Fixed everything.

Fast forward some more - I'm lifting very heavy now, not running much, but taking public transit (and since I am a fidgeter that means pacing or dancing around in place on the train platform instead of driving). Start feeling hungry and unsatisfied and generally sick of dieting. Gave myself the rest of november and all of december off and ate anything I wanted within reason (as in I didn't just start powering down entire cakes or anything, but if I wanted to eat a handful of mini reeses cups, I did it).

Stuck to the same amount of exercise, and I did a very half assed job logging for a couple days during that time just so I'd know how I was doing and I was eating around 2600-2800/day.

After that 6 weeks of nonstop eatery, I'd put on about 3-4 lbs total. Awesome right? So now I eat 2100-2200 to lose slowly.

I've got lady hormones, I'm 5'6", and a desk job.

*edit* crap and after upping my cals the first two times, I immediately lost a few pounds, 2-5, in the next few weeks, and then the rest has been very slow loss, but I don't care because I'm getting stronger and I get to eat a LOT.

cmeiron

Thanks for posting that, Tameko, it was super interesting and insightful!

alanfogarty

Cmeirun: I had a read of that it definitely looks like the way forward. How long have you been using this method?

alanfogarty

Thank you all for taking the time to write that I'm going to do all the maths in the morning and start eating : )

How long have you all been using this method? How long did it take for ye to start seeing results?

tameko2

Oh well...define results I guess. I stopped feeling like crap almost immediately, and had a ton more energy, and generally felt good and happier. That's the result I care about most.

For weight loss, our situations aren't really comparable. You're a guy (your body will almost always support more and faster fat loss than a woman's because again, those hormones - my friend dropped like 10 lbs once he started T, and he was already really skinny) and you have a lot to lose, it looks like? So, you should see the weight start to come off again pretty fast - but that 25lbs in 2 months thing probably won't happen again. Early fast loss always slows down and normalizes.