Calorie deficit but not showing much weight loss?

[Cherrypineapplecocktail]

If you dropped from eating 3000 calories a day and maintaining your weight to eating 1600, why would you barely be losing weight?! It doesn’t make sense to me and feel like I’m depriving myself for nothing.

1600 might not be much of a deficit - it has to be roughly 500 calories less than you burn a day for about 1lb a week loss. Not 500 less than you ate before.

My fitbit says I've only burned 1737 today, so I'd lose 1lb a month on 1600!

Either you’re not eating 1600 or you haven’t given it long enough.

Calculate your TDEE and see what it says for cutting calories or use an app like myfitnesspal to show you what you should be aiming for to lose eg 1lb a week etc.
My calorie cutting target is 1240! My BMR is 1340 so I have to eat less than my BMR to lose weight which means hair loss!

I definitely am. I’m weighing and scanning everything that enters my mouth. Been eating more ready meals (I normally home cook meals) so I can have accurate calorie counts to help move things along.

Look up TeamRH on instagram, Richie the PT has loads of videos that explain this really well

Thanks. Feeing so deprived! My treat the other evening was 6 raisins and half a dry cream cracker 🤦🏻‍♀️

3000 calories sounds like a lot to be maintaining a steady weight - are you sure that's what you were consuming, and are you sure you weren't slowly gaining weight if you were eating that much?

My weight went up and down 4lbs over a 6 month but remained pretty much stable.

To be honest some days I was probably eating way more than 3000 as at the time I hadn’t really thought about how many calories I was consuming e.g. if I bought a pack of donuts I’d eat 2/3 (as a snack without a second thought for calories ) 😨 which is hideous.

Why ready meals? Full of crap. The ultra processed lot will tell you your body won't even be recognising a lot of the ingredients as food - so you'll stay hungry but absorb the calories.

Why bother with the crackers and raisins! Have yogurt and berries if you really need a snack - do you or is it just habit?

Meat, chicken or fish plus veg or salad for dinner.

How heavy are you op? I got to a weight where no diet worked anymore.

My treat the other evening was 6 raisins and half a dry cream cracker

That's about 30 calories op. And it's shit. Why bother?!

My snacks are tip tops. If I had 30 calories spare I'd sit and eat 6 tip tops which at least I enjoy...and they take some time in eating.

How tall are you OP and how much weight do you have to lose? If you're not tall and/or already in your healthy weight zone, 1600 calories may be too much.

Isn't that guy whose a fucking nightmare?

Ready meals are actually allowed to be inaccurate with calorie count by up to 20%. So your 1600 could theoretically be 1920 if your entire diet is ready meals.

I know it's more work initially but you're better off weighing ingredients and eating healthy whole foods (plus these won't contain weird ingredients which mess with your metabolism and sabotage your weight loss efforts). Once you know how many calories your regular meals contain you don't need to calculate it every time but it is a pain at the start I know.

I am 5ft 7 and need to lose 8 stone.

I am often short of time and thought it was an easy way to keep a tight reign on calories 🙈

didn’t realise the 20 percent over thing.

If you need to lose 8 stone and at that height, you should definitely be losing at 1600 calories a day! So the only possible explanation can be that you're counting the calories wrong, assuming no thyroid issues etc.

Ready meals are not a good way forward, as a poster said previously they are full of Ultra processed food. You have to be in a deficit but you have to find your deficit as it is different for everyone. I have also found that i might have been eating a low calorie meal but the fat content was acutually much more than i should have been having, I now keep every meal below 600 calories and below 15g of fat, Gusto is very helpful for the evening meals for this.

I only eat 2 meals a day between 12 and 8, first meal is around 350 calories so chicken breast, cous cous and veg and then the gusto at 600 calories or less. I also do 30 mins of cardio a day and 10 mins of weights. I have lost steadily 2lb a week for 3 weeks. I was going to do WLI but i am too scared to take them tbh.

You just have to find what works for you.