Significent cut from TDEE but barely any fat or weight loss

akshu85 · May 2021

Hi everyone!

Hopefully, others have also gone throught this sort of a problem and they can help me understand what I'm lacking here. I'm certainly not lacking or patience! I have been diligently tracking my caloric intake for atleast 5 months now. Despite a significent Calroic reduction, I dont see a corrosponding change. Please check out my worksheet below.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1elULfj08rU0msps538CtTN9q64FQFMgHstoj_YK_Lv8/edit?usp=sharing

What's happening here? Any suggesions what I need to change to see results? I'm not losing faith but I want to change things up as clearly this cal in cal out hasnt working for me (yet).

Thanks!

PS: Due to covid19, i have not had the chance to go to the gym, play tennis, or even go for long walks (I live in TOronto and it was cold). So my phyisical activity level has been sedentary at best.

88olds · May 2021

What’s happening? Unknown. But the first question is always do you use a food scale to crunch the numbers whenever possible? And aside from that how many calorie counting gray areas do you run into in a week?

But if you’re already using and a scale and are convinced that your counting is as tight as possible, maybe you’ve just run into the limits of the calculators. If you read this board regularly this comes up about 1-2 times just about every day. Doing everything right but getting nowhere.

Calorie counting is both a science and an art. We aren’t working in laboratories, we live in the real world. It’s just not all that exact. The gadgets and calculators are based on averages and statistics. But no one is exactly average.

We lose weight eating in a calorie deficit. It’s how our bodies are designed. You’ve given this a good long test. Seems like you have 2 choices- tinker under the hood, rework everything, every number and calculation and see it that changes anything. Or try an experiment and just cut some calories. Try 100 per day if you can live with that. And see what happens.

In the end this is all just a big experiment and the actual solutions are found by trial and error. It takes a lot of persistence. The calculators just aren’t yielding a number that’s working for you. Try to find a number that does. It’s there. You can find it.

You aren’t that far from goal weight, take small steps. Good luck.

akshu85 · May 2021

Thanks a lot for taking the time out and

88olds wrote: »

What’s happening? Unknown. But the first question is always do you use a food scale to crunch the numbers whenever possible? And aside from that how many calorie counting gray areas do you run into in a week?

But if you’re already using and a scale and are convinced that your counting is as tight as possible, maybe you’ve just run into the limits of the calculators. If you read this board regularly this comes up about 1-2 times just about every day. Doing everything right but getting nowhere.

Calorie counting is both a science and an art. We aren’t working in laboratories, we live in the real world. It’s just not all that exact. The gadgets and calculators are based on averages and statistics. But no one is exactly average.

We lose weight eating in a calorie deficit. It’s how our bodies are designed. You’ve given this a good long test. Seems like you have 2 choices- tinker under the hood, rework everything, every number and calculation and see it that changes anything. Or try an experiment and just cut some calories. Try 100 per day if you can live with that. And see what happens.

In the end this is all just a big experiment and the actual solutions are found by trial and error. It takes a lot of persistence. The calculators just aren’t yielding a number that’s working for you. Try to find a number that does. It’s there. You can find it.

You aren’t that far from goal weight, take small steps. Good luck.

Thanks for taking your time and writing that detailed post. Yes, I'm counting and weighing everything very diligently. I have also assumed that despite tracking and measuring everything, I might be off by 5% everyday. That's included in my calculations as what I do is, I add more count/volume for oil, fruits, etc.

I think I'll cut 150/day and give that a shot for the next two months. Plus, with the summer almost here, I'll start walking 30-45 mins a day so that should help.

I know I'll get there but it's a little disheartening to see others with my height/weight consuming 2300 kcals a day and still being in a deficit while I can't get one even at 1800!

trinati2001 · May 2021

If you are NOT active 1800 calories can be a lot of calories. Do you have a way to monitor your steps? I find that really helpful to see how much "activity" I get throughout the day. I agree with the previous suggestion, decrease your intake by 100-150 calories and add in more water. Try chugging 16-24 oz of room temp water right before a meal. Really helpful to fill your stomach as you decrease your calories

wunderkindking · May 2021

1800 calories is not actually a lot for a guy, in fact it's pretty little. My maintenance calories at 147lbs/5'5" and lightly active woman is above that. Not a lot above, but above.

