200 calorie deficit enough?

[Bobobab]

Early days and I'm quite new to this, started reducing calories about 5 weeks ago, at first just reduced from what I was eating daily now looked at my maintenance calories and reducing from there. Aiming for 1200 but I think my average for the week is more like 1400 which is only a 200 calorie deficit. Is this enough to lose weight? Happy for it to be slow (say 4/5kg in 6 months) but so many things say you need a 500 deficit. Compared to what I was eating it is about an 800 deficit so I've made a big change and I want it to be sustainable

I have increased activity, 6000 steps a day and yoga 4x a week, I did very little before

That sounds perfect! You’ll lose slow and steady and sustainably 🥰 you only need 500 cals a day if you wanted to lose 1 pound a week, but that would be too low given your maintenance cals

It’s about what I started last august/September, I’ve lost a stone and a half, still a stone to go. Basically eating more veg, brown carb, protein and cutting out the crisps and biscuits. It’s working, even if slowly.

Thank you so much! The maths makes sense that any deficit would mean losing weight but 500 calories is mentioned so much I was worried I was kidding myself! How do you track its working when it's a gradual amount of weight loss? Assess it monthly?

I think there's a point when you plateau and you need to build in a new deficit but it depends where you are starting from, how much exercise you do etc...but as a starting point why not?

I've reached my 'old' heaviest ever having gone down from 'my heaviest ever ever'....

So I need to start putting in a bit more effort now.

If 1400 is only a 200 deficit then maintenance calories are 1600? Have you calculated properly? It's supposed to be a 500 cal deficit from your TDEE of your weight NOW. So say you are 200lbs and want to lose a pound a week and whatever calculator says TDEE is 2300 for that weight (taking into account activity levels, and always err down) - by the way I've no idea is that is the TDEE for that weight just using it as an illustration. 2300-500 is 1800. That's what you eat, then keep recalculating as you drop weight.
A 200 cal deficit is fine for very slow weight loss. If you can do it, weigh a couple times a month (though we naturally fluctuate so sometimes it's an up day for whatever reason which may discourage you - maybe weight every other month then)?
Measure everything.

Thank you, according to a few online calcs yes, I'm 170cm and 64kg currently. I've only just started exercise so I've classed myself as sedentary, thinking that exercise is a bonus and will add to the deficit. A 500 deficit would be 1100 and I can do that the odd day but long term I can't see me living on that!

The 500 deficit is based on the assumption that it results in 2lbs fat loss a week for the average person, but we're all individual. As a baseline though it's never recommended for adults to be regularly eating under 1200 calories without medical supervision (eg very low calorie diets as preparation for surgery)

Knowing what our maintenance is is actually pretty difficult, so in reality it's trial and error - try a target that you can stick to, stay with it for at least a month (to account for hormonal fluctuations) and see if it's making any difference. Then adjust from there. A smaller deficit will of course mean more gradual weight loss, but it's also likely to be more sustainable for keeping weight off in the long run.