Noob Question

I haven't been on the forums much so don't know the logic behind the question you asked... But what I have been doing is I put my goal for 2lbs a week (I need to lose at least 30... but 50 is my ideal) What I do is try and stay within my calorie limit which is 1200 a day. I also know the calorie requirement to keep weight steady at my 2 different goal weights... I have days that I go over... sometime 10 or 12 sometimes 2 or 300... but I balance them out and try not to go over the "Keep my weight steady" calorie limit. I have never been good a sticking to extreme diets... but this is working great for me... I have lost 15 lbs so far in 50 days. Eating the same food I always did just better proportions... and I haven't been hungry or need snacks and things... in just not "stuffed" like i used to be. Took a couple weeks to get used to that, but now I'm good. I think most of my weight problems are because I just ate too much food at each meal. I was never one for lots of sweets and chips and stuff to begin with...

The slower loss is because you have less to lose overall. A really obese person can lose 3-5lbs sometimes more in a week because they have to eat way more calories to maintain the higher weight. Smaller people have less mass and need less calories to stay the same weight, so they also have less calories to cut from to diet. The recommendation is because losing more than 1% of your body weight weekly is drastic and can cause cycles of restriction and then binging/overeating because your hungry or not getting enough nutrients eating much smaller calorie allotments. Not to mention fatigue and other nasty side effects of bad skin, hair loss and no energy. For example a 300lb person can lose 3lbs a week and be fine, but a 150lb person should aim to lose only 1.5lbs a week.

The bigger reason overall is that true fat loss is masked by overall mass loss. Your scale may show you losing 5lbs a week if you cut your calories down extremely low but you are burning some fat, but also muscle/lean mass that you don't want to lose. People tend to counter "more is better right?" But fat oxidation takes time and when your reserves are smaller because your body is smaller, that 20%body fat versus 40% BF comes into effect in that the body wants to maintain you the way you are, so it will burn off fat stores if if has to but when your smaller it wants to keep some of that for a rainy day. If you lose it rapidly the body sends hunger signals and fights you for it, where as slow and steady loss near the end zone gives your body time to adapt to you giving it less calories.
Starvation mode doesn't exist in that you supposedly will store fat by not eating enough, it doesn't work that way. But chronically undereating stresses your body and it will show you it doesn't like it and it wants more nutrition and that's when people go back to eating more because of the body's hunger cues and they tend to gain again. This starts the yo yo diet cycle. So don't yo yo and save yourself the grief and lose those 15-17lns slowly so you can feel comfortable losing and not miserable and risk undoing all your progress by being to aggressive. Good luck!

I'm going to go against what everyone else is telling you because your activity level is so high.

Set a custom goal that's right about a 350 calorie deficit. That will give you some wiggle room for logging errors and allow for a 250 calorie deficit. I can tell you from experience with a similar level of activity that it is VERY difficult to maintain that activity on an aggressive deficit.

Adiemus100 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice guys I really appricate it. So far I have just been making healthy choices but I crashed and burned at the end of last week and ate a load of food. So I guess I must have been eating too low callorie. So I'm going to start logging tomorrow to see how many callories I'm eating.

That is exactly what happens to me when I try to keep up a similar level of activity and cut too many calories. That's why I don't think you should try to lose a pound a week.

The only caution I have for you is that with a small deficit, you need to be really tight with your logging. Try to be as precise as possible.

To avoid crashing, link your fitbit account with your mfp account and eat back your exercise calories. Log accurately: weigh all your food in grams on a digital scale and measure your liquids in ml with a measuring cup. That will make sure you are neither overestimating what you eat and wiping out your deficit, nor short changing yourself.

Set to 1 lb per week. If you can cope at that deficit, there's no reason to up your calorie limit. If you can't, drop your deficit down to 0.5 lb per week.