Anyone have weightloss success eating over 1600 cals?

I'm seriously about to cry.  I've been exercising and watching my calories now for 3 weeks.  I just got on the scale and I haven't lost 1 pound!  I started at 245 and I'm at 245.  I keep reading articles about starvation mode and part of me doesn't believe it but maybe that's what's going on? 

I just don't understand how I've been eating under 1600 cals a day (that's the average) and exercising 5 times a week, I do 45 min on the elliptical and then 2 sessions a week of circuit/strength training.  I drink plenty of water, at least 2 liters a day....I'm 23, 5'10 and 245.  I'm seriously getting discouraged.  Should I increase my calories?  On the days I exercise the burn meter says I burn around 3420 calories.  Yesterday example I burned 3420 cals, and consumed around 1670 so the deficit is 1750 calories.  Shouldn't that equate to SOME sort of weight loss.  Somebody plllleeease give me a little encouragement or direction. 

It definitely sounds like you might not be getting enough calories.

If you are exercising so much and yet eating so little, your body is not getting enough energy for your muscles to grow. This means your body will be continually breaking down the muscle you are gaining. If this is the case, your body will also be afraid of starvation and cling to your fat stores. If you eat more, your body will figure out it is not starving to death, your muscles will grow (which ups your metabolism) and your fat will burn.

I believe the general rule of thumb is to be down 500-1000 calories a day, so you could probably go up in calories quite a bit. Maybe try 2000-2200 for awhile?

When I started I weighed 225 pounds.  I only ate 1600 a day and exercised 3 times a week, 15 min or cardio and weight circuit.  This gave me a loss of 2 pounds a week.  I'm also confused as to why you haven't lost something.  You could try a different exercise or upping calories a little to see if you lose something that way.

According to the Harris-benedict principal, which is a formula that asses your BMR, you would need to consume 2701 calories a day to maintain your current weight.  The goal is to have a daily deficit of 500-1000 calories with food intake and exercise.  One pound=3500 calories.  

With that said you could potentially eat 2200 calories and save yourself 500 calories daily, then you could add in whatever you burn from working out.  How many calories does the elliptical say your burning?  Are you breaking a sweat when you workout?

Keep us updated on your progress.  It can be very discouraging to be trying so hard and not seeing results.  Don't give up.  Are you working out at the gym?  If so talk to a trainer.  Good Luck!

Hey nsamiee, sorry you are feeling discouraged!  I think you are eating too little.  Using the calculator I come up with a Basal Metobolic Rate (BMR) of 1941.  You have been eating below that which ends up slowing your metabolism down considerably.  I have calculated using an activity level of moderate because you are doing a great job of exercising and I come up with eating about 2500 calories a day to lose a pound a week.  Your maintenance calories are 3000.

And you will eventually lose weight eating 1600 but it will be at the expense of nutrition and health because your body will go after your muscle and fat as it struggles to keep everything functioning.

Just to give you a frame of reference, I am 5'3" and weigh 125.  I eat 1700 calories a day and I am losing weight, although slowly.  You are eating 100 less than I am and you are 7 inches taller!

I hope this helps, good luck to you!

What kind of foods are you eating? If you are loading up on "diet" "sugar free" "fat free" foods you will have a hard time loosing weight and for sure fat. It is about clean/balanced eating.

I would starve on 1600 calories a day. I am 4'11" and weigh 93LB and I eat 1800-2100 calories a day. Workout hard 6 days a week. HIIT, cardio, lifting.

What are you drinking? How much water do you drink a day.

You can loose weight just cutting calories but you can loose and still not be healthy and loose and still have too much body fat.

Do you get your heart rate up when exercising? What type of cardio and how heavy do you lift?

With that amount of exercise, I'd have to say that you aren't eating enough.  A healthy deficit is 500-1000 calories.  You are getting almost twice that.

Yes, I've had success losing weight while eating over 1600 calories.  I am 5' 7", started back on the wagon at 205, I eat 1800-2000 calories a day, depending on exercise, I try to get a 500-1000 calorie deficit, I do daily exercise, and I've lost 11 lbs in the last month.

what is your account set to? and are you also adding exercise on top of the burn already calculated in? the only time you should add in exercise is if your account is already set to sedentary then add everything in manually, if you do 'very active' or whatnot and also add in workouts your double logging.

