Maybe Losing Weight too Fast?

cammiecane wrote: »

MFP gave me 1200 calories a day. Like I said, a lot of times I can’t find anything I want to eat that will get my cals right at 1200, but not go over. So I just leave it at 1100.

I’m 31 and I put my activity level as sedentary because I work mostly from home on the computer. The only workouts I do right now are hiking with hills and body weight exercises, ie push-ups, sit-ups and crunches, and various butt-toning exercises. Nothing too strenuous.

I know all about the heart thing, but thank you. I actually damaged my heart already from the last time which is why I’m trying to be careful this time and why I’m asking questions in the first place.

The reason MFP is setting you at 1200 is because it's the lowest it's allowed to set you (probably for legal reasons). It is set to the usual average of a pound of fat being about 3500 calories. So 2lbs/week means you need to be in a 7000 calorie deficit. That's 1000 per day. Your TDEE at your height is likely in the 1700-1800 range (just a guess, I did not calculate that) so it's attempting to subtract 1000 calories from that and stopping at 1200. I'd suggest dialing it back to 1lb/week loss or maybe even .5lb/week and make up the extra with more exercise. You'll get more calories, be able to better improve muscle/performance, and the weight may come off slower but it'll be a better way. In the absence of wanting anything extra to eat, consider a protein snack to use up those extra calories. It'll help you maintain what muscle you have while you are losing weight and help you to recover from exercise quicker. Just my .02 for what it's worth. I'm really sorry to hear you damaged your heart, did a doctor tell you that? I tried the 2lb/wk loss rate my first year, lost the weight but managed to injure my back several times due to fatigue and over-training with not enough calories.

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that eating really low calories was killing my performance for the things I wanted to do with exercise (running, weight training). Now when I attempt to drop weight I will only set myself at .5lb/wk and if I want to lose a little faster I'll just add a bit more exercise and still stay at that calorie level.

The biggest issue is we all want to lose the weight as fast as we can (myself included) but it isn't always the best thing for us to do. I fight the urge to drop my calories really low all the time. Of course my appetite from a heavy workout schedule helps me resist lol.

cammiecane wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

TavistockToad wrote: »

At 5ft7 you want to be 117lbs?

OP, again, obviously this is all up to you, but that weight is solidly underweight for your height. It will be very difficult to maintain, that's why you are having to eat so little to lose at the rate you would expect. If I were your friend, I'd strongly advise you to reconsider. Maybe aim for 125 and once you get there decide how you're doing?

I'm so glad you're willing to talk about all of this! So many posters take it personal, but we really just want to make sure everyone is making well informed decisions!

I don’t take it personal at all. I joined this community under my dr.’s suggestion. I used to have an ED and so it’s hard for me to notice if/when I’m slipping into old behaviors. That’s why he thought being a part of a community of people who are doing things the right way and focusing on health before anything else would be good for me.

I’ve taken your advice and others and have changed my goal weight to 125lbs and changed my weight loss goal to 1 lb a week. So I have 1440 cals a day to work with now. I guess I’ll need to work on the exercise cals. Apparently I’m supposed to be eating them back? The thought of doing so kind of freaks me out right now, but I’ll work towards it.

Again, I really want to say thank you to everyone. It means a lot to me. Last time I was so alone and didn’t have anyone to talk to/get advice from and it ended up being a disaster. Have a great day everyone! You guys rock!

Major course improvement: Yay!

In general, as rule of thumb, it's a risky plan to lose more than 1% of your body weight weekly on average (looking at an average over 4-6 weeks), and it should be even less as you get within 25-50 pounds of goal weight. That will also help you better learn the skills you need to maintain a healthy weight, in a healthy way, forever. No extreme measures, just sensible moderation!

cammiecane wrote: »

Spliner1969 wrote: »

Absolutely eat them back. The problem is always whether or not they are accurate calories. For instance if you run a 5k and your tracker says you burned 600 calories it's likely nowhere near accurate. Check out other calculators or look at MFP's manual database and see what it gives you. I always adjusted mine down to no more than what MFP's manual entry gave me, then ate back half of that. That was my first year in maintenance. I managed to lose weight over a few months doing that so I dialed it up to about 70% of those calories to eat back and it seemed perfect to maintain my weight at that point. Takes time to figure what your actual burn is, but a lot of people start with 50% of what their app/device tells them and go from there.

That’s exactly what I was worried about. The burned calories being inflated and me eating back too many and messing things up. I don’t use a tracker or anything so I just go by MFPs numbers. The eating back half sounds like a great idea! I’m going to try that. Thanks!!

I had a fitbit, lost it, went back to using MFP's numbers, and don't miss the fitbit.

Eating back half is a good place to start. If you find that over a month or so you are losing faster than expected, you can eat a higher percentage. (Toss out this week's numbers though.)