TDEE, Metabolism reset, and Diabetes

marathonmom72

Anyone here successfully used TDEE - 10 or 20% for weight loss while managing insulin dependent diabetes? Looking for some encouragement from someone with experience.

I increased my calories about six weeks ago, to around TDEE - 20%. Although, some days I go over my TDEE, but not many. Increasing my TDEE also means increasing my insulin. I am gaining weight. It sounds like this is a common result at first, and that maybe I need to eat at TDEE to reset my metabolism. How long does this generally take and what results should I expect? Is continued weight gain normal? How long do you continue before going back to a deficit? Any information, advice, and personal experience is appreciated.

heybales

To comment on the weight gain.

Remember the big initial loss when starting a diet, that water weight?
That usually initially comes back, so that increase in first week should be ignored.

But after that depends on how fast your metabolism moves. If you were eating a whole lot less and had no loss in measurements or weight, that actually was your TDEE at that level.
So you eat more than that, that is weight gain. 250 extra daily would be only 1 lb every 2 wks. So you can do the math to decide if weight gain is still water, or fat because metabolism hasn't come up to estimated TDEE yet.

If you picked estimated TDEE correctly, you'd see diminishing weight gain as metabolism raised, until for couple weeks nothing. Then again, it may be higher, so you test by eating more with your regular routine. Knowing that math still applies.

That whole wait time may take 4-6 weeks anyway, couple more weeks of test, so maybe 8. Then again, you may gain just water weight and nothing else and stabilize.
So you test higher for couple weeks, and then could probably drop. You just hope your metabolism isn't will to drop so fast as it raised so fast.