Can you lose weight on goal weight calories?

IsabeausRose
IsabeausRose Posts: 129 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I heard that sometimes people just eat at the calorie level they would eat at if they were already at their goal weight to get used to it and not feel deprived. Can you still lose weight that way? Honestly I just don’t like feeling so hungry.

Replies

  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    you could recomp (lose fat/gain muscle) - but eating at maintenance and lifting heavy *kitten* :)

    you would likely maintain or lose very minimally if you ate at maintenance; maybe reconsider your rate of lose and adjust it
  • NextRightThing714
    NextRightThing714 Posts: 355 Member
    Yes, this will work. The rate of loss will depend on how far away you are from goal.
  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
    IsabeausRose wrote: »
    I heard that sometimes people just eat at the calorie level they would eat at if they were already at their goal weight to get used to it and not feel deprived. Can you still lose weight that way? Honestly I just don’t like feeling so hungry.

    Mathematically, yes you can.

    Realistically, I think there needs to be a reasonable difference between current weight and goal weight. If that difference is too small, then the calorie deficit that MFP (or whatever site) would estimate for you wouldn't be meaningfully different (i.e. low enough) to incite weight loss.
  • IsabeausRose
    IsabeausRose Posts: 129 Member
    NextRightThing714 wrote: »
    Yes, this will work. The rate of loss will depend on how far away you are from goal.
    10 pounds I have it set to 0.5 pounds a week right now and this would be 200 calories higher

  • serindipte
    serindipte Posts: 1,557 Member
    edited May 2018
    It's working for me.

    ETA: I'm a lot further from my GW.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,959 Member
    IsabeausRose wrote: »
    NextRightThing714 wrote: »
    Yes, this will work. The rate of loss will depend on how far away you are from goal.
    10 pounds I have it set to 0.5 pounds a week right now and this would be 200 calories higher

    So that would be a 50 calorie daily deficit. Assuming your measuring and logging were accurate enough to actually ensure you had a 50 calorie daily deficit, it would take you 70 days (more than two months) to lose a pound, in theory. If you have the patience and the faith in the process to stick with that, go for it.

    You might also want to reconsider whether the foods you eat are satiating for you. For most people, a half-pound a week deficit (250 cal/day) does not leave them "so hungry" if they are choosing satiating foods.
  • IsabeausRose
    IsabeausRose Posts: 129 Member
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    IsabeausRose wrote: »
    NextRightThing714 wrote: »
    Yes, this will work. The rate of loss will depend on how far away you are from goal.
    10 pounds I have it set to 0.5 pounds a week right now and this would be 200 calories higher

    So that would be a 50 calorie daily deficit. Assuming your measuring and logging were accurate enough to actually ensure you had a 50 calorie daily deficit, it would take you 70 days (more than two months) to lose a pound, in theory. If you have the patience and the faith in the process to stick with that, go for it.

    You might also want to reconsider whether the foods you eat are satiating for you. For most people, a half-pound a week deficit (250 cal/day) does not leave them "so hungry" if they are choosing satiating foods.
    Well I was going by my Fitbit calculations yesterday and I think it completely overestimated my calorie burn. So I disconnected it from mfp and just set myself to lightly active which for the same 10,000 steps gave me 200 calories on mfp instead of the 700 that Fitbit gave me which is why I think I haven’t been losing any weight on my 250 deficit. I was eating 2,250 calories and wanted to bump it down to maintenance of 1975.

  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    @lynn_glenmont 's math would make that a no for me. After I was at goal weight for a while I decided I wanted to come down another 5lbs but didn't fancy losing many calories either. I kept MFP set to my maintenance calories but tried to come in under 1 or 200 any day I could manage. Something about that mentally worked way better for me than trying to hit one low number, and I didn't have to do the dance around "well I'm over but still at maintenance" with the numbers. It worked for me but telling myself I wasn't in a mad hurry, I think it still took only 8-10 weeks to get the 5lbs off, which isn't bad at all.

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