Am I not eating enough?

Cat_A_89 wrote: »

So I've started logging my food in late May and went from 225 to 189/188 since, im a 5'2 female aged 29. I tend to eat around 1000/1100 calories during the week and normally end up eating 1500 to sometimes 2000 on the weekend (my dad is home on the weekends and likes to cook high calorie foods lol)
I started working out 5/6 days a week recently with a mix of running and strength training but have not lost any weight for the last 2 or so weeks. I'm wondering if im not eating enough now that im exercising almost daily even though i eat more on weekends or are daily calories more important then weekly? I dont tend to eat back exercise calories as im not confident they are always accurate ( some days it gives me over 800 exercise calories)
Could I be retaining water? I dont think I've already built up that much muscle yet.
Help
Getting frustrated lol

It could be swelling from exercise, or bloating. Last time I started exercising again I stayed the same weight then a few weeks later I dropped weight quickly. I'd been lifting weights and using the treadmill at a high incline, my muscles ended up sore and swollen, but it went away. Also, if you've started exercise and haven't had a period yet it could just be bloat. My weight fluctuates a bit throughout the month, that's hidden weight loss from me before too. Honestly, people will say "if you don't eat enough you won't lose weight" but that's BS. Your maintenance calories will be lower when you lose weight, but that's normal, not the supposed starvation mode lmao. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy can't be magically created from nowhere. Fat is just stored energy. If you eat less calories than you burn your body won't magically create energy from nothing. That's just not possible. And for someone who's 5'2" you can keep your calories pretty low anyway. I'm 5'2" and at my goal weight finally, my TDEE is 1413. The last few lbs I had to cut my calories down to about 1000-1100 a day, or else progress would be so slow that I'd get discouraged. I ate that much starting out too and since I was so heavy I dropped 20 lbs in like a month or 2. As long as you get enough protein (70-80g protein for our height is fine for weight loss, kept my appetite down too) and take a multivitamin you should be ok.

Lastly, if you eat over your TDEE on some days you will gain a little, but then when you eat at a deficit later in the week it should come off again. Which sounds bad but like, if you're able to keep the 1000-1100 cals the rest of the week going from 1 cheat day at this point I wouldn't worry about it. When you get to a lower weight you might want to eat less on weekends, but since your maintenance calories are higher it shouldn't hurt you too much. I looked up your TDEE. You would need 1843 calories to maintain your current weight, 12899 calories per week without exercise. If you're eating 1100 calories a day on week days, and 2000 on weekends you would be in a weekly deficit of 3399, almost an lb of fat loss per week. Another thing you can do is track your measurements. If your weight isn't changing but you lose inches around your waist/hips then you're still making progress, especially if you had very little muscle to begin with. Though at some point your weight should drop anyway even if you're gaining muscle. If it doesn't after a few weeks you might want to invest in a food scale to make sure you're tracking things accurately.

https://tdeecalculator.net/
There's the calculator I used for that. The 'sedentary' option is accurate for me, even when I'm exercising it's only off by 100, but the 'light exercise' adds 250 calories.. Last time I chose 'light exercise' I put on weight. Being short sucks x'D