Remaining Calories Making Me Pull My Hair Out!

Your activity at 15K would be above MFP very active. if you are currently at 10K then active might be reflective.

Have a look at sailrabit. The issue is that you're guessing about your TDEE. Your Fitbit ALSO gives you a daily guess as to your TDEE. NOT how many calories you burned on your walk... that's a lost cause. But the complete all day estimate. <-- that and your food intake logging and weight change can give you your answers.

Each actual lb of weight change represents approximately 3500 Cal.

Now. A couple of things. You cut hard. You cut low (if your avatar is a current representation of you, you're ripped and have developed an awesome physique!) The fact that you're experiencing rebound hunger... is not surprising. It comes from you decreasing your weight and the degree of lean-ness you have achieved.

The only (acceptable) cure that **I** am aware off to fix this is time.
A good amount of time at maintenance.

I would start my "maintenance guess" based on the amount of calories you thought your were cutting according to Fitbit and MFP vs the actual weight you were losing WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED (not when you were ending). Especially if you're planning on increasing activity (which would increase your caloric needs) I would avoid taking my figures from the tail end of your weight loss as it would be likely to lead to an under-estimate of maintenance.

You do have a "few" too many things moving around here so it does make it a bit harder

Let me give you an example of what I am thinking.

if Fitbit and MFP thought you "cut" 14,000 Cal; but you saw a drop of 3lbs during the time you thought you had eaten 14000Cal less, then your 14,000 Cal were, for the purpose of this exercise, actually only 3500*3=11,500 Cal.

And that would mean that your fitbit was off by 14000-11500=2,500 Cal. You would then take that 2500 and divide it by the total amount of Calories your Fitbit said you burned during the timeframe in which you lost the 3lbs.

You would repeat that at different timeframes and establish a monthly and overall error during your weight loss. That should give you a good idea as to how accurately your Fitbit and your logging have been FOR YOU in general.

Now you can just look at your daily total from your fitbit and apply a correction factor based on your findings and be fairly confident you have something actionable... more or less.

It still won't stop you from being hungry... but hopefully enough time at maintenance will.

Some people slowly increase their intake (allowing for a small increase in weight for the sake of the experiment) in a reverse diet trying to increase their food intake while remaining relatively weight stable. This really is a thing and it does work sometimes to an extent.

Of course full scale weight regain will also fix the extra hunger problem... but it would sort of defeat the purpose of the exercise... so let's not go there!

sijomial wrote: »

In your position I'd actually work back from my own data rather than start from scratch.
Add up the totallity of all your calories eaten in last four weeks.
Add 3500cals for every pound lost in that time.
Divide that total by 28.

+1 to this. Use your real data to calculate your maintenance calories and probably even use that to get a better feel for your actual calorie burns from exercise, if you are willing to crunch the data.

I've done this and determined that my garmin daily adjustment is 300 calories too low for me.

You should be eating ALL of your exercise calories in maintenance. The question, of course, is what is the most accurate estimation of those calories. I personally have always used 100% when tracking exercise discretely. Since I'm in weight loss mode now, I don't do that, I just set my budget at an average deficit based on my average activity level.

If you do the calc's as explained, you aren't eating over maintenance - you are in effect eating the exercise calories - think about it.

If you are thinking do the calc's - and then add exercise on - think over the process again.

Yes, eating at maintenance generally causes water weight gain - same fast water weight lost when people start a diet.
Also more food remains in the body in a holding pattern, but also more stored glucose and attached water weight.
That is generally all over water added if using muscles that way - won't see it.

A 1 week diet (not even as extreme as it sounds like you were doing) will do that initial drop of water weight if you need to hit some weight limit for an event.

If your picture is an accurate representation, you may be on the verge of going sub-10-12% body fat? I've read things that say if you go to low, you lose testosterone. Too high is bad too. Compare yourself to some Google images for percent body fat that show a spectrum of body fat. You may be hungry because your body knows you've gone far enough.

Just a thought. Looking great, dude!

Wes

My approach to maintenance is to set an acceptable channel of weight numbers with, say, a spread of 7lb. So long as my weight falls within that channel all is good. If it moves out of that channel I go on alert (may just be a fluctuation) and possibly adjust calories a tiny bit, but if it stays out of that channel for more than a week I take more drastic action.