Eating at a deficit but not losing fat or lbs.

Correct, that merely changes were the minutes end up showing for review.
Like someone could make themselves feel all warm and fuzzy by lowering the intense to 1 MET.

heybales, I just calculated those numbers. My Katch-McArdle BMR is 1390, and the Bodymedia BMR is 1440. RMR on the BMF is 1584. The armband is picking up elevated activity on my workouts. So, it looks like the armband is overestimating by about 3.5%. Does that sound right?

Considering studies on differences in gender and the metabolically active organs, women's sedentary TDEE is 5-10% less than men at equal LBM.
The BMR wasn't such a tight bell curve of being lower as sedentary TDEE was.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1522233

So the Katch BMR is based on men and women, so your best estimate Katch BMR is even lower than 1390, which means the BMF is even farther away and inflating even more. It probably already lowered from starting at Mifflin down to 1440, and that's about as much movement as it can make.

If your are interested, PM me your stats and I'll tell you what height to tell BMF so it's starting with a BMR closer to Katch.
Age, height, weight, BF% is all the stats needed.

It'll still take a couple weeks for it to start moving it's assumptions. Because from what I've read, it basically has formula from tables that says this BMR should show this temp reading on avg, and it adjusts from there, but only so much.

I'm a 55 year old female eating at maintenance, and I also use a BMF. Sometimes my burns look insanely high, but they must be on target because I'm not gaining, and have actually lost a couple of pounds over the past few months. My nighttime calorie burn is about 0.8 per minute, which is right on track with my measured BMR, so I'm assuming that my high burn days are accurate. You'd be surprised how much you can burn by just moving around all day. In fact, my highest calorie burn days aren't on workout days, they're on days when I'm hosting a party because I'm on my feet from the moment I get up.

I have to ditto the weighing thing. Here are a couple of examples I found just comparing the package label to actual weight:

Oatmeal--says 1/2 cup (40 grams) is 150 calories. If I put 40 grams in a half cup measure, it's at least 1/4 inch below the rim. A full half cup of oatmeal weighs 55.2 grams, or 207 calories. There's 57 calories you'd miss if you were measuring, not weighing.

My bag of prunes says 5 prunes (40 grams) is 100 calories. If I weigh 5 prunes, it comes out to 51 grams, or 128 calories. Now we're up to 85 extra calories, and that's on only two items. This is why we tell you to weigh--those extra calories sneak up on you very quickly and can derail your weight loss.

I can empathize, I've been stuck at 160 lbs and measuring 30-31% bf for 6 months. Like you, I have noticed some positive changes in my body (I've lost fat and probably gained muscle in my back) but can't seem to get the scale moving no matter how low I bring my calories. Even if I'm overestimating I should be losing and I'm not. *shrug*

I weigh higher calorie fruits like bananas or pineapple that are difficult to measure otherwise, but I draw the line at weighing vegetables. I tried limiting my veggies when counting carbs awhile back and that was the road to crazytown for me.

What I find odd is that you haven't seen any change in body recomp at all, even if you're eating at maintenance. Something doesn't add up.

But a suppressed maintenance because body has already slowed down because of deficit being too big to start with, will the body then make improvements that require more energy, while it drops fat that requires very little?

Couple good references in post above.

I can empathize, I've been stuck at 160 lbs and measuring 30-31% bf for 6 months. Like you, I have noticed some positive changes in my body (I've lost fat and probably gained muscle in my back) but can't seem to get the scale moving no matter how low I bring my calories. Even if I'm overestimating I should be losing and I'm not. *shrug*

I weigh higher calorie fruits like bananas or pineapple that are difficult to measure otherwise, but I draw the line at weighing vegetables. I tried limiting my veggies when counting carbs awhile back and that was the road to crazytown for me.

Here ya go.
Yes, you can keep eating less and less and eventually you will start losing again - but is that the road to being able to sustain not only the weight loss to health goal, but have maintenance at such a greatly lowered level too?

