I’ve been getting into this subreddit after realising the usual guidance for weight loss and nutrition advice does not work for my body. I’m 21 Female, 5’1, 59kg and perceive myself to be lightly active. But when it actually comes to calorie counting and losing weight, I’ve only ever found that ~1200cals helps me just maintain weight. Eating even just above that and the scale goes up again. And eating in a deficit of 1200 is just pure miserable!
I’ve read a lot about identifying the activity levels and I genuinely don’t think I have a sedentary lifestyle. I commute to work everyday and average 6k steps a day. On top of that, I have quite an active night life – going to clubs and raves where I average about 15k steps in the night. And no I do not excessively drink or binge eat pizza after those nights, I fuel up on decent food before and still keep track of my calories.
So why do I still have to eat like my lifestyle is sedentary? It can’t seriously be that bad? I used to work out and lift weights but have not worked out in over 3 months. I go surfing with my partner occasionally. Help!!
by smokacola1969
9 Comments
Do you know what’s your body fat %? That can make a give difference in TDEE 🤔
It’s not possible for someone of your height and weight to gain on 1400 cals I don’t think, with your level of activity. I would guess that somewhere, you’re tracking your calorie consumption incorrectly. Are you actually weighing everything and including your drinks or are you eyeballing? Like are you adding your oils that you cook with, and any sauces/dips? Most people underestimate their calories even when carefully tracking calories.
If you’re 100% sure you are tracking correctly, then I would guess you have an actual medical condition and need to see a doctor. Most people (even pretty short people around 5ft) will be losing weight at 1400 cals, albeit slowly, or at the very least maintaining if they’re around the 50kg mark. You could have an under active thyroid.
Alcohol and salt and different phases of your cycle like the luteal phase also cause the scales to go up, so is it possible you’re mistaking that for fat gain?
How long were you tracking your calories and weight to determine that you gain on anything over 1200?
if you’re tracking your calories correctly and not seeing weight loss then you should try to see an endocrinologist or a weight loss specialist to help. you could have an issue with your hormones or thyroid that could be making it exceptionally difficult to lose any weight
My TDEE is similar and I’m struggling to lose on 1200 too. I feel like at this point 1200 just helps me maintain. It’s very frustrating.
I always recommend the Macro Factor app or an adaptive TDEE spreadsheet (like the one found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/s/zw2d3TXpJS) instead of trying to guess your activity level. It takes your calories tracked and weight changes into account to give you a custom TDEE and will work whether you’re gaining, maintaining, or losing. It’s really nice because it can account for fluctuations (which are totally normal) and small changes in weight over weeks that might not seem significant to you.
If you don’t have a food scale, they’re the best for making sure you’re consistently tracking calories correctly. Under- or overestimating your food calories by even a small amount can add up over time and also make your diet much more mentally taxing than it needs to be. Getting one made my diet so much simpler!!
There are a lot of things that impact the CO portion of CICO, including body composition but also underlying metabolic functions. Things like thyroid function and cortisol levels and other things that people want to SOLEly blame for weight gain do compose part of the picture when it comes to TDEE.
I’m 5’7″, 160lbs, 36F, I lift several times a week and I’m fairly active otherwise, and I know from a decade of tracking my calories than my maintenance sits around 1600, which is much lower than it should be for my stats. I also have subclinical hypothyroidism, which I suspect factors in to things, tho lord knows I’ll never know exactly how, lol.
1. Need to make sure you’re counting correctly/precisely.
2. You might just have a slow metabolism. I am in that camp. I am 5’7”, male, 68kg, and (was) sedentary – I had a DEXA scan and a RMR test, and found my TDEE to be about 1,550, which was way lower than I expected and motivated me to get active. I’d recommend getting tested. I am finally seeing results because I’m no longer operating under the incorrect assumption that my budget is 1900/day.
I am chiming in that I am also taller and I do lose very slowly at 1200. Even if I weigh everything and count every vitamin and bite I eat. I have multiple metabolic disorders and that’s just my life.
However, are you sure you’re tracking everything? Like some people they don’t track vegetables and they eat a gigantic steamer bag of broccoli and don’t realize it’s 200 cal! Where they’ll eat a whole box of TicTac’s and they won’t log that. Even though they are pure sugar! Maybe you don’t log your creamer in your coffee or you take collagen coffee creamer and don’t realize it’s 90 cal. Or you grab bites of other people’s food and don’t count those because it’s only a bite. You know if you take a big bite of 1000 cal burger, it might be 100 cal bite! Another thing is if you go out and drink, that large martini is like a drink and a half cal wise. If you go out to restaurants, are you getting everything plain steamed no oil no butter? Do you really know that 4 ounces of meat is literally the size of a deck of cards 😫which is comically tiny. Start weight all your food and log EVERYTHING. Look at your drinks that are diet, they might have 10 cal, have five of them a day and that adds up!
1500 seems accurate for a small women.
F eating 1200 calories. Just raise your activity by 50% taking multiple short walks. 6k steps per day is one hour of walking per day. Raise it to 9k by adding three 10-mintue walks. One right when you wake up, one around noon, and one after work.