r/CICO

I am having success with CICO with some weight loss and a loss of 2” in my hips!! However, my waist measurement of 35” is not budging! At 5’2” this is not attractive and also puts me at borderline for cardiovascular problems, etc. I am eating mostly Whole Foods with an occasional treat but still stay in calorie deficit of 1400. I am menopausal but I’m getting sick of blaming that on everything….any tips from those who have had success with losing belly fat??

So I'm 1lb away from my goal and getting ready for maintenance mode. I'd always selected "little to no exercise" on the calculators, because I don't exercise. But I'm 99% sure the tdee has always been way too low. The reasons I think that is because I ate at a level that should've had me losing .5lb per week, but I actually lost an average of 1.5lbs per week. And also, there were so many times were I'd 'eat at maintenance' for a few days but still lose some weight. And there were cheat days where, logically, I should have gained a little, but I didn't.

So I'm thinking maybe I'm more active than I thought? But I'm really not active. I'm unemployed and have depression and back pain. So I have my good days and bad days. On bad days, I sit around literally all day (or even lay, if my back is hurting). On good days, I'll do the housework and/or run errands. I take care of almost all the housework and errands since my husband is the 'provider'. When I go shopping, I always park far away because I enjoy walking. I never use drive-throughs or pick-ups, I just enjoy actually getting out and walking around. And sometimes (like let's say once a week when I drop my daughter off at girl scouts), I'll go to the park and just walk around for like 40 minutes to kill time. For housework, I'm very meticulous so I do a lot of cleaning like wiping baseboards and such. And I wash all dishes by hand.

So...what do you think my activity level is? Lightly active maybe? Please no judgment on lifestyle or anything, I'm just trying to figure out how to calculate my tdee because I don't think it's currently accurate.

I don’t mean weighing out food, but just roughly estimating and keeping that a mental note. I’ve been doing this for years and maintained my weight, and I have no issues or bad conscious of it. Honestly I love it.

Just some background info, not sure if this would change anything, but I am 18 yo girl and I’ve never been overweight. Not really sure why I feel the need to track but ig it helps me know what’s enough for my body. When I was 14 I gained 20 pounds (I was still in healthy bmi just very upper side) so that’s when I started tracking. Just to loose it again. Then at 16 I became underweight due to depression, so I tracked my calories to get back to a healthy weight. Now I just roughly track to maintain. Ofc it doesn’t stop me from slightly overeating one day, bc I just eat a little less the next.

Idk I just wanna make sure I’m being normal and not being weird. Anyone else do this? I told my step mom and she found it concerning (but tbf she has had a history of body image issues and a poor relationship with calories)

I have a lot of weight to lose and want to follow a CICO plan. I’m trying to figure out my calorie allotment but am confused about some conflicting things I know about cutting calories.

I understand the basics of CICO, but I’m confused by the reality of metabolic adaptation. I know once I get to my goal, my daily calorie needs will be drastically less than they were before weight loss. In other words, I know I can’t just cut calories for a little while then go back to what I was eating before.

I’d like to be aggressive in my deficit, but I’m worried if I cut to, say, 1,300 calories/day now, I’ll have to stick to that for the rest of my life. Folks who have had aggressive deficits AND maintained successfully, how many calories were you able to add back once you got to goal?

I’m also worried that if I go too slow, as I know doctors recommend, I won’t see the progress I need to stay motivated. I feel very deeply that this is an overlooked variable in the weight loss equation. It has to feel worth it pretty fast.

For reference, I’m a 5’3, 34yo woman with 50+ pounds to lose.

I’m a fairly active individual, a little less than 5’6” and 132 pounds. I’m not looking to lose anymore weight for the next good while, but I find it so hard to stick to what the calculators are telling me. I’m at about 1870/1900 a day and I’m still thinking about food and sometimes hungry between, tired, and minor persistent headaches. I think I need to bump up a little more but I’m unsure as to how high as I’ve been told that hunger really ramps up right after a deficit ends.

Does it ever get any better? I want to be able to eat and not just physically feel satisfied, but mentally too.

For reference, I try to lift 3/4 times a week, I run about 12/14 miles a week, and I walk anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 steps a day (this weeks average I think was like 13/14k) would this put me in the moderately accurate category of a calculator since I have an office job?

Im really tired of being tired, my running is really important to me and I just want to be happy in my body without being tired all the time.

This might sound crazy but I’m finally loosing weight at a snails pace. I’m tracking my food and have at the moment 2,200 calories allowed per day. I know at some point this will reduce but I can’t even fathom how I will eat less calories. I struggle particularly at work where I stress eat and I take healthy snacks to graze on but I don’t know how to omit these completely. I just can’t envision it. Can anyone tell me their food on about 1800 calories?