Increasing my calories for better fat loss

frees1spirit wrote: »

I started dieting in November on 1700 calories and after 10 weeks had come down to 1400. I lost 10 lbs along the way. After learning about BMR and metabolic adaptation I increased my calories to 1800 as I figured 1400 was too low and I still have a bit of weight to lose.

I weigh myself daily and work out the average for the week. I have eaten around 1800 calories daily for 2 weeks now and my average weight has stayed the same at 72.7kg/160lbs. My fat % has gone from 43.7 to 42.9. That is a loss of 0.7kg/1.5lbs. I am 5 ft 1.

This week I have increased my calories to 1900 and will eat like this for the next 2 weeks. Then I will increase my calories by around 100 cal every 2 weeks until around 2500. Anyway that's the plan.

Anyone else ever done this before? Thoughts?

Spirit

Are you tired? Do you always have cold hands and feet? Have you been dieting for a while? I was in the same situation but I’m 5’ 4” and I used to eat 1200-1500 calories a day, hovered and bounced around 2000 calories (for a few months) then slowly reverse dieted all the way up to 2600 on some days. In the end I averaged out to be 2300 which is my maintenance but if I’m more active then, yes, I do have an average maintenance of 2500 calories. I do want to add I have 20 lbs more muscle than the average woman so it’s much easier to eat more and stay leaner. I can burn 160-230 extra calories and that adds up. One pound of muscle can burn 8-13 extra calories at rest! They burn even more calories when they are being repaired. I do still feel that 2500 may be an over reach for you because of your height but hey, it’s totally possible that you might suddenly become WAY more active with more food. There are hyper responders. This has been studied in regard to ED patients where, when they were fed more and their metabolisms sped up. Aside from this, I honestly can’t think of another way for your to eat that much but maybe 2200-2300 calories would be better for you and that is still a lot.

Re-feed and diet break thread very relevant in this case.

If some walking is what others would call substantial and if you're wrapping everything into the single very active setting ignoring how mfp is designed to separately add deliberate exercise while only considering your base daily activity in the setting you choose, then sure.... very active would require consistently engaging in 2.5+ hours of moderate intensity activity during the day, or any combination of inactivity, low, moderate, and more intense activity that produces an equivalent caloric burn!

OP can you let us know how you get on if you decide to go ahead.
Diet breaks and refeeds, periodised fat loss and such like seem to be trendy at the moment and are practiced by reputable folk like Mike isratel. But he’s a pro body builder and advanced. His book does recommend short periods of fat loss followed by a period of maintenance for the general dieter. Not exactly same as what you’re setting out here.