Three Weeks of EM2WL; Sharing for Anyone Who Might Be Interested

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  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Watch out for other interesting physical changes as body is willing to speed back up to use those extra calories.

    Workouts getting better - if you have a way of measuring intensity/speed/weight to compare.
    Hair/nails growing faster. I always notice on toenails first since they are slowest anyway, but also speed of healing of cuts/scrapes. Keeping warm easier, ect.
  • andymcclure
    andymcclure Posts: 40 Member
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    ...also, sleeping better.
  • andymcclure
    andymcclure Posts: 40 Member
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    Week 5, 3.8 pound increase. Not so thrilled about that, but I'm trying really hard not to get hung up on the small week-to-week changes. This is still WAY less weight than I was gaining when I starved myself.

    So, I'm going to start backing off on calories to see if I can start losing again. I'm starting at 500 calories/day for a goal of losing 1 pound a week. I'm also going to try to increase my exercise a little. (I've not been very good about doing my PT exercises, which is my main form of exercise right now.)
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Well, careful of doing the old double bang of eating less at the same time as exercising more.

    That just creates more deficit. Keep it reasonable on both and that's fine. Make each by itself reasonable, and it just became unreasonable combined.

    So if exercise is going up your TDEE you were doing is now lower than what it will be, so 500 off now lower figure means bigger deficit there than 500.

    So a water weight gain of 3.8 lbs in 1 week, since wk 4 saw no change.

    Maybe body finally responded well to good workouts and increased water weight associated with that.
  • andymcclure
    andymcclure Posts: 40 Member
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    I definitely FEEL better overall, and that seems more important than a number on the scale for now. My pants are all getting a little snug, which is not so great. I am trying to pay more attention to my macros, not just calories; I'll be curious to see how that changes things. I'm finding it hard to get enough protein, so that's where I'm focusing for now.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    When eating at the higher maintenance level, and the fact it's maintenance too - the protein level being at 30% can be overkill for what is really needed.
    Won't provide anything extra except making you feel full - which perhaps isn't a problem anyway, and lightening your wallet, which may not help the pants situation anyway.

    I'd suggest see how many grams is bodyweight x 0.8 and call that desired, you can eat more if you really want to work at it.
  • retirehappy
    retirehappy Posts: 4,752 Member
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    Bumping.
  • andymcclure
    andymcclure Posts: 40 Member
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    OK, I'm 9 weeks in and 12 pounds heavier than I started. Here's where I'm running into trouble:

    I let MFP and Fitbit work together to give me a number (currently 1830 calories/day, based on sedentary activity level and losing 1 pound/week), and that number is nearly identical to what I got doing far more calculation. So, I feel pretty good about that number.

    Great. I get to eat a lot more. My weight jumped up the first couple of weeks, but that was expected. Then the weight gain slowed, but was still creeping up. Again, not terribly surprising. Then I actually started to lose a tiny bit of weight. Then a plateau. Plateau. Gain. Plateau. Gain.

    So, here's the part I don't understand about EM2WL (or any weight loss program, really)...

    I eat X calories a day to maintain my weight. I eat X-Y calories a day to try to lose some weight. I lose some weight. THEN, X-Y calories becomes what I eat to maintain. So, then I eat X-Y-Z calories to lose some weight. Repeat endlessly.

    Over a surprisingly short amount of time, I'm starting the day with just a few hundred calories and still gaining weight, which is where I was 9 weeks ago (12 pounds lighter but hungry and crabby all the time).

    So here's the question I can't seem to get answered anywhere:

    To lose weight, one must take in fewer calories than one burns. What prevents my body from simply adjusting to the new reduced calorie intake and starting to plateau (or even gain)?