That said, experiment for sure. Calculators can be off. Go slow, be easy and see where you need to be to get things to work. Things change a lot and no matter what you're going to need to make adjustments along the way.

akshu85 · May 2021

trinati2001 wrote: »

If you are NOT active 1800 calories can be a lot of calories. Do you have a way to monitor your steps? I find that really helpful to see how much "activity" I get throughout the day. I agree with the previous suggestion, decrease your intake by 100-150 calories and add in more water. Try chugging 16-24 oz of room temp water right before a meal. Really helpful to fill your stomach as you decrease your calories

Thanks for bringing that up. I just ordered a Garmin watch to track my daily activity, metrics, etc. And yes, i live a VERY inactive life these days (no gym, no tennis, no waking as it was cold until last week) so 1800 could still be a lot.

akshu85 · May 2021

wunderkindking wrote: »

1800 calories is not actually a lot for a guy, in fact it's pretty little. My maintenance calories at 147lbs/5'5" and lightly active woman is above that. Not a lot above, but above.

That said, experiment for sure. Calculators can be off. Go slow, be easy and see where you need to be to get things to work. Things change a lot and no matter what you're going to need to make adjustments along the way.

That's exactly why I was surprised to see such little progress in my case and it lead me to create this post. I think my metabolism ight be just SLOW. I might not be buring much calories, certainly not without any activity. So, my TDEE might be almost equal to my BMR.

I gotta move around a bit to create another 300-400 kclas deficit, on top of the calroic intake deficit. I cant see any other way around it.

bainsjas · May 2021

How do you work out your calories and macros pls?

AnnPT77 · May 2021

akshu85 wrote: »

wunderkindking wrote: »

1800 calories is not actually a lot for a guy, in fact it's pretty little. My maintenance calories at 147lbs/5'5" and lightly active woman is above that. Not a lot above, but above.

That said, experiment for sure. Calculators can be off. Go slow, be easy and see where you need to be to get things to work. Things change a lot and no matter what you're going to need to make adjustments along the way.

That's exactly why I was surprised to see such little progress in my case and it lead me to create this post. I think my metabolism ight be just SLOW. I might not be buring much calories, certainly not without any activity. So, my TDEE might be almost equal to my BMR.

I gotta move around a bit to create another 300-400 kclas deficit, on top of the calroic intake deficit. I cant see any other way around it.

Exercise, sure.

But also:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

Those are not so much calories you can estimate and eat back in the short run, as ways you can increase daily life calorie expenditure to somewhat increase actual TDEE via habit changes in the long run. With serious attention and working at it, a couple of hundred calories or so daily is potentially viable.

kelMee2 · May 2021

Set MFP to sedentary and eat the calories it tells you to eat daily that should work for you and you should see a loss. You could also try to exercise indoors to burn some calories.

akshu85 · May 2021

bainsjas wrote: »

How do you work out your calories and macros pls?

Well, i weigh everything I cook and I barely eat out. And when I do eat out, I eat standard stuff that can ne inputted in MFP fairly accurately.

akshu85 · May 2021

AnnPT77 wrote: »

akshu85 wrote: »

wunderkindking wrote: »

1800 calories is not actually a lot for a guy, in fact it's pretty little. My maintenance calories at 147lbs/5'5" and lightly active woman is above that. Not a lot above, but above.

That said, experiment for sure. Calculators can be off. Go slow, be easy and see where you need to be to get things to work. Things change a lot and no matter what you're going to need to make adjustments along the way.

That's exactly why I was surprised to see such little progress in my case and it lead me to create this post. I think my metabolism ight be just SLOW. I might not be buring much calories, certainly not without any activity. So, my TDEE might be almost equal to my BMR.

I gotta move around a bit to create another 300-400 kclas deficit, on top of the calroic intake deficit. I cant see any other way around it.

Exercise, sure.

But also:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

Those are not so much calories you can estimate and eat back in the short run, as ways you can increase daily life calorie expenditure to somewhat increase actual TDEE via habit changes in the long run. With serious attention and working at it, a couple of hundred calories or so daily is potentially viable.

Thanks for sharing (and writing) that informative post!

Significent cut from TDEE but barely any fat or weight loss

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