I really think I was still in a a deficit actually and the apps and website were just wrong for me. Let me explain. After thinking about this a little more and doing some research - I think we can all agree with calories-in-calories-out. The problem is new research and evidence that is supporting that scientist need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to calorie calculation of a food. I have read several articles where the data doesn’t add up like they thought on how a calorie is burned; or when you compare say a 100 calories of a processed food group vs a 100 calories of a whole food group. The body simple does not burn/use processes/whole food the same. I even read how different it can be between each person concluding that we are unique in how we burn the calories, and people change based upon their health and fitness.
Bottom line - find what works for your and don’t blindly take what any app or website tells you is the correct calories you need or deficit you need. Use the apps and website as a starting point for RMR and go with their suggestions are first to see if it works. It will probably work for most. If it doesn’t work, start experimenting to see what works for you. I am seeing with me I can eat more whole food calories and lose weight slowly vs eating the same number of calories in processed sugary food and then stop losing/gain weight. I would need a more sever deficit to lose weight with processed/sugary foods is what I believe. It is still calories-in-calories-out, but you might need to experiment with what type of calories are we talking? whole foods or processed sugary crap? No doubt - some can eat crap processed calories and still lose if at enough of a deficit, but I doubt they can perform because the deficit would be too severe to maintain performance. I would rather focus on whole foods and performance and let the body composition take care of itself. In the end, when your performance goes up, it becomes very difficult to get enough whole food calories anyway to not lose a little weight slowly.
Yeah, I was in a similar position. I thought I was hitting my workouts fine, but the weight just stopped moving at about 10-11% BF. I decided performance was more important, so I quit focusing on a deficit. I started focusing on trying to match my expenditure as best I could. Suddenly found another level in my workouts I didn’t know was missing. Couple weeks later, weight started moving down again! I was like no way! Now I match or surplus my calories based upon where I am at in workouts. For instance I will eat an extra 200 calories the day before a VO2 max workout or a 4 hour out door ride. Days that are at or below threshold or less than hour, I will try to match calories as best I can. Shifting the last bit of weight off me this way seems to be working. I would have never found it though had I kept chasing calories rather than performance.
I would suggest trying something similar for a couple weeks and see how it goes. I bet you see a difference either in the workout or weight loss or both. Worst that can happen is that you gain a pound or two which would not be hard to get rid of. Just my thoughts.
Yeah, I think we need to evaluate our goals and remember things can change in our journey. We are all different and many times what used to work quits working because something shift in us or our bodies just got used to the stimuli. Almost like training - you can’t do the same thing forever and expect your performance to keep increasing. Have to change it up. For me, I could handle a deficit of 500 calories according to apps/websites fine until I got down to about 10/11% BF. Problem was that I started to struggle more in my workouts and the weight seemed to stop trending down at all. I more a less gave up on losing any more and changed my focus to fueling workouts and making it up with gaining FTP. Didn’t realize it was the change needed for my weight to start trending down again. My thoughts are that once I got down to a low enough BF%, the current calorie deficit was too severe and started stressing my body while hurting performance. Even 200 calorie deficit was too much for me. That’s when I said screw it and started chasing performance instead. I am so glad I did!