    Right now, I'm about halfway down the slide: eating more than I was 9 weeks ago, but less than all the EM2WL info would suggest.
  • kmac1196
    kmac1196 Posts: 188 Member
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    Muscle. Kiki (from Eat More Weigh Less) just did a persicope about this very issues. When you diet down, you lose muscle, some water, fat, etc...lots of stuff. And then your metabolism slows down (becomes efficient...remember, your body wants homeostasis). Building muscle and lifting weights help to preserve metabolism. As does taking breaks.

    FYI..I am cutting at 1950-2k.
  • KickboxDiva
    KickboxDiva Posts: 142 Member
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    I 2nd kmac... Pump some iron!! ;). Weight training supports your metabolism in a major way. I'm 5'7 172lb female at 20ish% body fat maintaining at 2200-2400 calories. Mulling over tipping the calories higher to bulk before the cut in January.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Also can depend on how the majority of your daily calories are burned.

    A reasonable deficit with resistance training and enough protein can prevent muscle mass loss, but you'll still lose LBM which effects metabolism. But need about 5-10 lbs gone for that to add up enough.

    But if the vast majority of your calories beyond BMR are from increased daily activity - that is effected the most from moving around less weight all day. But with Fitbit synced you are informed of that fact.

    Exercise likely goes up in intensity enough to compensate for moving less mass around, unless someone gets on treadmill and always sets the same speed. Which also means they have stopped improving their cardio system.

    But even with that exercise aspect - even if big majority of daily burn is not from daily activity - your TDEE still drops as weight drops, even so slightly.

    You can run normal TDEE calc with lower weights and see it doesn't change much.
    That assuming you maintain same ratio of fat/muscle that BMR calc's are assuming.

    It could be you are keeping the muscle, so BMR doesn't drop actually, only TDEE from moving less mass.

    But now the deficit has actually increased if you think about it as weight has dropped.
    So if body was on verge of not liking the deficit level before and on verge of adapting slower, that would likely cause it. But, usually that means the deficit is still there though, just as not big as might be suggested by just the numbers.

    So say that 2330 was your actual TDEE on non-exercise day. And BMR really was 1864 (this suggests you are taking more deficit than your TDEE allows room for).
    You eat 1830 and really lose 1 lb of fat a week for 5 weeks. Obviously during that time the rate of loss would slow slightly.

    So you lose 5 lbs, but you maintain muscle mass, so BMR stays at 1864.
    And TDEE now is say 2236.
    So eating level would be 1736 to keep 500 deficit.

    BUT - what MFP and even Fitbit (since it uses BMR too in calorie calcs) do is say with 5 lbs loss, BMR drops to say 1750, and sedentary TDEE at 2188.
    They assign eating goal of 1688.

    You would have a real deficit of 548. Again, not much difference for 5 lb gone with made up numbers, but you see what happens when reality is better that calculated.
    And if 500 was almost or already stressful, that effect could cause stress to be bigger - depending on how much muscle mass you have compared to average already.

    My Katch BMR (based on Bodpod BF%) is almost 200 more than Mifflin calculated. My last VO2max test where you sit still at start and can calculate RMR from the stats, bore out the accuracy of that figure.

    So if I go by unadjusted Fitbit and MFP - I've got a much bigger deficit than reasonable, and prior to Fitbit giving a clue about daily burn, I was accidentally with a big deficit.

    So to your X-Y to lose weight.

    Both should become smaller as you actually do lose weight - and it could very well be depending on several factors - that the eating goal stays exactly the same. That is possible as deficit becomes less to match the decrease in TDEE.

    Taking breaks is so much needed for the aspect of body adapting - even with reasonable deficit - you may have enough other stresses in life the additional diet stress is too much.

    Either every 6 weeks take a week off.
    Or with doing a dynamic eating goal daily with Fitbit with constant deficit amount - take 2 rest days and eat at no deficit. 1 day usually not enough if body really wants to adapt.

    That's why the 5:2 diet showed such success in studies - 5 days no deficit, and eating to satisfaction. More than compensated for the 2 rest days with 75% deficit.