Help me find the right calorie deficit?

[Leopardboard]

Made some healthy changes recently and am feeling pretty good. Weight is not shifting however. I'm 5ft 3 and feel good around 10 stone but I am in fact 14 stone.

I'd say I'm moderately active in that I always hit my 10,000 steps. I struggle to find the time to exercise outside of this. I'm going to try calorie counting. What do you think a good deficit for me would be?

I think you should read the Glucose Goddess book and Jason Fung The Obesity Code.

Calories in vs calories out do not work, it's much more detailed.

I don’t think everyone agrees CICO doesn’t work

I took ozempic for 5 months or so last May- Sept but since then I have lost another 2st calorie counting and continue to lose weight. I’m not hungry all day or unwell with it.

I use this calculator

https://jamessmithcalculator.co.uk/

What you need to factor in is the activity level. If you are walking 10,000 steps but slowly, across the whole day this might be lightly active. I don’t think it’s moderately active as actually this is more intense exercise that gets your heart rate up and makes you hot and sweaty for at least 30 mins multiple times a week.

If you purposefully exercise more than 3 times a week at a more intense level this might be active/moderate.

I always underestimate my activity to take into account when I am too busy or not well enough to exercise and try to find a middle ground. So perhaps with sedentary exercise my TDEE is 1400 but with light it’s 1500, and active it’s 1590 so I would try to fall between these numbers somewhere. I can walk 10,000 steps a day but sometimes these are all day and Im not getting hot and sweaty doing it or just a casual dog walk. Exercise burns a lot less calories than we think it does

It's about 1200 calories at your height.

It's really not. I'm the same height and lose weight calorie counting. Im on 1600 calories for 10k steps, currently weigh 10st 13lb, started at 15st 3lb march last year. Got down into the 9st range but put a load back on comfort eating after my dad died, and now in the process of getting it back down. You shouldn't ever need to drop your calories as low as 1200 unless you are completely sedentary.

Ha! Not true.

I run 3 days a week, power walk an hour every day I'm not running. I do weights, I do yoga and my meals never come to more than 1200 very carefully counted calories daily. I am most definitely not sedentary despite having a sedentary job.

I'm also almost 4 stone overweight, at 5ft that makes me almost dangerously obese...I do not eat like my size suggests. I cannot lose weight, no thyroid issues. It baffles everyone that knows me, including me.

I think CICO works for a lot of people. On that basis I'd agree that between 1200-1500 calories per day for someone roughly the same height as me is a decent goal to aim for with sensibility about flexing so life doesn't derail your efforts.

For others like me, I'd love a simple answer. I'm sure if I was rich enough I could throw money at the problem with better results, but I'm a full time working mother of two with very little spare cash so I have to do the best with what I have.