To nsammiee,

I know exactly how you feel girl!!!  This site told me my daily intake should be 1650. On that many cals. I didn't lose a lb. in 3 weeks.  I know my body and I knew I couldn't lose weight on that many calories.  I also know that alot of people are telling you to eat more calories, but my advice is to tweek it to just under 1400 cals a day and you will see a drastic change.  Just try it for two days, at just under 1400, and you will see the difference.  I know it's hard but if you can cut just 200 off daily you will see the lbs, come off.  Good luck!!      &nb sp;  Lisa

I'm a 5'10" male so I know that's different but when I started this weight-loss journey I weighed 215.  I reached 170 by eating anywhere from 1700-2400 calories a day and doing vigorous exercise daily. 

The problem I have is that I am less active in winter and so I gain but then I lose in the spring and summer.  I have just started exercising vigorously again and I have 15 lbs to lose that I gained this winter.  I try to keep my calories at 2000 a day.

I'm 5'5" with a medium-large frame.  I started at 190.  I now weigh 140.  Up until the last five pounds or so, I ate 1700 calories or more per day, on average.  If my deficit was higher than 1000 calories, I'd eat more.  I run and lift weights for exercise.

Thanks everyone for the responses.  I feel a little bit better.  Today I'm going to try and increase my cals to around 2,000.  I'm planning on doing my usual cardio workout and strength training after work.  So far this is what I've had to eat:

6:45 a.m. - 1 cup skim milk w/ 1 scoop muscle milk protein powder (220 cals)

Snack:  1 banana, 1 Zone protein bar (314 cals)

I didn't bring a lunch but thankfully I have quite a few places to choose from for salads and things like that.  I'm going to start aiming for more protein in my day.  I've checked my food history and its a lot of carbs and not much protein.

I weighed myself again this morning, 245 =\  I'm really starting to hate that number.  I even went out and bought a new scale with a body fat and water weight calculation.  Apparently my bodyfat is 40% YIKES!

To answer some of the questions above:  Yes I have my account set at sedentary because I have a desk job, everything else I add into it as far as activity goes.  I don't buy the fat-free, sugar free "diet foods" but I do buy protein bars/powder and have it as a snack. 

littleshellys:  As far as my workout goes, when I do the elliptical the resistance range is 1-20, I set it at 12 and my HR is around 170.  I tried the stepper and could only do 10 min and my HR was up to 180 after that and I was dripping in sweat.  I'm thinking I may need to switch it up a little bit, maybe my body is used to the elliptical although I do sweat and get my HR up.  Not sure.  For the weights, I'm pretty new to it so I'm doing the circuit machines.  My legs are fairly strong so the weights range from 90-180 pounds, the arms...not so much.  I think 45lbs is my max, I'm pretty weak upper body.

I am about the same weight/ height as you give or take a few inches/pounds and I had a similar problem when I first started. It seriously took my body about 2 weeks to get used to all the exercise and calorie counting. Also, you have to remember that muscle weighs more than fat so in weeks where you did some weight training the loss that week could be swallowed up by the gain in muscle. -- this will change as your body starts letting go of fat, but it is something to think about.

Also, you may need more water if you are working out a for over 45 mins 6 days a week. All that sweat needs to be replaced for a positive weight loss. I usually have about 3-4 liters of water on days I exercise.

I have also been varying my calorie intake from 1500 to 1800 each day to keep my body guessing. I have been losing an average of 2.5 pounds each week doing the above things.

GOOD LUCK

Well, it's good your upping your calories.  I'm 5'7" and my starting weight was 207 lbs.  I started eating 1700 to 1900 calories a day and I was extremely sedentary.  So far I've lost 32 lbs.  

Your taller, and heavier and work out a lot.  So you really should be eating more.  Upping to 2000 is a great start, but you may need to up it even further.

As several people have said your max deficit should be 1000 cals.  So with a burn of 3420 you should likely at the least be eatin 2500.  That gives you a deficit of 920 calories.  Specially since your weight training.  Your body needs fuel to build muscles!!!

Other wise I'm really really impressed.  All that exercise is awesome!!!  And your attitude toward the kinds of foods you eat is very healthy and smart.

Good luck with everything! 

Just a quick note.  To the best of my knowledge, getting a high heart rate isn't the best for weightloss.  For someone in their 20's, over 165 bpm is aerobic exercise and good for the heart.  The target heart rate for maximum fat burning is a sustained 145 bpm.

