Weight loss, 1lb, 2lb, or percent?

[WantLessFat]

Pretty straight forward question here. I have heard so often about losing weight "you gotta lose 1-2lbs a week, anymore and it's bad". Personally it does not make much sense, a person who weighs 200lbs and someone like me at 350, 2 lbs for them is a lot more percent of total body weight than for me (1% v .57%.

Been reading a lot about this, and it seams 1-1.5% is acceptable. What is the consensus in here? If my TDEE is about 3,500 calories daily and I wanted to lose 1% a week.

I made an excel sheet that I can plug my body weight & body fat into to give me the calories I need and it puts me around 1900-2200 depending how active I am. I can still feel fine on that many calories (today I only had about 1,700).

What macros would you use at this deficit?
Eating back calories burned in exercise? (got differing opinions on my post about that, but which such a high calorie cut, I think eating back a decent portion would be optimal)
Thoughts?

[spradish]

Read the DON'T LOOK PAST THE BASICS thread and follow its link to how to set up your calories and macros.

And no, don't eat back exercise calories. Your TDEE already includes exercise calories so adding them back means you're double dipping. Additionally, most people (even when using machines and devices) are not good at estimating exercise calories and just make a mess of it.

[xsquid99]

Never ever ever "eat back" your calories burned during exercise. Fitbits and machines and people always massively overestimate their calories burned, so this never ends well.

1% of your overall bodyweight per week is a good, safe, sustainable target.

[284Shooter]

Doubtful that your TDEE is 3500.

[xsquid99]

Doubtful that your TDEE is 3500.

What makes you say that?

[284Shooter]

What makes you say that?

Because I have been close to 300#, at 6’3”, active job, and would not have lost weight at 2500.

[spradish]

Because I have been close to 300#, at 6’3”, active job, and would not have lost weight at 2500.

Then you are either bad at counting calories (which is common) or not as active as you think. It is not difficult for a 350 lb person to have a TDEE of 3500.

[284Shooter]

Then you are either bad at counting calories (which is common) or not as active as you think. It is not difficult for a 350 lb person to have a TDEE of 3500.

Ok, just stating facts from my personal experiences with weight loss. But at 1800 he will lose weight. At 350#, he can dump weight as fast as he wants.

[WantLessFat]

Never ever ever "eat back" your calories burned during exercise. Fitbits and machines and people always massively overestimate their calories burned, so this never ends well.

1% of your overall bodyweight per week is a good, safe, sustainable target.

Thanks, so when I do the TDEE I ALWAYS put in sedentary because generally I sit at a desk all day and occasionally travel. I am also 6'6" for what it's worth. My current BF is 34.7%. I am really not concerned with the TDEE amount being inaccurate comment, given my deficit I am losing weight, and it is almost exactly 1% a week (first week was more, but I understand that is normal water weight, done this a couple time lol, just the following through part..).

So I guess now that we agree 1% is fine. How do you calculate different activity levels? For example today I worked from home for 4 hours (laying on my stomach in bed), then went and spent 6 hours tiling at my parents, definitely worked up a good sweat but nothing crazy. Tomorrow however I will go to the gym early. When I say eat back what I do is take what the "machine" says I burned and deduct 30%, then divide that by 2. For example (total arbitrary numbers). If I walk and it says I burned 100 calories on the treadmill, I remove 30% (multiply by .7), so it gives me 70, then divide that by 2. Only if I really feel like I am starving will I then eat 35 extra calories? Real world example is if I bike 20 miles (16-18 average mph), MapMyRide will say something crazy like 1,300 calories (BS I know). So only if I need it I will add 455 to my allowed limit ((1300x.7)/2)

Or would it be better to have a separate TDEE calculation for each day based on exercise level? I know the levels are take the BMR and multiply by 1.2 for sedentary, 1.375 for slightly active, 1.425 lightly active etc etc.

Am I crazy or does any of this sound rational? lol

[xsquid99]

Because I have been close to 300#, at 6’3”, active job, and would not have lost weight at 2500.

