Energy Drop in Deficit

How big a deficit are you in?
How many calories are you eating?
What exercise are you doing?
Are you eating any of your exercise cals?
How long have you been on your plan?

Look everbody is different. Personally the calorie deficit thing hit me quite hard as I was probably eating around 3500 to 4000 cals a day and then to suddenly go to day 1 of my new MFP kick at just under 2k cals did hit me for 6.

I also felt ratty, drained... hungry as my body is being denied the thing it wants —>> food.

However, I persisted and after I would say the 2-3 week mark my energy levels normalised somewhat.

The body just kind of accepts that ok, this is just how it is now.

Even now, 40 plus days in... as I am on reduced carbs (approx 150grams daily) I can stuff feel sluggish in the gym but I have a routine of eating and training that works for me.

Try and stay close to your allowed calories - it will get easier. It’s a test of your metal but if shedding the fat was that easy... we wouldn’t be here needing to do this.

Good luck.... happy 4 u 2 add if you need that extra push! 👋

yasminara wrote: »

I eat heathly foods, but the deficit and exercise leave me really drained? Should I power thru until I “adjust”? Has anyone else experienced this?

This is normal for a human or a car when the fuel supply is less than required to fully function.

After 40 years of yo yoing weight with 100%+ regain after each round of deficit eating I made the decision to total stop trying to lose weight at the age of 63 with fast failing health because it never worked in my case. So I removed the goal to lose weight and just focus on eating to improve my health and health markers by changing my calorie sources but not by cutting my calories since I had no weight lose goal.

That was back in Oct 2014. After 2 hellish weeks from ditching my high carb/high fat Way Of Eating my body pain started to lessen and then the mental fog started to lessen. A big plus was I stopped falling all of the time but had not lost a pound of weight because I had started to weigh daily.

I was shocked at day 45 on my new WOE I did lose the first pound of weigh. As major health problems started to self resolve so did my obesity without trying. By the end of the first year I was down by 50 pounds with better health and health markers than in decades. I am still down by 50 pound going on 5 years now.

That was over 5 years when I decided to change my WOE on a hunch when trying to avoid starting Enbrel injections for my life long arthritis (Ankylosing Spondylitis) pain. Thankfully to changing my WOE my pain is less than I can remember and am Rx free.

Only you can discover the best way for you to eat. Sure we could type this or that but it would be like a shot into the dark. Take the time to try one WOE for a while than another. Quality for calories is huge in my personal case.

By the way my hunch that would not go away was to stop eating food containing added sugar and or any form of any grain so my WOE over time became low carb/high fat. Since it has personally worked well for over 5 years now I plan to keep eating this way and my family knows to feed me this way if I can not remember to eat this way some day.

Best of success. Trust what your body tells you about how to eat. Advice from myself or others as to WHAT to eat may be helpful or harmful.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

yasminara wrote: »

Oh I'm sorry I didn't respond! It never sent me a notification so I never saw anyone say anything.

I eat 1300-1600 calories on the average (5'2", 160lbs)
I workout at Orangetheory 4-5x's a week. I don't eat back calories.

I'll pay attention and adjust, but I'm sure all other short folks can agree that I'm like 200c shy from being back in maintenance.

It could be the quality of food, so I'll tweak that too. Thanks!

Are you relatively new to exercise and/or Orangetheory? I'd suggest at least one full day between OT workouts, rest day or something mild like gentle yoga or very-LISS cardio, unless quite seasoned.

At 160lbs, not eating back that much exercise, I don't think an accurately-measured 1300-1600 is alarming close to maintenance.

It occurred to me later that I should've said why I think this about recovery days.

As I understand it, OTF focuses on getting a certain amount of time each session at Z4/5 heart rates. It may also include high-rep/low-resistance (or other) strength work. Either of those things can be fatiguing for relatively less conditioned people, if there isn't sufficient recovery time between.

Some of the response seemingly can be individual, so if someone who's doing OTF (or really anything with similar or greater intensity, or repetitive stress of same muscle groups) on successive days, is feeling fatigued, I'd suggest experimenting with longer recovery between workouts to see if it makes a difference, at any fitness level. Sometimes other stressors in our lives (work, family issue, holiday bustle, calorie deficit, nutritional issue, sleep problems, etc.) can make workouts that used to be fine, be a little bit much, via cumulative stress of varied types.

For someone with a calorie deficit, that's a likely place to consider as a fatigue source. But fatigue can also be related to insufficient recovery from exercise. Training in a smart way, with enough recovery, is usually best for progressing in fitness, or weight loss, IMO. Fatigue can tend to bleed calorie expenditure out of daily life activity, wiping out some of the exercise benefit.