Help! Overwhelmed re: Metabolic slowing, Dieting, BMR, etc.

Given your stats I think you can safely lose up to about 2.5lbs/week in the beginning provided that:

1) Nutrient needs are met.
2) Gym performance is maintained.
3) You closely monitor dietary adherence/how you feel.

Finally, this will all depend on your total intake and what things you need to do with activity and diet in order to approach that value. I'd consider 2.5 to be reasonable depending on all these factors.


EDIT: Additionally, I think you're approaching this a bit incorrectly as far as assuming that you need to subtract 500 from your TDEE for each pound you want to lose. A more reasonable approach would be to set your intake around 20% below your TDEE, and monitor rate of loss and gym performance. If you land anywhere around the 1.5 - 2.5 mark, which you probably will by doing this, leave it there and see where it goes.

I would NOT calculate your TDEE at 2700 and then chop 1000 calories from it assuming that you need to do this to lose 2/week. The math usually won't work out that way due to massive amounts of estimation error in energy needs, energy intake, and energy output.

Given your stats I think you can safely lose up to about 2.5lbs/week in the beginning provided that:

1) Nutrient needs are met.
2) Gym performance is maintained.
3) You closely monitor dietary adherence/how you feel.

I'd second that.

Hi everyone. So, my background is that I am a 6' 0" male. I started dieting on Tuesday (started counting calories on Wednesday), and have been trying to read up as much information on weight loss everyday since Tuesday (when I joined). On Tuesday, I weighed 235 pounds. Today, I weigh 229 pounds (though from what I've read this is probably water weight as I have not done any exercise). I just did a whole lot of reading on ruining one's metabolism with VLCDs and I was wondering if it was safe to lose 2 lbs a week, without lowering my metabolic rate? According to the calculations by MFP, I would have to eat about 1600 calories per day, however my BMR is 2100 calories/day (TDEE is 2500-2700). So that's eating approximately 500 below my BMR. Would eating so low below my BMR slow my metabolism? Is losing 2 lbs a week risky/dangerous? Also, I hear that it takes 72 hours for any serious change to occur in metabolism, and despite my 1600 calories/day target, I haven't been eating that much (my food diary is open) due to not feeling that hungry for the past 72 hours, and it's been about 72 hours so I want to try to make a change today, before serious damage is done.

I was initially thinking of losing 2 lbs/week until I was in the overweight range (221 pounds) or until I was in the healthy weight range (184 pounds), and then readjusting to lose 1-1.5 lbs/wk thereafter. Do you think any of these plans is reasonable, or should I just readjust to 1-1.5 lbs/week from now (I really want to get out of the obese range quickly)?

At this point, I just really don't know what to do, so any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks for your time.

Eat 1600 calories/day
Eat 1.5 g protein per kg body weight (or not)
If you do a high volume of exercise (e.g. burn > 800 calories in a workout, replace some of those calories afterwards to keep glycogen levels up.
Lift weights 2x/wk in a 5-10 RM range.
Be active in your daily activities.
Track your weight loss.

Seriously--don't overanalyze and overthink this. The chances of you "damaging your metabolism" are nonexistent under most circumstances. Your metabolic rate will likely decrease somewhat no matter what you do--that's part of weight loss and eating at a deficit-- but it will be transient and mitigated by your resistance training and protein intake.

Weight loss is not linear and it doesn' t occur on a fixed schedule--you may lose 3 lb one week and 1 the next. Seriously--if you are worried about "serious damage" to metabolism after 72 hours, you are going to drive yourself nuts.