I'm 6'5", 213 lbs, desk job, and my TDEE is in the range of 3100-3300. My cutting calories are 2500 usually. A 350 lb guy having a TDEE of 3500 is totally believable.

For OP you're overthinking this and getting way too caught up in eating back calories and looking for exact numbers, which is an exercise in futility. Use www.tdeecalculator.net to find your ballpark TDEE, subtract AT LEAST 500 calories from that, and eat that same number every day. Regarding your activity level, just use sedentary or light for the calculator, this will err you on the conservative side and ensure you're in a deficit.

[John Prophet]

I have heard so often about losing weight "you gotta lose 1-2lbs a week, anymore and it's bad". Personally it does not make much sense, a person who weighs 200lbs and someone like me at 350,

the 1-2lbs get quoted a lot because it covers a huge % of the population. How many people do u think weigh 350?

1% for you is obviously round about 3.5lbs. 2lbs per week for you would be somewhat conservative but not too bad.

Aiming for 1lb would be so small of a % that it would be hard to know if u were on track or if it was just daily water variation etc lol

[WantLessFat]

Thanks all for the input. Really helped me out! I am a numbers guy, so it is easy for me to get lost in it lol.

Right now I am in a deficit to lose 1% a week which for right now is about 1900-2000 calories. Just had some chicken breast before bed and brings my total for the day to 1,914.
49g carbs
75g fat
275g protein
That has been a pretty standard day. 2 weeks ago I was not looking at protien and started to feel flu symptoms, on a hunch I used keto strips and sure enough I was dipping into ketosis which I want to avoid so have been proactive to keep fat down and protien up.

[XinXom]

Thanks all for the input. Really helped me out! I am a numbers guy, so it is easy for me to get lost in it lol.

Right now I am in a deficit to lose 1% a week which for right now is about 1900-2000 calories. Just had some chicken breast before bed and brings my total for the day to 1,914.
49g carbs
75g fat
275g protein
That has been a pretty standard day. 2 weeks ago I was not looking at protien and started to feel flu symptoms, on a hunch I used keto strips and sure enough I was dipping into ketosis which I want to avoid so have been proactive to keep fat down and protien up.

Your last statement doesn't make any sense ketosis is all about carbs and is normally a high fat diet. It doesn't matter if you ate low fat or high fat if you eat the same super low amount of carbs your still depleting glycogen. I don't think this really matters all that much though what really matters is meeting fat and protein minimums and not going over the caloric target that is all.

[WantLessFat]

Your last statement doesn't make any sense ketosis is all about carbs and is normally a high fat diet.

Sorry I didn't think it was relevant to put the macro data since it is a moot point. When I went into MyFitnessPal and looked, my carbs for 4 days were sub 30, fat was really high, protein was also low. IE, getting vast majority of calories from fat, with extremely low carb count = recipe for ketosis.

Reason I want to avoid Keto is I did it before and actually lost a lot, but started to have gallbladder issues (severe pain). I went to the Dr and they wanted to remove it, not a huge fan of surgery especially being very overweight and a smoker (at the time, I have quit since) wanted another option. He suggested immediately lower fat intake and take bovine bile (yes, it is disgusting). Within a few days I the pains subsided, and within a week and a half was feeling fine. Rather than do the sensible thing and just eat healthy I gave up... Here we are, not quitting this time!

[XinXom]

Well if too many fats are a problem for you and your doctor said not too then yes don't eat that many fats. The only thing that determines ketosis though is depletion of glucose due to low carbs. So if your carbs stayed the same that has not changed your still running on keytones when your deplete your glucose from your sub 50g of daily carbs. While I don't see anything wrong with that much protein if you wanted to avoid ketosis altogether you would want more carbs. I'm a big guy and i have been cutting on 180G carbs 150G protein and 65G fat and that works well for me as long as I lay off the alcohol. Yes you carry more water with the carbs but it helps with the exercise half of the equations and allows for you to not only get in the fruits and veggies but actually go to places like subway and eat some bread which for me makes things easier.