Losing Weight Too Quickly/YO-YO

I've been doing Calorie Count for a month now and am worried at the rate I'm losing weight...

1/27- 176

2/03-174.2

2/10-170.8

2/17-172.2

2/24-166

The week of 2/10-2/17 I went on vacation and totally abandoned my weight loss goals and ate badly. I'm concerned that in general I'm losing weight too fast. The weight loss plan I'm using recommends losing 1.5 pounds a week for sustainable gradual weight loss. I am 23 years old, and not too active. I walk about 1 mile a day and work out at the gym for 1/2 hour 2-4 times a week jogging at 5.8 mi/hour. Other than that, I don't do much activity. I am eating around 1450 calories a day. What do other people think? Has anyone else been losing weight faster than they thought they would/would like to? I'm worried now that if I hit a plateau I wouldn't be able to get out of it. 

Are you being very accurate with your food intake?  Weighing and measuring rather than guessing?  It can be easy to underestimate what you eat and that can be enough to make a difference.  If you think 1450 is too low there's nothing to stop you upping it to 1600 a day and slowing things down a little...

Hey Gi-Jane, thanks for your always thoughtful post replies! I've always heard people underestimate their food intake/calories by a good amount, so I've been overestimating my food intake to account for that common error. Perhaps you're right, I'll try bringing up my food intake to 1550 calories and see what happens. Do you think it's bad to average a 2 pd loss a week?

Two pound loss a week!  Take it and run, it will diminish before you know it and you'll be struggling for a point something eventually.  Congratulations!

Original Post by mtpleasantgirl:

 Do you think it's bad to average a 2 pd loss a week?

 Not necessarily.... it's not like you're losing 3 or 4lbs a week.  That would be more of a concern.   When I was over 200lbs I lost 2 - 2.2lbs a week for quite a long time.   But as you're below 200 you should expect it to slow down a little to 1.5lbs or so a week.  

To make sure your body doesn't get too used to one amount of food it can help to have a day every so often when you get a lot more food... 2000+.  This extra injection of energy is very helpful if you'll be losing weight for several months.  It's also good practice for when you get to the time when you need to maintain.  It's also good for the soul   I used to time my 'extra food' days to coincide with a evening out with friends or some other occasion when eating more is a natural thing to do.  Good luck

That isn't yo-yo dieting...

Yo-Yo dieting is when you have an extreme diet and lose an excessive amount of weight, and you do that for a while...then you stop dieting so extremely and you gain all the weight back, and keep going through that cycle- extreme diet & weight loss, gain it all back, extreme weight loss, etc...

If you are eating healthy and over 1200 calories, you should be fine. It is healthy to lose between .5 and 2 pounds a week. Which is about what you are doing, what is not healthy is to lose like 10 pounds a week... Good luck!

GI Jane et al. --

Not sure if this thread is still being monitored, but I have a similar issue am am wondering about the accuracy of Calorie Count's burn estimator. 

I am mostly sedentary (I sit at a desk all day) although when I do exercise I log it accordingly.  Lately, I haven't done much except watch my caloric intake.  Calorie Count says I burn about 2600 a day, so I set my goal at 1700 a day and have been eating around 1800 a day (and under-countingat that, if anything).   My food choices have been consistently in the B+ to A- range.

However, my fancy scale tells me that to maintain my current weight given my height, weight, body fat, age and activity level, I would need 3100 calories.  Assuming I am eating 1700 calories, the scale says I'm averaging a 1400 calorie deficit, while Calorie Count puts the deficit closer to 900.

After reading mtpleasantgirl's post, I'm curious if anyone is finding that burn estimate on Calorie Count is off from time to time?  I'm not quite sure how else to explain my typical weekly loss of 3.5 lbs.  I used to think that this was simply because my usual food consumption was in the F range (lots of processed, fast food), and now that I am eating well my body is simply shedding the weight that was kept artificially high due to my horrible food choices.  But after reading a great deal since first coming to Calorie Count, that no longer seems like a plausible explanation, since it takes 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat, period. 

Not sure if this post makes any sense, but if anyone has any thoughts on the Burn Estimator or other similar personal experiences, I'd sure appreciate reading about it.

Other stats: 41 yr old male; starting weight 270 current weight 243; typical loss is about 3.5 lbs a week (which seems higher than it should); BMI says I'm obese and should be 195; was a 185 lb athlete in college (a long, long time ago).

Thanks.