Losing a bit too fast, how many cals should I increase?

ana3067
ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
edited October 2014 in Health and Weight Loss
I've lost almost 7lbs in the last 30 days. This is too much (goal is 4lbs/month), especially now that I'm nearing the last 15lbs. How much should I increase the cals, 50? 100? 10%?
Been netting 1880, eating back all exercise calories.

ETA i've just changed my goal to 1950, or +70 cals, for now so I have a rough idea of how to eat for breakfast and lunch. Any guidance is welcome!

Replies

  • allyphoe
    allyphoe Posts: 618 Member
    Three pounds of excess = 10,500 calories, so 350 cal/day.

    That assumes that you have reason to believe that a) you're measuring loss of body mass, rather than water weight fluctuation, and b) you're losing fat, not muscle. If you want to hedge your bets, pick any of the options you came up with and see where you are after another month.
  • JTick
    JTick Posts: 2,131 Member
    Was this your first 30 days? If so, it's not going to be reflective of real results as you've likely dropped some water weight. It should even out a bit now.

    If you've been at it a while, I'd bump up to 2000, continue eating your exercise calories, and reevaluate in a few weeks. Also, you might want to consider weighing daily and producing a trend line so that you can more accurately see your fluctuations. If on day 1 you weighed at a high "bloated" weight, and on day 30 you weighed in at a low, non-bloated weight, that doesn't give you the whole picture of what happened in those 30 days. I use the app Libra which gives a trend line and will spit out how much I'm actually averaging per week.
  • FrenchMob
    FrenchMob Posts: 1,167 Member
    JTick wrote: »
    Was this your first 30 days? If so, it's not going to be reflective of real results as you've likely dropped some water weight. It should even out a bit now.

    If you've been at it a while, I'd bump up to 2000, continue eating your exercise calories, and reevaluate in a few weeks. Also, you might want to consider weighing daily and producing a trend line so that you can more accurately see your fluctuations. If on day 1 you weighed at a high "bloated" weight, and on day 30 you weighed in at a low, non-bloated weight, that doesn't give you the whole picture of what happened in those 30 days. I use the app Libra which gives a trend line and will spit out how much I'm actually averaging per week.
    Good advice.
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  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
    JTick wrote: »
    Was this your first 30 days? If so, it's not going to be reflective of real results as you've likely dropped some water weight. It should even out a bit now.

    If you've been at it a while, I'd bump up to 2000, continue eating your exercise calories, and reevaluate in a few weeks. Also, you might want to consider weighing daily and producing a trend line so that you can more accurately see your fluctuations. If on day 1 you weighed at a high "bloated" weight, and on day 30 you weighed in at a low, non-bloated weight, that doesn't give you the whole picture of what happened in those 30 days. I use the app Libra which gives a trend line and will spit out how much I'm actually averaging per week.

    No, i've been logging for 140 days. I switched from TDEE to net maybe... 1.5 months ago? Maybe almost 2? I've been back in school so my energy burn has increased outside of exericse, and I did calculate my estimated intake needs from a separate, proper calculator (actually used one that can tend to estimate high, but I must have underestimated my activity or my lifting burns more than what I'm logging).

    As far as daily weighing, this is just not something that I a) have time to do (half the time I don't even remember to weigh in weekly, since I am sometimes rushed in the mornings) and b) don't really think it would work well for my psyche haha.
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
    MrM27 wrote: »
    Honestly, no one will be able to tell you exactly how much more you need to increase, you have to apply trail and error. You upped it 70 and you're comfortable with that then stay there a monitor for the next month and adjust as needed. You can either do that or reduce your cardio if you're able to.

    Personally I would have gone with 100 calories just to test it out. Just remember that the increase will come with increase glycogen storage and additional volume of undigested food so be patient in tracking trends.
    I do not do cardio, outside of 5 minutes of warm up, and it is not used to increase my calorie deficit (i.e. I eat back all exercise calories that I log)

    I might just increase to 100, to 2000 as the other guy recommended, since that gives wiggle room. My guess is that I'm either burning more when working out or I'm walking/standing more than I think I am, or I'm a special snowflake whose body burns more than the average person with my stats :p thanks everyone though for the advice!
  • FrenchMob
    FrenchMob Posts: 1,167 Member
    ...or you're overestimating your calories intake.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    edited October 2014
    Can't you monitor each week, adding a 100 calories each one, if you're still going too fast?
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
    FrenchMob wrote: »
    ...or you're overestimating your calories intake.

    I weigh all food, so this is quite unlikely.

    Liftng4Lis wrote: »
    Can't you monitor each week, adding a 100 calories each one, if you're still going too fast?

    Since there'd likely be other fluctuations in my weight from eating more calories, I'd need to wait longer to see. I'm thinking I might actually stick to 1900 as a net and use the vigorous lifting category instead of light/moderate, since on lower body days I definitely am not doing a light workout.
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