so confused

You eat less than you burn to lose weight.

You eat what you burn to maintain weight.

You eat more than you burn to gain weight.

If you ate 1550 and lost weight to where you are now - then you've been obviously eating less than you burn.

Like if you had for last several weeks been losing say 1/2 lb weekly - that means you had a 250 calorie deficit to what you burned daily (if you only lost fat weight).

Which means in that example you could eat 1800 and maintain.

On the same activity level.

Life lesson there though.

You do more, you eat more.
You do less, you eat less.

So if you remove 1 hr of cardio a week - guess what happens on that day, or on average?


As to moving up in calories, suggest you slowly increase calories.

You will likely gain some of the water weight back that you lost in the first week starting a diet.
Don't worry - that's LBM and will increase metabolism.

Besides - you should have a goal weight range, not a single number - or you'll drive yourself batty.
Watch the scale weekly with a monthly change being significant, along with waist measurement to see if fat is going back on or still losing.

Slowly increase calories and you should be able to maintain weight. Do it as slow as you want. Remember you can't gain fat fast so anything you gain isn't fat.

I'd wager your cardio is negatively impacting your lifting already - if that is more of a focus anyway.

And with 4 x weekly - sounds like it is. Sounds like enough done for heart health already.

Unless you are really short, I'd bet your food logging isn't great, and likely you are eating more already.

Just means you should still move up slowly.
Just won't be as high with less cardio.

But with better lifting workouts causing more damage causing higher metabolism to repair - may just not matter anyway.

Not alot if you have cardio based goals, like running a fast race time.

If your focus is lifting weights - then yes.

Seems like very low calories then for all that working out.

Are you like a total bump on a log all other times besides the workouts, weekend included?

You could be super sedentary (and as I commented, that could easily be because of undereating by too much and body is forcing adaptation) and your workouts barely push the calories higher than a more active lifestyle would cause.

But by slowly increasing calories, you may just become more active unless you literally can't.

Or this has happened through your diet, and you'll just have to live with the consequences, which can make maintenance so much harder having to eat so little.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i_cmltmQ6A

I think that sounds like a lot of cardio. I'm no expert but I haven't heard of anyone doing that much cardio and lifting weights unless they are training or just trying to lose weight very fast. I think you would be fine to take away an hour or two of cardio. Lifting weights alone can find your body. Adding cardio helps too but that seems like too much.

Your at that point now where you can stop that cardio. The reason most people do cardio is because it increases the calories burned each day so that while you are still eating the same amount, your body burns through it faster.

Decreasing your cardio may also decrease your appetite. Many people find that doing cardio makes them really hungry/thirsty and they find they eat many more calories than they would otherwise. I say do the cardio if you want to not because you have to. It's probably the cause of your hunger.

Your deficit right now - easy to figure out. ZERO.

Are you losing or gaining weight?
Exactly.
No deficit.

That should actually scare you. If you got sick or injured and couldn't workout, or vacation, or life responsibilities like sick family or such.
Now how low must you eat in order to not gain fat back?
Watch that video I linked. Further studies have shown the body actually can recover, it's not as dire as they say, as in permanent adaptation.

Lifting, eating enough protein, and reasonable deficit are the 3 supports by which you can maintain muscle mass despite being on a deficit.

Make any 1 support too short, and the other 2 won't help enough generally.

Meaning even if you lift, and ate enough protein - if you took an extreme deficit (some people eat nothing but 1200 calories, despite burning around 2400, and the body won't be happy with 50% deficit) - you will lose muscle mass somewhere.
The least used muscle won't be built back up after normal breakdown of it.

Workouts are no where near what they could be at some point, meaning you aren't even telling the body this muscle is that important anymore.

Yes, as I've mentioned, 1550 seems very low for as active as you are for workouts.

I'm betting those workouts are no where near how productive and energetic they could be, if eating more.

Oh, I'm sure you feel like they are a hard effort, and in the state the body is currently in - I'm sure they are a hard effort.

But just because you do a set of pushups while holding your breath and muscles burn by the time you collapse - doesn't mean it was as good a workout for the muscles compared to breathing and doing say 2x as many.

So also undereating - the body adapts by making you move less, daily and in workouts. Less damage done, less need of energy for repair you aren't feeding it. Less intense, not really burning as much as before.

That's why the advice to eat 100 more daily for a week or two at a time, then increase by another 100.

Yes, more muscle that use daily can increase your TDEE. Your BMR won't go up by much as resting metabolism - but if actually active, sure. Not a huge amount, but better than losing muscle.

You could be stressing out the body enough too that the increased cortisol is increasing water weight - usually that's in stomach. And cheap BIA bodyfat % scales won't be able to discern that accurately.

How long have you been heavy weight training?

Still making progress by adding weight to the bar?

Oh, and losing say 20 lbs on your body, while your squat and deadlift go up by 20 lbs - doesn't mean you progressed - you broke even on the legs.
And if beginner lifter still learning form and improvements should come from merely that - you actually lost progress on the legs in that case.

zfitgal wrote: »

I don't mean to sound rude, but what are you talking about??? I'm losing fat, body fat% So if my scale is staying within 3 pounds but my inches are going down along with bf% going down, you mean to tell me I'm not losing fat and I'm not in a deficit??? sry def have this theory wrong....

Keep it simple.....
If you are maintaining weight you are eating at your current maintenance calories.

That your body continues to change composition is good news - that doesn't mean you are in a calorie deficit.

Heybales' advice is spot on. Strongly suggest you follow it.

zfitgal wrote: »

I don't mean to sound rude, but what are you talking about??? I'm losing fat, body fat% So if my scale is staying within 3 pounds but my inches are going down along with bf% going down, you mean to tell me I'm not losing fat and I'm not in a deficit??? sry def have this theory wrong....

If this is a scale that does bodyfat as option - the range of inaccuracy is pretty bad - you could lose and gain decent % merely getting on and off the scale a few times, with most.
Some are better at consistency than others even when not accurate, they can at least give a direction, for those, BF% going down would be good sign.

But if weight is the same, you are eating at maintenance right now. There is no deficit. These are definitions of words here. May not be potential maintenance, and I don't think so.
So again to my point what happens if you can't workout to this level - you'd have to eat even less to maintain.

But good sign if inches are still going down - that means workouts are intense enough to some degree that body is making improvements while it's burning fat.

That's called recomposition - gaining LBM (muscle and everything NOT fat) while slowly losing fat.

Very good method when already at healthy weight.

But I'll bet you could eat more, improve workouts and daily activity level - and still maintain.
So if you drop that cardio, keep eating the same amount for 2 weeks, that's automatic increase since doing less but eating the same.

So good job being gutsy enough to test it out. Might reread some of what I said, don't freak about good water weight gain - that's LBM also.