Ok, firstly, when i started loosing weight i was 245 on the dot, too.  I stopped drinking things with sugar (just drinks, i still ate sugar) and dropped 30 lbs, so if you drink/intake a lot of sugar, stop and see what happens.

Second, My personal trainer tells me that if your heart rate goes too high, your body might not burn fat quickly because you aren't getting enough oxygen (which is essential for weight loss).  I was working out with a heartrate of 168, and it wasn't doing ANYTHING.  He told me my heart rate shouldn't go above 135 (I'm 27)- and i dropped 3 lbs this week. 

I was really ticked off when he told me that, because you would think someone would have mentioned that pushing yourself isn't the best thing to do... but it was news to me.

I just wanted to mention, too, that although it sounds like you are doing plenty of exercise and seem to be pretty knowledgeable, keep in mind that the "calories burned" function on the machines are rarely accurate, because they are based on averages. You could very well be burning far more, OR far less. I found this out the hard way as I started running more on the treadmill. At the end of a long (60 min) workout, I was happy with the almost 1400 calories it said I burned. Unfortunately, I wasn't losing any weight and couldn't figure out why. So I began wearing a heart rate monitor to get my average HR during exercise, then entering the number into a formula to find out how many calories I burned. This number was much lower, and much more realistic. I'm losing around 2-3 pounds a week now, because I have adjusted my calorie intake to my ACTUAL calorie output. For instance, I ran for 1:55hrs today, my average HR was 156, I burned 1113 calories. Hope this helps, and good luck! FYI, if you google "calories burned based on heart rate" it will bring up a post by someone here on this site, which will then give you the link to the formula.

Sanguin: Its funny you mention that because on this site, when I add in 45 min of elliptical, moderate effort, it says I burn around 830 calories which I think is way too high, whereas the machine at the gym says for about 45 min I burn around 450-600 depending on what intensity I'm at...so to be safe I go with the lower calorie burn because 830 just seems really high for a 45 min period, I dunno.  I will google that information though, thanks!

Also, I was able to get to the 2,000 cal mark yesterday even though it was kinda tough, my mind is struggling with the "you need to eat more then 1500 calories a day" thing.  Here's my meal layout if anyone wants to offer input:

Breakfast:  1 cup skim milk, 1 scoop protein powder

Snack:  Banana

Lunch:  Chicken burrito (not too happy about that)

Snack:  Protein bar

Workout - 45 min elliptical

Snack:  1 plum, 1 nectarine

Dinner:  2 cups raw spinach and 6 oz broiled chicken breast (no oil/salt) and 1 oz low fat rasberry vinaigrette

3 liters water

I weighed myself this morning, yesterday I was at 245.2, today I'm at 245.4...

i dropped mine few months back by upping my calories to 3000 cals per day (not much exercise) Then i got fat headed and eat 5000 most of the day..Now i gain the damn thing back..

Now, granted, I am a male and I burn more calories naturally, but I eat an average of 2,000 (more than the 1,500 - 1,800 calories recommended for optimal weight loss) calories per day.  I am very active -- run for an hour 5 days per week, lift weights on the other two.  If I ate 1,500 calories per day, I'm pretty sure the scale wouldn't budge.  I've found that forcing myself to take in 2,000-2,200 calories of nutritious food works best for me.  I lost about 8 pounds last month following this plan. 

A common misconception is that 1200 -1600 calories for women is ideal.  And it may be for many.  But if your body's not reacting, and you are pretty active, try upping your calories by 300 (eat an apple three times per day), for a week.  Take note of what happens and adjust your calories up or down accordingly.  It won't happen overnight, but as someone who has lost 70 pounds in the past, continuing to do the right things will eventually pay off.

I lost about 30 lbs and almost always ate over 1600 cal/day.  For the first 10 weeks I ate under 1600 and I was starving most of the time.  I was grumpy and had headaches and just felt miserable.  Then I started eating just really healthy foods (no 100 cal. snack packs, alcohol, or other treats), just focusing on whole grains, fruits and veggies, beans and legumes, and lean proteins.  I would eat a fair amount ~ about 2000 cal/day and exercise about the same as what you're doing.  My weight loss wasn't fast; it took about 6 months total.  But I've kept it off now for 3 years!  And something to look forward to... maintainance is MUCH easier than losing!  So make good habits, get it off, and keep it off.  (Now I even have treats once a while!)

Good luck!