Some help please...Insight on deficit and weight loss rate

serialmahogany
serialmahogany Posts: 42 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Is a calorie deficit of 1000cal too large for me? I feel like Im not doing something correct. Maybe I should lower it? My BMR is like 1500 and something, so I make sure that I am eating at an average of 1500 daily. I know that I am not going to lose literally .2lb daily, but I am still shifting to 170 some days. I am not sure what is happening. What do you suggest that I do to make this work? Only thing that I know am going to do is eliminate cheat days on the weekends. As I think that sets me back a lot. I upped my fiber because Im not going (and still not going, even with the tbsp of olive oil daily)…And then also I brought a fitbit to help me monitor my TDEE correctly. It looks like it is working a bit, but I think that my deficit might need some type of tweaking.

Aiming for 2500 TDEE daily, when I can w/ 1000 deficit
Routine… Some days I zumba, nike+ training on xbaox. Wed I do a Core strength class and play basketball. If I can’t or don’t feel like the gym, I will go for a 500 cal burn to my parents house and back and then finish whatever cals fitbit says I need to burn doing xbox or a 100 cal burn workout. Other days I go for a 4 mile run/walk, and if I’m at the gym I add strength training on the machines. I log them via fitbit (http://www.fitbit.com/user/26N7Z8), not MFP.

When I look at my daily deficit, I should be at or around 163 by now...since 7/21. And Im not seeing too much change in measurements either :(

Current Stats
Female 5’9”
168.1 on a good day this week
BF said 45lb or 47lb this morning
31 yrs
7/2113 to date...TDEE avg 2465 Intake average 1477 cals Avg Def is 1008 cal

Goal 145 w/ 20% BF

Any help would be appreciated.

Replies

  • UrbanLotus
    UrbanLotus Posts: 1,163 Member
    My BMR is like 1500 and something, so I make sure that I am eating at an average of 1500 daily.

    So you're eating less than your BMR...? And not eating back exercise cals?
  • herblackwings39
    herblackwings39 Posts: 3,930 Member
    MFP sets us up with a calorie deficit before exercise. That's why it gets logged and is supposed to be eaten back. I'd suggest that you lower your desired loss rate to 1 lb since you're about 20 lbs from your goal weight and be ready to lower it again to .5 lbs a week in about 10 lbs. The 2 lb a week loss is too aggressive for 20ish lbs. I'd also suggest getting and using a kitchen scale. It makes logging more accurate if you KNOW that your 3 oz of chicken is 3 oz instead of eyeballing it and having 2 oz or 6 oz.
  • serialmahogany
    serialmahogany Posts: 42 Member
    Yes, I am technically eating my exercise calories back. So I go by my Fitbit...If I burn 2500 TDEE, then my intake had to be 1500 at least. Yesterday was hard, because I burned at the end of the day, but I got very close. So if I burn 3200 cal, then I try my best to get to the 2200 intake as possible. But since I had such a hard time getting in I try to to expend more than 3000 a day. The fitbit supposedly takes to account the MFP calc on exercise and adds any extra from the formula to my MFP.

    So what about days where I dont get to a TDEE of 2500, should I just go by what ever my TDEE is and subtract the deficit from that or should I just eat the 1500 and let the deficit lose?

    I do use a scale weight, so I know my food is right. And I do make my own recipes, and weight them out too. This made a difference in my food intake a while ago. I usually say if I had anything over, it would be lunch from aramark not being accurate.

    I think lowering is a good idea, as her black wings says, it was what I was thinking, but when I do, all of a sudden my scale starts to go upward drastically. EVERYTHING I PUT INTO MFP SAY IM SUPPOSED TO BE AT A 1200 DEFICIT...What do you think I need my deficit to be daily if I lowered it?

    Is there a chart that shows maybe a more formulated approach to how much I should do my deficit? Just wondering because you can read "20lbs to go" in many ways...depending on what you base your goal on...like 20 lbs to be a certain personal goal size (mental), or 20 lbs to go before you reach "healthy" range ...or 20lbs to go before you reach an appropriate fat to muscle ratio...which Im going for the latter....as I want the stomach and leg fat to start to diminish again.

