Calorie Deficit

[Meow79Meow79]

Apologies if this topic has been covered before but I'm after a bit of advice regarding calorie deficit.

For the last four weeks I have been using My Fitness Pal. Since I have an office job it has recommended that I eat 1200 calories a day. When I started I weighed 145 pounds, I am 164cm tall.

Within the first two weeks I lost 6 pounds so I now weigh 139 pounds. For the last two weeks my weight loss has stalled which is disappointing but since some of my clothes already feel looser, I'm inspired to carry on.

Anyway I've just got a Fitbit so it was a bit of an awakening to realise that you burn so many calories by doing absolutely nothing.

I understand that my weight loss did stall for the last fortnight because for the first week I was off work and went out for lunch on more than one occasion. Last week at work someone bought in cakes and while I didn't over indulge as much as I would have before, on those bad days there would have been at least half the week where I ate 1500 calories instead of 1200.

What I am slightly confused about is that I have been making a determined effort to walk at least 10,000 steps a day. Since I only just have my Fitbit I don't know how this truly affected my calorie burn but if I was to assume that I am burning 2000 calories a day, then wouldn't I be losing weight by eating anything less than that? That is if I ate 1500 calories, I'd be eating 500 less than the 2000 I was burning off? With this in mind, surely I'd be losing weight for those weeks that I stalled?

Likewise, if I started eating 2000 calories a day (which now seems like a lot!) then just by moving around normally and burning the average 2000, I wouldn't actually gain weight?

Sorry if this is a stupid question but this is the first time when trying to lose weight that I've actually logged by food and monitored the calories, normally I just try and cut down, so any advice would be great. 🙂

[Dominique]

Welcome to the community, @Meow79Meow79 !

"Burning so many calories by doing absolutely nothing" is also known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR). You don’t necessarily need a Fitbit to become aware of it and of its extent: just enter your personal data in a calculator like this one. The value added by a Fitbit is that it estimates energy expended on top of your BMR based on your actual activity: if you have a very sedentary day, your calories burned for that day will be low (close to your BMR); if you have a very active day, your calories burned may be up to twice your BMR. With calculators, you need to settle on an average activity level.

As to losing 6 pounds in weeks 1 and 2, and 0 pounds in weeks 3 and 4, I wouldn’t say your weight loss has "stalled". I would rather consider you have lost an average of 1.5 pound per week over 4 weeks, which is in fact quite good, especially since you started from a relatively low weight (within the normal range as per BMI). Weight loss is seldom fully linear, especially for females (impact of hormonal cycle).

Even if relatively sedentary with an office job, you should be able to maintain your weight eating more than 1200 calories. Increasing your activity (e.g. getting 10k steps or more) will allow you to eat more. Keep in mind calories burned reported by your Fitbit is an estimate, which may be on the high side. If you want to maintain your weight and are logging your intake, start eating slightly less than what Fitbit reports, see what happens on the scale over time and adjust accordingly.

[Meow79Meow79]

That’s great thank you. 

The calculator is actually suggesting I can have 1502 calories a day so I’ll worry less if I go over the 1200!