I asked this because for those that have struggled with their weight for the majority of their lives (like me), it's not as simple as just counting calories. Like I said before, I was in a calorie deficit, but I was stalled until I changed my macros. I'm not totally disputing all you've been saying, I'm just saying it's not as simple as you're explaining it.
*Sorry for the extra long essay below, but please read it because it is important and I shouldn't have to keep explaining this*
To be blunt and unfortunately dismissive of the way you are perceiving your own personal experience, the bolded part is wrong. There is no way you were in a calorie deficit and not losing weight (other than with water retention which is just short term). I don't think you really are understanding that this is not a debate, it is a scientific fact. If you weren't losing weight, it means you were not in a calorie deficit. It is not possible to retain all of your mass if your body has a negative energy intake.
Explain to me how your heart can pump blood, how your lungs can breathe air, how you can talk and walk around if your body does not have an energy source to feed from? If your body has used up all of the energy from recent calorie intake, it has no choice but to dip into your body's mass and convert it to an alternate energy source. What you are describing above in bold is literally against all science, logic, biology, and physics known to man. What you are describing is literally a supernatural phenomena, unless of course you are a plant or an photosynthetic organism and get your energy from sunlight.
The are two possible reasons for your stalled weight loss. Either you were calculating your calorie intake wrong (probably not the case) or you were estimating your calorie output wrong (almost undoubtedly the issue). You were relying on either a universal mathematical equation for calculating metabolism which doesn't account for differences in the individual, or you were relying on past personal experience for what calorie intake resulted in weight loss for you personally, which doesn't account for changes in metabolism over time due to a calorie restricted diet.
This is why I hate the phrase "everybody is different" even though it is a correct phrase. It is a cheap cop-out that latches onto relatively insignificant differences in our bodies and brushes aside universal truths that get to the heart of the matter directly, i.e. positive and negative energy balance and how it affects weight loss and weight gain.
So to get back to your personal experience, what most likely was happening is your body was starved due to your calorie restriction and your metabolism slowed down to a crawl and you adapted to your new normal calorie intake (1600). 1600 became your new "maintenance" number, rather than your "deficit" number.
You might respond to that by saying that you were still at 1600 when you changed your macros and your weight loss jumpstarted again. And I would respond to that by saying
of course it did, because of the thermic effect of food. By changing from easily digestible energy sources (carbs) to difficult to digest energy sources (fats and especially proteins), your body actually had to use more energy than it was used to
just to digest the food. The thermic effect of food is a well established piece of the puzzle for calculating our body's metabolic rate. And it is a factor that universal equations can not possibly hope to account for. You essentially jump started your own metabolism by taking advantage of known biological facts, even if you didn't realize that was what you were doing.
Furthermore........and this is just a guess.....but I would venture to say that once you took the steps to change your macros, it was probably part of some sort of "re-dedication" plan to losing weight. You probably were in a funk where you were doing the same thing every day and seeing no results, and you re-dedicated yourself by switching up your diet and your physical activity. Now, that is just an assumption and you may dispute that, but even if my assumption is incorrect it doesn't change everything else I said above.
You know what I would have suggest to you back then before you changed your macros? I would have suggested that you INCREASE your daily calorie intake to 2100 for a few weeks then drop back down to 1600. This could have jumpstarted your starved metabolism in the same way that changing your macros did. And it wouldn't have had to come at the expense of carbohydrates....you may have even had better workouts due to increased energy levels and might have seen fat start melting away again
even at the 2100 number, before you dropped back down to 1600. I can back this up with numerous anecdotal stories including my own personal experience. At the end of my inital weight loss journey I had been down to 1800 calories per day and was stalled, just like you. After a few weeks of dreading dropping below 1800, I decided to bump up to 2000 for a week then 2200 the next week. Over those two weeks, I started losing weight again despite my calorie increase. Unfortunately my personal anecdotal evidence stops after those two weeks because then I started on an EC stack and clouded my results.
The last thing I want to point out is the issue you have we me stating how 'simple' it is and you countering that you have struggled and it really isn't that simple. The truth is, we are both right. We are just using different meanings of simplicity. For me, the science is simple. Calories in vs. calories out. Boom, easy, done. But the actual
practice of correctly doing calories in vs. calories out is more complicated, which I agree with you on.
One major reason for this is that calculating calories out is incredibly difficult and evolving daily, so it is never an exact science. Changes in metabolism and daily physical activity mean that it is not a linear equation, and adjustments over time must be made. Sometimes this involves dropping calories further, sometimes increasing physical activity, and sometimes increasing calories temporarily to jump start metabolism
The second major reason for the difficulty is psychological. You can search and search, but you will find exactly zero clinically controlled, calorie controlled studies of weight loss in which a caloric deficit didn't result in loss. Any study you will ever find that would negate the idea of calories being key will always have the caveat of relying on the person being studied to follow a prescribed method for weight loss. And unfortunately, the human psyche is an incredibly fragile thing. This is why I push the psychological aspect of weight loss so hard on this forum (and a simplistic, long term, maintainable calorie counting approach). We are fickle people, and we are constantly bombarded with misinformation that clouds our understanding of what should be clear issues. We are hit with "this is the correct way" advice from people who have a financial stake in you doing things their way. Furthermore, the main problem in weight gain--overeating--is so directly tied to psychology that it must be explored (depression, stress, boredom, apathy).
If someone would like to dispute any of the stuff I have just posted I would love to hear clear, concise reasoning for it. Ideally, including links to properly controlled studies that dispute any of my points. Or at least some well thought out logic.
I be grouchy as hell during the week, including today. I work out everyday still, not to gain muscle but to maintain/increase strength. I'm trying to get down to 198 by August. It sucks because once I do hit that number, i'm gonna have to change my eating habits for a long time to maintain that weight until my body adjusts permanently.
