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Discouraged about the weight loss.

Hello all, This sub has been really helpful in starting my weight loss journey. About me: 6'0", starting weight 95KG (209.5 lb) I want to be at 78KG (172 lbs); that was my weight at my lightest in 2014 I started IF by eating between noon and 2:00 PM. I have been pretty good and don't eat anything during "off hours" except cold brew black at 7 AM and water throughout the day. I alternate between the following for lunch: 1. 4 eggs boiled, 3 vegan bacon, one plain greek yogurt and 1/4 cup of dry roasted pecans for the yogurt 2. A big bowl of fruits (mix of grapefruit, raspberries, blueberries, kiwi fruit and half an apple) and 1/4 cup of dry roasted pecans I'm pretty sure both my lunches are less than 800 calories. My weight loss so far: Between Nov 28 and Dec 7th, I lost about 4.5 kg (10 lbs). But since 7th, I've been stagnant and and stuck at 90.5kg +/- 0.2kg every day. What should I be doing different? I know my body will adjust over time, but I wanted to make sure I'm on the right track. It's discouraging to have the will power to resist eating any snacks and jump on the scale to see no weight loss. Thanks in advance

Answer

You’re starving yourself and your body is desperately clinging to its stored nutrients… OMAD less than 800 calories every day is not healthy or sustainable. If you’re doing OMAD, you need to eat a real meal, not an apple and 6 walnuts. If you want to do these extremely low calorie days, try doing them a couple times a week and eating normally the rest of the time (5:2 schedule). What you’re doing right now is disordered eating.

Answer

800 calorie diets should be supervised by a physician imho.

At 800 calories, you are not even meeting the minimum nutritional needs, and you are putting yourself in a position to have more loss of lean tissue than fat.

But also, 5 days is not “stuck”. That’s just normal expected weight loss behavior.

In your situation, I would calculate TDEE and set a reasonable 500-700 calorie deficit, and then that is the calories I would eat in my eating window.

I would also try to make sure that I get adequate protein, and start doing some light resistance training to encourage the body to preserve lean tissue.

Some people think that if eating 1500 calories is great for weight loss, then eating 500 should be even better, and it’s not. It just leads to malnutrition and heart & organ damage.

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Your body will burn way less calories if you are only giving it a bit each day. Our bodies adapt to make up for the fact that we don’t feed it a lot and become energy efficient, especially in anticipation of not receiving future calories.

Think of it like exercise, over time you don’t have to work as hard for certain exercises if you repeat them because your body adapts to that exercise and becomes more efficient and burns less calories to the same work that before it had to worker harder to do

Answer

You may want to switch up your meals a bit. Id probably drop the vegan bacon. That stuff is usually garbage from what ive seen. If your vegetarian, stick with vegetables and drop the fake meats. Good luck!