Hit a wall/plateau/whatever you want to call it!

Yes, you are eating too little.

You maintain your current weight of 208lbs on 2525 calories per day.

If you eat 1500 and exercise off 500 calories your net intake is 1000 calories a day, you are trying to maintain a 1500+ calorie deficit daily.

Your estimated BMR is: 1,978 calories/day this is how many calories your body would burn if it was a in a coma.

It is not recommended to eat below ones' BMR, this increases the amount of muscle lost during weight reduction

There are a lot of people who make protein shakes on this website, plenty of recipes, some are upwards of 1000 calories each. If you aren't feeling hungry, sometimes drinking calories is easier.

I'm 27, hovering around 220 (23% body fat), 6'2 and same build as you. Your BMR is a lot higher than 1978/day -- it's closer to ~2100/day.

1200-1500 will plateau you any day of the week. The 500-750/day of exercise, you need to subtract ~100-110 per hour so if that's over an hour 400-650/day. Saying this, your body uses around ~2500 to ~3000/day depending on what you do for work or if it's your day off. Adding in exercise, your body uses most likely around ~3200 to ~3300 to maintain it's weight.

You should be eating no less then 2000 calories/day. On days you stay at home and do absolutely nothing you can drop down to 1800.

Got it. 2000 calories/day

I tried keeping my calories at 1600/day and i plateaued hard core. As soon as I boosted it up to 2000/day im back on track.

Also dependent on sodium intake, types of foods, stress level etc ...someone our size can fluctuate 6lb give or take in a day.

Settings (Upper right corner) --> Diary options --> public

Your breakfast has far too many carbs. You need to get some protein there. Too much reliance on protein shakes. Eat real meat, fish, poultry and you['ll have better nutrition and more calories. Add some veggies to tea.

I can agree with some parts of your post & not others. The psychology part yes, the against eating more calories no.

If you do the math he is between 1700 - 2000 calories below his maintenance! TDEE -55% to -62%, your body will react after so long. TDEE - 40% max should be your limit for long term success. You will still be below your TDEE by significant amounts. However, based on your weight, height and AGE, a good weight for you is 190-195 then you can start with resistance training. Better diet is needed to maintain muscle growth. You're almost there but you need to be smart about it!

You need to LOG everything. Time and time again, the biggest correlation between long term weight loss & success is Locus of Control (believing you can change), food journals and lifestyle change. Log everything, every day and don't feel bad about it. If you're over you're over but you need to see your own pattern and figure out how to change it.

This is how i look at lifestyle change
-- Eat foods that make you feel alive -- if you feel sluggish after eating something, switch it up
-- Get proper amounts of fruits & veggies every day. It doesn't matter if you're over your sugar limit if it's coming from hard fruits!
-- Eating junk sometimes is good for the mind, if you're healthy most of the time and go out the pub and have chicken wings and fries who cares but don't fall into the trap of "it's my vacation" or "it's my cheat day" if you want to achieve your goal. Once you've reached your goal, you can figure that out.
-- Do what makes you feel good, if you hate the gym, find some activity that you like & enjoy
-- Don't sacrifice your social life to be thin but don't engage engage in activities with people who affect you negatively because of their bad habits, (don't hate them, just learn to adapt...if they're going out for a bad dinner, show up 20 minutes late after they have ordered)
-- Love yourself. Take photos once a week, and stand infront of that mirror and tell yourself you are looking thinner, sexier or whatever. Confidence is key my friend. Without confidence you can be the most beautiful guy in the world and still feel like ****.

You will find a lot of people on here will immediately tell you to "eat more", thinking that it works for everyone. (It doesn't.)

But what I can tell you is that there's NO HARM in playing with your caloric intake, especially when you hit a wall. I have seen SO MANY times when someone (even me) will have a spike day or two, or even a week, and it busts the plateau. I have found in my own body that if I've been at a large deficit for a while (which you definitely are at), that the body needs a good "refeeding" every 1-2 weeks to remind it that you are not in a famine and that there's no reason to hold onto all this pesky stored fat.

Worst case scenario, you put on a pound of fat, 2 pounds of water weight, and lose it all quickly the first week you go back to the "old ways".

Many of us have a fear of "putting all the weight back on" if we cheat at all, but if you tell yourself from the very beginning that this is a CONTROLLED refeeding/calorie boost with a specific time limit and goal, you can get right back into the bigger deficit.

I do this when I go on vacations, for example. I've lost 15 pounds this month, and next week I'm going to Vegas for 4 days. I am losing weight to enjoy my life, and I will always enjoy food, so I'm going to enjoy the wonderful cuisines available in Vegas, come back either 2 pounds heavier or 2 pounds lighter (yeah, sometimes I lose weight on vacation even without watching my eating), and go right back to "the plan".

Also, if you're not already, it might be time to add some weight training to your regimen since you're close to goal weight. You can definitely eat more when you're doing that so that you can put on some muscle and get the "ripped" look that's great with the ladies. :P

going to throw this out there... if you were losing weight fast and then you 'plateaued', it could have been that you were losing a lot of lean body mass and then you hit a point where the calories in could sustain that reduced lean body mass and hence weight loss curtailed.

note that one can get stronger (bench press or squat go up) while losing lean body mass, thus giving you the psychological illusion that your gaining muscle or at least maintaining.

going to throw this out there... if you were losing weight fast and then you 'plateaued', it could have been that you were losing a lot of lean body mass and then you hit a point where the calories in could sustain that reduced lean body mass and hence weight loss curtailed.

note that one can get stronger (bench press or squat go up) while losing lean body mass, thus giving you the psychological illusion that your gaining muscle or at least maintaining.

+1 for that