    Thanks for all the input everyone. I appreciate it very much
  • AJ_G
    AJ_G Posts: 4,158 Member
    At the end of the day, all that matters is that you're not losing more than 1% of your body weight a week. Anything less than that is fine, anything more than that, and you're losing a good percentage of that weight loss from muscle which is not what you want. Your BMR, NEAT, TDEE, etc are all just estimates. Eat at whatever caloric intake has you losing a proper amount of weight each week( <1% BW ), and stick with that
  • stepplax
    stepplax Posts: 26
    I start off by doing TDEE minus 15% for cutting. TDEE is just an estimate but does take into account your activity level. As long as I workout consistently, per the information I entered into my TDEE calculation, I eat the same amount of calories every day. No eating back and no SUPER starving on off days. You can adjust from there after a short evaluation time w/out cheating in either direction. Using iifym.com to calculate TDEE and macros and not eating back calories is what works best for me. Most simple also.
  • joshdann
    joshdann Posts: 618 Member
    At the end of the day, all that matters is that you're not losing more than 1% of your body weight a week. Anything less than that is fine, anything more than that, and you're losing a good percentage of that weight loss from muscle which is not what you want. Your BMR, NEAT, TDEE, etc are all just estimates. Eat at whatever caloric intake has you losing a proper amount of weight each week( <1% BW ), and stick with that
    This is mostly true, except that a large number of studies have tried to nail down the point at which a body starts to consume its own muscle instead of fat. That point is different for everyone. 1% per week is a safe bet, but the only way to know if you can lose more (or less) safely is to have yourself tested for BMR, EE, lean muscle mass, etc. And do it regularly. It's an expensive practice, but there is *no* other way to know for sure. If you don't want to (or can't) spend the money on clinical tests, you can make a much better guess at how you're retaining/gaining/losing lean muscle mass by using an average of all the available home methods. It's still not as good as clinical, but it's significantly cheaper.

    > 1% per week does not mean you're losing muscle, not necessarily.
  • JeffGDDG
    JeffGDDG Posts: 252 Member
    I think that we are always supposed to eat at least what our bmr is. Occasionally going under won't hurt but its not a good habit. If you don't burn your 1000 calories then you just have a smaller deficit. Also I shoot for a range. 500-750 deficit. Gives me some room to go over and under.
  • AJ_G
    AJ_G Posts: 4,158 Member
    At the end of the day, all that matters is that you're not losing more than 1% of your body weight a week. Anything less than that is fine, anything more than that, and you're losing a good percentage of that weight loss from muscle which is not what you want. Your BMR, NEAT, TDEE, etc are all just estimates. Eat at whatever caloric intake has you losing a proper amount of weight each week( <1% BW ), and stick with that
    This is mostly true, except that a large number of studies have tried to nail down the point at which a body starts to consume its own muscle instead of fat. That point is different for everyone. 1% per week is a safe bet, but the only way to know if you can lose more (or less) safely is to have yourself tested for BMR, EE, lean muscle mass, etc. And do it regularly. It's an expensive practice, but there is *no* other way to know for sure. If you don't want to (or can't) spend the money on clinical tests, you can make a much better guess at how you're retaining/gaining/losing lean muscle mass by using an average of all the available home methods. It's still not as good as clinical, but it's significantly cheaper.

    > 1% per week does not mean you're losing muscle, not necessarily.

    Not sure what you mean by consume its own muscle instead of fat? ANY TIME you lose weight, you lose fat AND muscle. The larger your deficit, the higher percentage of your weight loss is from muscle. It's not as if your body burns pure fat up to a point and then switches over to burning muscle instead of fat. Maintaining muscle is calorically expensive, and your body will always lose muscle in a caloric deficit for survival reasons. People use the 1% body weight as a good rule of thumb for weight loss while lifting heaving and eating adequate protein for optimal fat loss while retaining most of your muscle. Getting your BMR tested is pointless when you can just find your maintenance calories on your own for free by maintaining a caloric intake and tracking your weight, and adjusting until you find maintenance. BMR is pretty irrelevant anyway in the grand scheme of things, TDEE is much more practical.
  • michellekicks
    michellekicks Posts: 3,624 Member
    I say a 1000 daily deficit is too much. Cut it back to 500.
  • serialmahogany
    serialmahogany Posts: 42 Member
    Ok I'm going to cut back to 1 lb a week. 1% is 1.6lbs so ill go with the 500 deficit and hope for more. I went on scooby s and it has me on a 1570 to 1700 losing a lb a week. That's fine, as I'm trying to lose for keeps and keep a good healthy diet. I updated mfp. I think their calc changed cause it actually gave me 1580,close to scoobys number, and close to fitbit. So we shall see how it fairs out another month. Fingers crossed!

    When I get back homeim going to try out iffmy calc again. I loved it when I was fasting, but its so hard when there are so many lunch meetings. I really might need to go back on that again proper.

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