weight loss nutrition sanity check

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi all!

I’ve been toying with the idea of increasing my calories a bit due to how fast I’ve been losing rate, but I wanted to get the input of more experienced fitness minded people before making any adjustments. I’m a 6 ft 36 year old male who has done weight training in the past (but never with a proper program or strict nutrition so I assume I fall into the newbie category).

  1. As of 2/8/2021 I weighed 232.5 with 30.3% body fat (162.1 Lean & 70.4 fat). My BMI at the time was 31.53 which classifies me as obese.
  2. As of 3/27/201 I weight 217.9 with 28.19% body fat (156.5 lean & 61.4 fat). My BMI has dropped to 29.55 which is now simply overweight. All weights/body fat % are based on 7 day rolling averages.
  3. I had some compliance issues in the beginning, but for the past 3 weeks I’ve been averaging a weight decline of 2.45 pounds (.92 pounds per week coming from lean mass, and 1.53 pounds coming from fat). I understand this to be above the recommend weight loss limit of 1-2 pounds per week, but that its safe to exceed this if you’re obese (which I was, but am technically not anymore)
  4. I am white collar worker who interacts with my mother who is a very high risk individual for covid, so I really don’t leave my house much. I probably put on about 20 pounds of weight since March of 2020. My only real exercise is some brisk walking 30-45 minutes a day and running the beginner template (I will probably start phase 2 of it in the next week or two as I’m just now starting to struggle with adding weight to the bar and only for the 10 rep per set exercises)
  5. I have no issue eating the same things everyday and have consistently been eating 1823 calories. Macros are 210 Protein, 101 carbs, and 42 fat; if you calculate out the calories using 4/4/9 for protein/carb/fat you only get 1621, but if I use the calories listed on the food and/or myfitness pal it walks to 1823. Any guidance on which number to use long term would also be great). I am very rarely hungry, and I have been assuming that lack of hunger to be due to the fact that without purposely going outside and walking around town I will only do 1000-1500 steps a day in my apartment and would fall below base sedentary modifiers for TDEE calculators.
  6. Not sure how relevant it is outside of the above calories, but I went from being a moderate to heavy drinker to not having a drink for almost 40 days. I plan on keeping alcohol out of my diet until I’m at or below 200 pounds and then reintroducing it in small quantities. The daily walks really help with stress management and help keep me away from my old habits. With all that out of the way, my main questions are am I losing weight to fast since I’m no longer technically obese, is this ratio of losing 37% lean mass for every pound I lose good or bad (or is it even really lean muscle mass loss to begin with as opposed to generic fat free mass), and if this is an acceptable fat loss rate due to my size at what point should I get concerned it it continues.

Thanks in advance for any help or guidance!

2

TSMC,

I’m guessing you’re measuring your body fat using at-home BIA, which is probably not accurate enough to tell you what your ratio of lean : fat tissue is for weight loss. That said, standard rates are somewhere in the 25% lean, 75% fat range, with a decent amount of interindividual variability.

I do think your Calories are quite low for weight loss, as I’d guess you could probably lose weight with your Calories in the 2200-2400 range. If it were me, I’d probably just keep things the same if you’re okay with your current diet and are building the skills, tools, and resources necessary to sustain a similar dietary pattern.

I would also be tracking your waist circumference instead of your BF % to aid in gauging how your weight loss is going. I assume you’re doing some sort of resistance training too, yes? This would be very important for mitigating any excess lean muscle mass loss.

-Jordan