To think I’ll be stuck at 16 stone forever

[justmeandthedogs]

I’m in the process of losing weight and since the start of the year I’ve lost about 13lbs.

But I seem to be in a loop. I’ll hit 16 stone 0.3 on the scales and then go back up to 16 stone 4, then go back down, then back up. It’s like an annoying cycle.

I eat well:

breakfast - yoghurt with berries and sometimes a drizzle of honey. On low protein days I’ll add some skyr.

lunch - something from home. Usually soup, a salad or a bit of meat with some veg.

dinner - again something prepped. Can be another big salad, cottage pie, pasta bake.

I eat 1550 calories a day, which is a deficit for my height and weight. I go to the gym twice a week (under the direction of a PT, to lift weights), try to run 3 times a week but I’m waiting on some new running shoes, and the other two days a week I’ll walk 10k steps minimum. I try to drink 4 litres of water a day at least.

my clothes fit better but the scale just won’t change 😥 do I just accept I’m stuck here?

I've got a question for the anti-CICO people.

Your argument seems to be that even if we are in a deficit, if we overeat carbs and sugar, our body will not use those calories for energy but will store them as fat, which it will then not burn, is that right? Otherwise, it's still CICO, surely?

If that is right, where do we get the energy required to breathe/digest food/walk etc? Do we develop the ability to photosynthesise? Once we develop this ability, do we keep it, or does it evaporate once we stop eating carbs?

The body uses different calories in different ways.

protein takes energy to digest and it’s hard work for the body to store it as fat. Nuts look very calorific but much of it gets pooed out undigested.

But yes if you eat in a true deficit even if it’s all junk you will lose weight but if you don’t eat enough protein (amino acids) some of the weight loss will be muscle.

It’s not the same. It’s widely established that protein has a 40% cost of processing.

I agree, but this is advice meant for athletes or people into body recomp or bodybuilding.

No offence meant to OP at all, I think she's doing great by the sounds of things and is just experiencing a plateau, but if she weighs 16 stones and is eating 1550 calories a day, it doesn't matter whether it's all Mars bars and Snickers or all grilled chicken and steamed spinach, she is in a deficit. A slice of sourdough and some avocado is not going to stall her weightloss as long as she is in a deficit.

If her plateau lasts, then she should consider either upping her calorie expenditure or lowering her calorie intake, but until then, assuming she's not eating nothing but carbs and sugar, none of this is relevant to her.

Once she's closer to her goal weight and looking to fine-tune her muscle-to-fat ratio, she will need to think about this, but I would hope that, if this is something she would be interested in, her PT will help with that.

Sure but as others have said that’s not really relevant unless you’re looking to grow muscle

Kind of, but eating enough protein should be a goal for anyone on a weightloss diet because it minimises muscle loss.

Nutracheck has macro targets too. I would just try to stay within those for carbs and fat and exceed the protein goal.

The idea of timing carbs to match workouts, drilling down into your macros to the extent that a slice of sourdough might throw you off plan, is for body recomp/building, but the advice on eating more protein in general is solid, but again, this depends on your overall diet. The meal you showed us had a decent amount of protein.

The pasta meals may not, it depends on what is with the pasta.

Although you are right in that if you're in a deficit, it doesn't matter for weight loss in general, just be aware that muscle is also weight on a scale. If you don't eat enough protein, a decent chunk of the weight you drop will be muscle.

I was quite shocked at how big I got, especially because my mum and others told me breastfeeding had them lose loads of weight — I was the opposite, but it made sense to me that my body needed to store fat while nourishing me and child.

I actually don’t know how many more times I can say I hit 120g of protein a day

Or you could say,
"You lost weight, that's evidence that you have eaten foods that stimulate your metabolism "
"You gained weight, that's evidence of your metabolism slowing down"

Science and maths (maths? where does maths come into this? 🤔) working nicely.

Millions of years?😲😲😲

You do realise man has only been on earth for around 300,000 years?

And we have maybe 3000-4000 years of scientific thinking, but more like 300-400 years of modern science.

I don't have a case to argue. You're the one who is spouting rubbish and claiming it's "science"

When you look up the thermic effect on weight loss of something like 100 calories of crisps (a pack) vs 100 calories of veg, the consensus is that the body uses more energy to digest whole, high-fiber foods like vegetables than it does for highly processed snacks like crisps. So surely it's not actually the case that you could eat a load of Mars Bars instead of a meal (as in someone's example) as long as you're in deficit and lose at the same rate?

That’s not true. Regardless of whether trying to grow muscle a) it makes you feel fuller and b) it uses 40% of its calories to process so even if it’s stored as fat (rather than being used to repair muscle) less of it will be stored due to the high processing cost

You have misunderstood - the higher protein meal will result in a bigger deficit witn the same number of calories due to the processing cost. Either way she said she is eating 120g protein which is likely enough.

Protein will result in a bigger deficit, but assuming OP has a relatively balanced diet, the thermic effect of digestion is negligible, certainly not big enough to show results on the scales over the course of weeks or months.

If one person ate only 1500 cals of Mars bars and one person ate only 1500 cals of grilled chicken, the grilled chicken person would lose more weight, but let's face it, neither of those people would live long enough for it to make a massive difference.

For most people who eat a variety of food, the thermic effect of digestion isn't worth worrying about. It amounts to something like < 5% of your overall TDEE.

And, in the debate of CICO, the thermic effect of digestion is part of the calories out.