Hey guys,
I would appreciate a little help adjusting my fat loss diet. I went into it confidently because I thought I had a good grasp of how my body works because of previous dieting experiences. But I did run into some problems.
I’ve been dieting for two weeks now and progress has been almost non-existent or very very slow. I am a bit baffled because I expected some quick losses in at least the first week. I have seen the initial quick losses in my past two diets.
• I started at 189 pounds and dropped my intake to 2300 kcals
• my maintanenance is ~3000 kcals, so I should really have been in a big deficit
• my macros are ~50% carbs, ~30% proteins, ~20% fats
• after one week my weight didn’t change → I did a refeed day of 3000 kcals at the start of week two because I thought the deficit would be too big and I would maybe get a “whoosh”
• in the second week I started walking to work 3 times a week in hopes of speeding things up (one way takes 15 mins, so 30 mins a day)
• after two weeks my average weight has only decreased by 0.4 pounds; waist and ass circumference have changed minimally, but I guess this is rather due to measurement error
My thoughts:
Eating / Metabolism:
3000 has been my maintenance calories in like forever. The thing is that I have been sick over christmas. Bedridden for a week + feeling tired and having low appetite for almost a week after that. So my calories have been pretty low and I didn’t train for almost 3 weeks. But after that I started training again and ate 3000 calories for a week. Although my metabolism must have been running really low, I didn’t gain any weight in that time. So I guess that when I started training and eating it sped up quickly again. This would go hand in hand with past experiences.
It might be that it hasn’t fully recovered though. In my past diets when I have come from mainteanance calories I was always able to drop fat/weight pretty quickly and consistently eating 2500 calories, especially in the first week. So maybe my metabolism is still running quite low because I am not losing weight even while eating only 2300 calories (which is like 12 x bodyweight for me)…
Training / Cardio:
I still have the same desk job I did in my previous diets. So I don’t really move around any more or less than before. I never really had to do any cardio at all or maybe just at the end of my diet.
BUT a point to consider is that I did high frequency training in my previous diets. I trained pretty much every day (1 push, pull and leg movement). This time I came from doing a 4-day split routine. So maybe the HFT pushed my metaboslim way more than I thought and that’s the reason I am not losing fat as efficiently right now?
To offset that a bit I added the walking in the second week and changed to a full body routine (every other day) too. It didn’t help until now. It’s maybe still not as metabolically demanding as the daily training back then and the walking maybe isn’t helping that much at all.
Water retention:
I thought that my deficit was too high, which probably isn’t the case at all. To maybe counteract some ongoing water retention I did a refeed day at the start of the first week. It didn’t change anything though. I didn’t really expect it though because I never had any specific issues with water retention in past diets. Whenever I stalled progress picked up again as soon as I reduced calories again.
So, what do I do now?
My guess is that because of the points I mentioned I am just not in a big calorie deficit, if at all (obviously). What would you guys do in my case? Decrease calories and see if progress starts because I maybe overestimated my deficit by far? Increase calories because maybe my metabolic rate still isn’t up to par?
Thanks to everyone who read the rather long text. I might be overthinking things, but I am just trying to understand the game and especially my own body better.