Help! I need to lose the last 5 kilos!

It sounds like you have much less than 20lbs available to lose.

You may want to fuel that exercise by eating substantially more than 1200 and starting to "seek" your maintenance level of calories.

As long as you're even at a slight deficit you will continue to lose weight and with less than 10-15 lbs left to lose there is nothing wrong with doing so at less than half a lb a week.

You can't SEE that level of loss unless you use a weight trend application and ZOOM OUT to look at your month to month average weight as opposed to looking at your day to day or week to week variations. Your water weight fluctuations are much larger than your loss rate... and that's as it SHOULD be.

Continuing to seek fast weight loss will eventually impact your energy levels and possibly your health. Start consolidating your gains and making sure that you will continue to have the energy to engage in all the wonderful physical activity you're currently engaging in.

Don't react to fluctuations with large changes (remember that water weight moves much faster than your underlying fat levels). Just small changes applied over time.

Sounds like you've done an excellent job so far! Go you!

I see only two replies so far and neither @harper16, or myself, are implying that you think you're on a quick fix journey!

Both of us seem to think that you are currently attempting a very substantial deficit while also exercising substantially!

1200 Cal is the least that MFP gives as a goal, and usually it implies that you've selected 1.5 to 2lbs a week as your weight loss target -- which would be an extremely aggressive target given your current weight.

It also sounds as if you're substantially more active than the sedentary setting you've selected on MFP, yet you do not mention eating back any of your exercise calories.

So let's quickly go through my post:

PAV8888 wrote: »

It sounds like you have much less than 20lbs available to lose

You've done a bang up job and you currently no longer have the same level of energy reserves you did when you first started out. (most) People don't lose at the same rate from start to finish. It is time to slow down and smell the roses!

PAV8888 wrote: »

You may want to fuel that exercise by eating substantially more than 1200 and starting to "seek" your maintenance level of calories. As long as you're even at a slight deficit you will continue to lose weight and with less than 10-15 lbs left to lose there is nothing wrong with doing so at less than half a lb a week.

Are you going to only eat 1200 Cal a day from now till you're ready to permanently retire? Surely not, right? Do you expect to continue to run around with impunity at your current activity levels while hardly eating anything (i.e. Cal=1200)?

So when would be a good time to start adjusting this low intake to something that will be closer to your permanent reality? Once you reach goal weight? With no practice or preparation whatsoever? Or perhaps starting now while you're still experimenting and have the security blanket of aiming towards further weight loss?

Also: the bulk of your health benefits will came from the first 17kg. The extra 5kg or even six or seven are a wonderful bonus, but defending the first 17kg is what will, hopefully, postpone your date of permanent retirement. The extra 5 or however many you want are a nice bonus. But not the meat and potatoes when it comes to your health.

In any case, you shouldn't be scared (from a weight loss calculations perspective) to eat closer to maintenance, even a small deficit will eventually result in weight loss. And eventually maintenance eating is where you will be (hopefully) spending the majority of the rest of your life... so it's sort of important to dial it in a bit.

PAV8888 wrote: »

You can't SEE that level of loss unless you use a weight trend application and ZOOM OUT to look at your month to month average weight as opposed to looking at your day to day or week to week variations. Your water weight fluctuations are much larger than your loss rate... and that's as it SHOULD be.

Continuing to seek fast weight loss will eventually impact your energy levels and your health. Start consolidating your gains and making sure that you will continue to have the energy to engage in all the wonderful physical activity you're currently engaging in.

Don't react to fluctuations with large changes (remember that water weight moves much faster than your underlying fat levels). Just small changes applied over time.

Nothing much to add there. Your September to February losses averaged close to 1.75lbs a week. That's pretty dang fast for weight loss. Continuing to stress your body, as you are by eating so little, is probably contributing to extra water retention. And possibly to an unconscious slow down of your calorie burning activities during the day.

Eating a bit more is likely to result in either no change to your current rate of loss, or to even actually increase the rate. It could also impact your appetite... but then the question becomes when would be a less bad time for this to happen? Have the floodgates open once you're at goal weight, r while you're still on a mission to continue to lose?

PAV8888 wrote: »

Sounds like you've done an excellent job so far! Go you!

Hey, I'm not trying to be mean! Just trying to offer my vision of your best chance of retaining and extending your weight loss and not ending up going postal from weight loss stress and ending up in a regain spiral which is something that, unfortunately, happens to a lot of people!

Given the general statistics on regain, you're looking at a good two to five years of continuing to actively manage your weight in order to protect those initial 17kgs: start preparing and positioning for that... hence take it easy... you got nothing but time!