When to adjust

DJCrowe12 · November 2021

So, do I just wait till I reach my plateau before I lower my calorie goal?

ama3387 · November 2021

I go in and adjust the 1st of every month just so I don’t forget. But it also happens to be around 10lbs lost.

waleson85 · November 2021

I change my calorie goal sometimes each week or alternate depending on what I want to do. So in short you honestly can change it whenever you want.

Strudders67 · November 2021

In the years that I've been on here, the general suggestion has always been to do so after every 10lb lost.

However, after an extended period of cutting cals, you may need a diet break for a few weeks so switch to maintenance, or you may find you're struggling so change to lose at a slower rate in order to give yourself more calories, or you may have lost enough that you only have a smaller amount left to lose, so you'd change to lose at a slower rate and gradually decrease your deficit.

AnnPT77 · November 2021

FWIW: You may not plateau. I never did. I pretty much had to increase my calorie intake as a I went along, to slow the loss and keep it at a reasonable rate for my decreased body size.

If you start to slow down in loss, gradually, and still have plenty of weight to lose, you can decrease calories to keep your loss rate in the 0.5-1% of current weight per week loss region, as long as the process stays sustainable for you. (You don't want to cut so far you start derailing in reaching goals because it's Too Hard, y'know?) Some people gain energy as they get lighter, so burn more calories in daily life, though that's not true for everyone.

A fast stall - going from a good loss rate to very small loss suddenly, with no big change in eating/activity - is usually some weird water weight thing, not a cause to reduce calories. Actually stalling in weight loss is more likely to be a gradual slowing of loss rate.

How long have you been at your current goal? How fast have you been losing, at first and recently? If things are going OK, or you're just getting started, I guess I'm wondering why worry about when to cut calories.

Best wishes!

lgfrie · November 2021

There's an assumption built into your question that one has to reduce the calorie target as weight is lost. You don't have to. You have to find what works for YOU.

While true that you burn approximately 5.5 calories less per day per pound lost, it's up to you whether to try to eat 55 calories less every day after you've lost 10 pounds, or just eat the same # of calories and lose weight a bit slower. The question is really whether the extra 55 calories lost per day will get offset by being dissatisfied and hungrier, leading to binging or just getting tired of dieting and either formally or just slowly giving up.

Personally, I've found it extremely unhelpful to reduce calories after losing weight. To me, it feels like punishing success. I've lost 90 pounds and therefore should get 500 cals per day less food to maintain the original weight loss. Well, that is not tenable. For me, the calories always stay the same and the rate of weight loss does whatever it does. In fact I've *increased* my calorie quota four times so far during my diet. It's more important to have a diet you can live with all the way to the end goal than to maintain a certain rate of weight loss.

PAV8888 · November 2021

lgfrie wrote: »

It's more important to have a diet you can live with all the way to the end goal than to maintain a certain rate of weight loss.

QFT

mjglantz · November 2021

As I was losing I ended up cutting the calories by about 100/day as my weight loss stalled and that seemed to kick start it. When I got to a weight that was in the middle of the BMI range I kept the calories stable and still lost very slowly so I started increasing the goal by about 100/cals day. did that until the weight stabilized. Interestingly enough I started out at 2,000 cals/day to lose and now at 2,000 cals/day to maintain. Of course I do a lot more exercise now.

When to adjust

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