Fingers crossed.
Weight loss is starting to stall and I've noticed myself having increased hunger pains including when I wake up in the morning.
Decided to re-eval and with my increased exercise habits bumping it to 1850 from 1550 calories.
Anyone else do this with success? I'm nervous.
I'm also trying to add more protein to my diet. I've noticed even tho I was doing sort of a low carb, my fat content was really high, around 50% of my calorie intake. So trying to adjust and add even more veggies and a few protein sources. Grrr, diet is way more complicated and all the tweaks get somewhat overwhelming.

I don't believe in increasing calories to break a weight-loss stall. As a medical writer who has written about obesity, I've done some research on this strategy, and as far as I know there is no documented evidence that it works. (I know there are plenty of anecdotal reports, but I don't trust them.) However, increasing calories to reduce chronic hunger is a perfectly logical solution, IMO.

F.

Agree with freelancemomma 100%.

Hunger on waking up is normal and a pretty good sign. Hopefully you are then eating breakfast which is getting rid of the hunger, no?

Losing weight is more about cutting what you eat and/or exercising more in my experience.

For maintaining you can certainly adjust what you eat to eat more.

And to gain muscle or perform better exercise you can also eat more of different stuff to get better results.

But eating more of different stuff is hard to lose weight with unless your diet is really bad which yours is probably not.

I say stick with it. Consider cutting some foods. Or exercise more. And revisit those hunger pangs. Being hungry before your next meal is normal.

Ok, I usually don't wake up hungry, I go to the gym then eat, because my performance sucks on full stomach. I just was having a bit of a stall and even backwards. I'm already pretty much only eating veggies, chicken other proteins and some dairy,. Short of cutting dairy...not much left? I do put salad dressing on and sometimes a touch of Alfredo or spaghetti sauce on my food for flavor and variety.
I do eat a protein bar at some point in my shift because 5 hours without eating seems impossible. It has to be something that I can hide easily in a corner and eat in about a minute or two because we aren't supposed to eat on the floor.
I haven't gone clean eating all the way, but I guess I could try to see if I could keep food down like that. :/
I just reevaluated what I should be eating at and between the physical job and working out 3 to 5 days a week, my calorie intake even for weight loss should have been higher, so was thinking my body might think it's not being fed. I'm, however no expert and I appreciate insight from those with more knowledge than me.

I say experiment to be honest, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I count calories, aim to be between 1200-1400, but don't try to restrict too much. And I find with good days of eating, the occasional day of more calories (1600-1700) actually helps my weight loss and I always see loss on the scale the morning after. (Days over I still maintain a deficit, albeit a much smaller one. I need just under 1800 to function without exercise according to calculators.)

I think its more natural to have some fluctuation like that, but its a personal theory and I have no science to back it up. I think it just keeps the body from predicting a pattern or habit. So maybe up your count like you want, but start with like two days a week or doing it every three days or something instead of every day. Just a suggestion though, I am certainly no expert, just sharing what works for me right now! You are only going to find what works for you by trying!

I'm not an expert either but in stalls I have found a temporary increase HAS prompted the scale to start moving back downwards.

That's the old starvation-mode theory. If you're eating very little, it's true that your metabolism will slow down, but not to the point that you'll stop losing weight. If it were otherwise, people who eat almost nothing (e.g., anorexics, people who've just had weight loss surgery, people in a famine) would remain fat.

F.

This.

Bump your calories to maintenance levels for a couple of weeks, then go back to your usual plan. Not only does it give your body a break from weight loss, but also your mind - and that might be the most important part. But get right back to it after two weeks! And don't stop working out during your maintenance break.

I'm actually fond of the fat2fit method (you can plug in your stats into their BMR/TDEE site).

I went from around the 250 range all the way down to the 115's by eating for my new weight maintenance and exercise plan, which was around 1860 calories per day.

But keep in mind that once you decide on an exercise plan, you have to stick with that or be prepared to drop some serious calories again!

I also thought that the "starvation theory" was more about finding the weird zone between not enough calories and extreme dieting issues like anorexia where you just stay reasonably steady. I would never doubt that eating almost nothing would make you loose weight over time (albeit with serious harmful consequences to your body) but I always thought that people who ate too little without starving themselves just put themselves in a really slow spot, because the body is just trying to conserve energy. It would make you loose weight eventually, just much slower and frustrating enough that it makes people give up or think they aren't getting results, when upping the calorie intake would have been a more immediate fix to the situation as a sort of jump start.

Thanks guys for the support. I only ended up adding about 100 calories xtra for two days and i finally broke the plateau. Sometimes i run out of patience.

My understanding of the science is that your metabolism slows down progressively the more you restrict calories, but never to the point that you lose weight more rapidly by upping your calories. You'll lose more weight eating 1,000 calories per day than 1,500 calories per day (though the differential may not be as great as expected by the standard formula). You'll lose more weight at 800 than 1,000, more weight at 600 than 800, and so on. I agree you'll get less bang for your buck if you restrict beyond a certain point, but you won't ever retain more fat than if you ate more.

Sort of like taxes. A lot of people have a misconception about tax brackets and believe you can reach a level of taxation at which your net income is lower than if you were earning less money. In fact, this doesn't happen.

Freelance

But upping your calorie count does sort of jump start the metabolism and doing that once in awhile prevents a sort of predictable routine for your body or something right??? I don't really know. But its working for me!

I saw an article online today and thought of this thread. I can't post links yet but it's in the weight loss section of MSN and it's called "science-says-cheat-meals-actually-help-you-lose-weight".