I eat at a deficit while doing SL. Eating enough protein is soooo important. Minimum 1g per lean body mass. My baseline calories per day are 1300 if I don't exercise (more if I do) and I can tell you right now it is a challenge to eat enough protein. My goal is 100-110g per day and I pretty much live on Quest bars, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs and straight up meat. Everything else I really have to pick and choose carefully. I'm not explicitly low carb but they are much less bang-for-the-buck and I just don't end up eating that many. A serving of pasta is a lot of calories and I am hungry 30min later.

On the upside, eating lots of protein makes me feel really full, and I am more satiated than I was back when I was quite overweight and eating 2000+ per day. I'm almost never hungry, but I eat very monotonously.

I don't know why this post was all about protein, sorry. I guess it's just because, your protein macro is super important if you are lifting, especially at a deficit.

I guess I could add: the daily goal without exercise MFP gives me is 1350 for enough of a deficit to lose about 1.5 lbs a week and with a lightly active status due to where I work.

That protein is such a struggle. And I can't have things like greek yogurt and such, except on the rare occasion. But I like to save my rare dairy for treats like pizza cause mmmm. Still, I need to work on that protein too because it's hard to get over 80 grams all of the time.

SansSerif421 wrote: »

I just want to make sure I won't cause any damage.

i don't think you'll damage yourself, exactly . . . but fwiw i was at that 1200-calorie deficit when i started sl last june, and my summer was kind of a compendium of setbacks. that could be something that would have happened regardless of my eating patterns, since you couldn't get a much noobier noob than i was. but still, i don't think the deficit helped me get the best out of my recovery days, and to be honest i didn't start making any real progress until i got bored with mfp a few months later and quit logging and monitoring my calories.

i think now that i tried way too hard to keep up with the add-5lbs rule too. i think it's a 'rule' that kind of assumes you're eating like a lifter, after all. i found it kind of hard to lift like a lifter when i wasn't eating like one.

threnjen wrote: »

I'm going slower than a lot of ladies that I see on this board as far as adding weight. I stay at a weight 2, even 3 times before going up. And if I miss a whole week lifting, I deload. With those two things my progress is sloooow on the weight additions. And I've been at this since Sep and still only do 45lbs OHP

Same here, been lifting since early August and my OHP ranges from 45-55lbs depending on the day. But Squats and Deads...I have been killing those!

I also lift while eating a deficit and I try really hard to get in my protein. I am currently set to 124g of protein a day. I guarantee at least 30g of it with a protein shake, but the rest is made up of chicken/fish/greek yogurt/cottage cheese. And admittedly after a while the protein intake can be hard to deal with.

I am in the last ten pounds or so of what I wanted to loose and so I haven't really lost many lbs, maybe 1 or 2 since lifting, but my body is smaller. I only lift 3x a week and truly rest on rest days.

I'm glad you asked this. I'm new to the program, just started on Friday. I'm eating at a deficit to lose weight too and wasn't sure I would be able to keep up with the program by doing so. Reading that people are taking it slower than the added 5 lbs every time is encouraging.