And any exercise that could have great potential for changes - won't. Body's not going to make changes that require more energy when it's already get so little it had to slow itself down.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/heybales/view/reduced-metabolism-tdee-beyond-expected-from-weight-loss-616251

http://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/truth-about-metabolic-damage

heybales:

I've only had a chance to look at the first reference so far but I found it very interesting. I have been observing myself and the way I've felt and acted on 1450 calories per day and I can tell you, I know my voluntary NEAT has gone down, I have a lot less energy to get through my workouts, my mood is impacted, and I have no libido. I was never planning on staying at this calorie level for a long time but the idea was to try it for a couple weeks and see if I would see a loss. Of course my experiment isn't really probably worth anything since I took a free day for my birthday yesterday. But the first 7 days saw a totally steady scale weight which quite honestly I cannot explain. This is the first time I've tried such a big deficit; every other dietary change has been to choose cleaner foods, choose leaner foods, or reduce portions by 10-15%, for example.

The thing I don't really understand I guess is that everything I"ve read points to "crash dieting" as the cause of metabolic damage, but if anything the last few years have been the opposite. I've lost 30lbs in 2.5 years; I've never lost more than 1#/week and that was when I was still quite heavy.

Also the referenced paper quite clearly states that the baseline TDEE was not affected in the CR+EX group, and I've been consistently exercising this whole time...

ETA: sorry for highjacking OP! But hopefully we can learn from one another ;-)

Stress hormone for women can halt fat loss in its tracks just like it can for men, despite calories consumed. Skip breakfast decrease carbs and increase protein and see if that helps. Opt for eating your carbs at night, despite what many people will say otherwise, but I have been at this for a long time and have moved beyond the simpler concepts and broscience that gets spewed on here daily. Also opt for whole fats from animal sources as these are best.

that is horrible advise

I've only had a chance to look at the first reference so far but I found it very interesting. I have been observing myself and the way I've felt and acted on 1450 calories per day and I can tell you, I know my voluntary NEAT has gone down, I have a lot less energy to get through my workouts, my mood is impacted, and I have no libido. I was never planning on staying at this calorie level for a long time but the idea was to try it for a couple weeks and see if I would see a loss. Of course my experiment isn't really probably worth anything since I took a free day for my birthday yesterday. But the first 7 days saw a totally steady scale weight which quite honestly I cannot explain. This is the first time I've tried such a big deficit; every other dietary change has been to choose cleaner foods, choose leaner foods, or reduce portions by 10-15%, for example.

The thing I don't really understand I guess is that everything I"ve read points to "crash dieting" as the cause of metabolic damage, but if anything the last few years have been the opposite. I've lost 30lbs in 2.5 years; I've never lost more than 1#/week and that was when I was still quite heavy.

Also the referenced paper quite clearly states that the baseline TDEE was not affected in the CR+EX group, and I've been consistently exercising this whole time...

ETA: sorry for highjacking OP! But hopefully we can learn from one another ;-)

When people say paying attention to their body - you are excellent example of that being done right. Was it the extreme nature of the changes that made it stand out, or you think you would have noticed with smaller changes?

Seems vast majority think that means the body weight on the scale - totally missing the idea. Well, until several tell them they sure seem cranky, or other big obvious signs.

I've always likened it to mineral or vitamin deficiency. The negative effects of that rarely comes fast, usually takes a while, and symptoms that can be ignored or applied to something else. Could lead to some pretty bad effects too, that could effect you rest of your life. But eventually, hopefully, a blood test or testing results in improvement, even if not back to 100%.
Same thing with calorie deficiency. May take a while for negative consequences to show up, and may cause long lasting effects.

So the TDEE in the study was measured, and the amount of exercise required was exactly measured on treadmill so the burn and diet resulted in that 25% overall deficit.
They also started exercising basically with this program - so huge room for improvement.

Rest of us going on best estimates, maybe a VO2max test and RMR test, ect, for slightly better estimates.

Was that 1 lb that was lost weekly in accordance with what you thought the deficit on paper said you should be losing?
I only ask because I've seen many times usually ladies respond that their weight loss amount slowed way down, but they accept it as slower is better.
Well, slower by purposeful wise choices is better indeed, slower because of unwise choices and that's what the body forced on you is not better.

But stress also makes a difference. Notice the prerequisites for those to be included, never obese (so never any weight loss down to overweight), no sick, ect, ect.
That and genetics, because even the outliers on the bell curve saw worse or less effects of suppression.
And the exercise was pretty low aerobic level, 569 calories in 53 minutes isn't intense. Now for someone coming from no exercise, it was like resistance training for them at the start, I'm sure for awhile.

But as that study shows, recovery did slowly start coming - when they ate at true measured TDEE, which is hard for rest of us to know without some extensive logging of eating levels.

Might try to 2 week test too, nothing like a diet break anyway.