calenleroux's Journal, 12 Apr 21

The app says I should be eating 2200cals but it’s way more than other apps suggest. I eat between 1500-1800cals. What helps, I do IF so I have at least 10 hours before my next meal. And I dry fast 13hrs before my last meal. I do 2mad. If I had to eat through out the day. 1500-1800 wouldn’t allow me to lose much. Actually very slowly or might even gain. Fasting a few hours between meals helps a lot. If I had to do 3 meals a day and snack. 1200-1400 would be better for me. 

my deficit is between 300-700 calories per day less than what I should have. so it works out to about 1300-1700 per day total. some days if the deficit has been in the lower range for a few days I need to up it and get more in. 1500 gives loads of wiggle room once you know what foods work best to keep you satiated for longer. my meals are big and hearty. small skimpy meals don't exactly equate to long term loss. you need to eat enough for your body to fuel itself. my snacks are about 200-300 cal total. my meals are between 500-800 calories depending. that plus IF on 16:8 to 18:6 (depending on my mood) have worked great for me and I've kept the weight off. I'm currently in maintenance with just a few kgs to shake off, but I'm in no rush to get those few off.  

Thank you so much for the feedback  

Normally as a coach I'll advise a 500 cal deficit per day to start which equals to a 3500 cal deficit per week to aim for half a kilo to 1 kg weight loss per week for it to be sustainable, then depending on how the body responds I keep the deficit it as is or change if needed.  

I try to maintain a 500 cal deficit but the more I excercise the hungrier I am so its a viscous cycle 

FS gives me a daily cal of 2100 but I've been maintaining a deficit of 1000cal. I use to loosely do IF before but I only recently started tracking it so I'm on 20:4 of IF and I'm pretty comfortable with that. 

I have a low metabolic rate, my BMR is estimated at 1580 and I’m eating 1450 cals and trying to exercise for 10-20 minutes a day to increase the deficit. 

The app gives 2500 cals as my RDI, which is ridiculous compared to other calculators. I set my RDI at 1900 and generally eat between 1400 and 1800 most days. It gives me wiggle room for a bad day and increased deficit down the line, but it's low enough for me to have had a steady weight loss over the last month. 

For those where FS gives a very high estimate i would recommend looking online for the BMR calculators that use body fat percentage. And you can work our body fat percentage approximately entering your body measurements. This helped me see that FS was way overestimating my BMR because they don’t account for people with a high fat mass 

My TDEE is 1576 calories approximately and I then try to create the deficit by excercise. So I eat around 1500 calories a day. Thanks for everyones insight and advice  

Please go on google and search TDEE calculator. It's one of the most " accurate " calculators to determine your daily calorie targets , according to your goals. I used that to set calories targets on this app. I workout 3-5 times a week , but I selected sedentary on this app as it was closer to the RDI on the TDEE calculator. My target is 1600 , so I try and aim to be within 10% of my target . I use to reserve an extra 300 calories , to account for things I don't track accurately . But now that I have a scale and weigh everything under the sun, I sometimes reserve 50-100 calories for the licks, tastes , bites that I don't track  

Also, I'm definitely with coach Jaredrheeder. A deficit of 500 should be enough . You really don't want to massively restrict yourself and go on a huge deficit, you will end up resenting your weight loss journey . Personally, I choose losing weight slowly and steadily . It reduces the chances of me binge eating and my weight yo-yoing. My current deficit is around 400 cals. I usually lose around 0.5 to 0.8 kg per week when I track my calories accurately with this deficit  

My daily recommended calories are 2100 for weightloss so most days I try to consume on average between 1500 and 2000 but I do have days whereby I exceed the 2100 but I try not to make that a habit