It is not all about calories. Calories don't explain this.

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  • Mavrick_RN
    Mavrick_RN Posts: 439 Member
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    Exact science? Well, the first problem is all of the data is based on guessing.

    Totally agree. Your body is keeping an exact count even if your calculator or HRM isn't. Without being in a closed system that measures EVERYTHING (that would mean air, urine, sweat, stool) exactly it's just an average/estimate.
  • SanteMulberry
    SanteMulberry Posts: 3,202 Member
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    My guess? Your TDEE is higher than you think it is, and therefore you're eating at a deficit greater than -3500/week.


    ^^ this. exactly this.

    Also, if all you are doing is running and not weight lifting, a portion of your rapid weight loss can also be muscle (especially if you arent eating enough carbohydrates pre-run to fuel your muscle glycogen stores). Cardio doesn't burn as much muscle as people make it out to, but it still burns SOME muscle if you aren't incorporating weight training and are at a large enough caloric deficit.

    ^^^This^^^Too many women make the mistake of consistently netting below 1,200 calories and then doing cardio, cardio, cardio. I've been there before, and what it does is not pretty, because you lose muscle mass along with the fat. And it sets you up for regain and yo-yo losing/gaining/losing/gaining. Much better to do a bit of weight training along with your cardio (some even feel that you should limit cardio to 2 hrs.--3 at the most, per week and then do 3 half-hour weight training sessions per week). If you are close to goal, you might even gain a little but you will look better and be much healthier. It is important to eat really well too, since you will be trying to preserve lean tissue, while burning the fat.
  • willdob3
    willdob3 Posts: 640 Member
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    It doesn't really work that way. s already mentioned there are too many variables.

    Using the scale to determine if you've lost fat is never going to work. You might be losing fat but retaining water & the scale is not going to show that.
  • SanteMulberry
    SanteMulberry Posts: 3,202 Member
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    This might be a first on the forums. Someone is actually complaining that they are losing too quickly? Normally we get the complaints from people who are eating right and exercising and not losing weight. Perhaps we need to direct all those questions to this OP, as they apparently have found the secret to losing 2 pounds per week!

    Seriously tho, like everyone else has said, TDEEs can vary between people. If you are consistently losing 2 pounds a week, then your TDEE is probably around 1000 cals over your average daily intake at this point. If you want to slow it down, then up your cals a bit.

    Lately, I have been losing faster than I want to lose--and I figure I am losing a fair bit of muscle as I am currently having a mild attack of gout (that is just one of the reasons why rapid weight loss is really bad for anyone with a tendency to gout). I had my first attack when I was 30 and on a "medically supervised" rapid weight loss plan (name the diet and I think I have been on every one). As you all know, when you lose weight too rapidly, you risk burning a lot of lean tissue. And when that happens, you release nitrogenous compounds into the bloodstream and one of the metabolites is uric acid (high serum uric acid causes gout). Very low carbohydrate diets also can cause gout because a lot of ketones are formed and they also can raise uric acid when burned. Slow and steady wins the race. :smile:
  • EvgeniZyntx
    EvgeniZyntx Posts: 24,208 Member
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    I agree with the above posters - what is your TDEE? Eat at a reasonable deficit based on your activity level (I heavy lift 3xweek at 90 minutes each time and set mine to moderately active - about 1800 calories burned a week). Most of us girls pick a lower activity level because we are afraid of gaining, but it is counterproductive to eat too little.

    Hm, I don't include activity because I always eat back exercise calories. I assume the activity level is for knowing how much more calories you need, and since I eat my back, I should not count it or it will muddy the picture.
    Also, if all you are doing is running and not weight lifting, a portion of your rapid weight loss can also be muscle (especially if you arent eating enough carbohydrates pre-run to fuel your muscle glycogen stores). Cardio doesn't burn as much muscle as people make it out to, but it still burns SOME muscle if you aren't incorporating weight training and are at a large enough caloric deficit.
    That "running kills muscle" thing seems crazy to me. You mean that as a sedentary me, who could not run 1 minute without keeling over, had 20lb of muscle to loose, and the "now" me who runs 5k or more 5 times a week has gotten there by losing all the muscle?
    I remember a couple weeks back you were upset because you thought you stalled. Now you're losing 2lb/week. Out of curiosity, what do you think made the difference?
    Yes, after that crazy stretch, all of a sudden the weight started to come off like crazy. It slows down and speeds up in cycles, but I'm talking about a 10 week average in this post.

    What do you guys think my accurate TDEE is? I"m 5'3, 144lb, 34 years old. My only exercise is running.

    Without getting BMR/RMR measured, there is no way to know. The calculators give you an estimate based on averages. I've seen posts on here where people got tested and had an RMR/BMR 1000 calories higher than the calculators told them they did.

    If you have been logging for 10 weeks, add up all the calories you've eaten plus 20lbs x 3500 calories per pound and then divide that all by the number of days logged = average TDEE.

    The bottom line is that it is all about calories. If it were not about the calories, what would it be about?

    It's easy. It's 2450.

    1450 x 7 + 3500 *2= weekly Total / 7 = TDEE.

    That's assuming the loss is 100% fat, which is unlikely.

    "That assumption is that 100% fat is being lost when a deficit is created. Now, if you diet correctly (e.g. the way I describe in my books), this is a pretty good assumption but it’s not universally true. Often people also lose muscle and connective tissue on a diet.

    And the issue is that muscle and connective tissue doesn’t provide as much energy to the body as a pound of fat. Rather than 3,500 calories to break down a pound of fat, a pound of muscle provides about 600 calories to the body when it’s broken down for energy.

    Let me put this in mathematical terms, to show you how the identical 3,500 calorie/week deficit can yield drastically different changes in body mass depending on what percentage of tissue you’re losing. I’m going to use the extremes of 100% fat, 50/50 fat and muscle, and 100% muscle.


    Condition - - - ----
    Energy Yield Total Weight Lost
    100% Fat
    3500 cal/lb 1 pound
    50%Fat/50% Muscle - 2050 cal/lb 1.7 pounds
    100% Muscle
    600 cal/lb
    5.8 pounds


    See what’s going on? The assumption of one pound per week (3,500 cal/week deficit) is only valid for the condition where you lose 100% fat. If you lose 50% fat and 50% muscle, you will lose 1.7 pounds in a week for the same 3,500 calorie deficit. Lose 100% muscle (this never happens, mind you, it’s just for illustration) and you lose 5.8 pounds per week."

    From - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance-equation.html

    Correct but you are losing the forest for the trees.
    The majority of the loss will be fat. Let's say 70% fat is really a maximal muscle loss.
    Do the calc

    That's 2270 TDEE.

    So her TDEE is between 2270 and 2450.
  • mattashbrock
    mattashbrock Posts: 38
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    Pretty much everything related to calculating weight loss is a guess, an educated guess based upon real science, but still a guess. Even with things like food scales the amount of calories that you are actually eating vs what you actually are, are not 100 percent spot on. Also calculating how many calories burned during a workout is guestimation as well. HRMs and other devices can give you a more accurate picture but even they are estimations. We try to weigh ourselves at the same time each day to account for hydration levels but even this doesn't mean we have exactly the same hydration level as the last weigh-in. It only takes a 1 pint of water hydration difference to equal a pound. Adding all of these small inaccuracies together makes it very hard to put much faith in small weight numbers like 1 or 2 pounds.

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