Originally Posted by
stephtu
I also don't buy "starvation mode". "Starvation mode" as is too commonly promulgated is mostly a myth. As you lose weight in a prolonged calorie deficit, your metabolism does drop some, but not enough to halt weight loss as long as a deficit is still present. Otherwise anorexics wouldn't get dangerously thin, etc. As you lose weight, you have both less mass to support so your base energy needs are down, and you have an adaptation so you need less calories to maintain than someone who was at your new current weight to begin with. So whatever deficit you had when you started (which was probably a smaller deficit than you thought) shrinks, and your loss slows down. So you have to either step up the workouts, harder/longer, or add different exercises (body gets efficient doing the same thing), or eat less (perhaps easiest), or a bit of both, if you want to continue at a higher rate of loss.
Most likely your estimates for how much you burn are too high, and probably you are consuming more than you think. Studies show that even pro nutritionists will often underestimate by like 12-15%, and normal people often will underestimate as much as 40% or even more. Portion sizes are bigger than what's in the calculator app, or you forget extras like sauces/dressings, sugar in coffee, etc., or you forget to record some snacks. To get a truly accurate calorie intake figure you practically need to get a food scale and weigh everything to make sure your portion sizes are accurate. But it's probably not necessary to be that accurate, you could just try further cutbacks of maybe 10% and see if you get things moving a bit faster.
I agree with this, though possibly not for the same reason. The body is a survival machine, it can drop your metabolism in order to respond to starvation, however it can also do the opposite, depending on how you are using it. If you were constantly on the run from enemies, how much sense would it make for your body to start shutting down on you, rather than unlock some of it's fat stores. It is totally different for people that go on starvation diets, and then work at a desk all day. Their body has no reason to believe you NEED that energy for survival. Same goes for muscle, if you are using your muscles, your body isn't going to sacrifice them, as far as it can tell, you need them. If you run or bike every day, to your body that would signal that you are using your body to try and obtain more food, or to escape harm, therefore those muscles are not expendable, but the fat is. If the muscles are not in use, then they are expendable.
Are you doing full body workouts? It could be that your body is sacrificing muscles in other parts of your body to fuel the ones you are using for cycling. If you engage your whole body, your body should burn fat stores, not shed muscle. When i lost a lot of weight in the past I had to push hard to get my body into a weight loss mode, but after dropping my calorie intake while increasing physical activity, the pounds started flying off and I didn't reach a plateau until i was very close to an appropriate lean body mass.
My personal recommendation would be to make sure you are working every area of your body, and do some kind of cycle, it may take a while to find what works for you. An example of a cycle would be, 1 week, increase weight lifting, increase calorie intake, with a bias towards protein. Next 2 weeks, drop calorie intake and increase cardio, while decreasing weight lifting. You may have to play with that a lot before you find what triggers your body to do what you want.