Active and healthy, losing the last 10 - looking for similar friends

[LetterWriter]

Hi, I am pretty active and healthy but new to Fitbit and looking for a couple friends to be able to check in with who are on a similar journey.

Backstory... I've been athletic and have eaten pretty healthily for a long time, but I've been trying to lose the last 5 pounds for years... lately it has turned into 8-10. I upped my activity, lowered my carbs, no change. I think at this point the difference will lay in fine tuning macros and achieving a consistent calorie deficit. In the last couple weeks I started counting calories and carbs with Fitbit, something I've never done. Hopefully this will be the key, but maintaining a deficit and finding the right macro ratios are tricky and it would be great to be in touch with others encountering the same struggles!

[Dominique]

No need for a magical macro ratio: just eat enough protein and split the rest between carbs and fats as per your personal preferences. It’s calories that matter (most). You may want to have a look at my rapid fat loss experiment, with which I’ve been able to lose about 4-5 kg in 1.5 months, from a starting BMI of 22.4.

[LetterWriter]

I like your approach, it's cool to see what works for people. I agree that it's mostly about calories and that personal experiments are the best way to learn. From my own personal experiments and from what I've read, playing with macros can influence how hungry you are, which makes it easier or harder to stick to a calorie deficit, and the calorie deficit is what influences your weight. 

Right now I'm experimenting with a fairly traditional approach with low calorie/low carb 6 days a week followed by a higher calorie/high carb refeed day. How much protein do you eat? I've been playing around with this - there's a big difference between the common 1g per pound of bodyweight recommendation and what dietitians recommend, which I think is around half that.