Have I been too severe with my weight loss?

Hey all,

Just hoping to get some outsider perspective on what I’ve been doing and whether my progress has been healthy. Sorry if the title isn’t great, I wasn’t sure what to put. I’ve gotten a lot of conflicting information from different sources throughout the process so far, and I figure people on this sub might have a more concrete answer.

Stats:
23 year old male
6’2
Currently 195lbs
“Lightly Active” lifestyle — 50-60 hours of work per week requiring light activity, as well as strength training when I can fit it in, typically 2 hours per week. The core of my strength training is high weight low reps, so short bursts.

Progress so far:
I have been seriously dieting for just about 2 months now. I did not have a scale until 6 weeks ago, and at that point I was ~210. This puts me at 15 lbs lost in 6 weeks, above the “healthy limit”.

Now that I’ve written out all that info, my absolute biggest issue is that I think I may be taking it too aggressively. I practice a 21:3 fast as it is suitable to my lifestyle, and I have also found that I have a persistent hunger craving between meals if I eat multiple smaller ones throughout the day. I eat the bulk of my calories at the beginning of the window, and then I consume a protein shake at the end of the window.

My daily caloric intake is ~1800. This is where I think I may have gone wrong. For whatever reason I was under the impression that my maintenance calories were ~2300, and as such was maintaining a 500 calorie deficit. Today I used the Mayo Clinic calorie calculator to see if I needed to slightly lower my intake to account for the 15 lbs lost, and was shocked to see that the estimate for my current stats is 2750 calories per day maintenance? This would seem to suggest that I have been maintaining a deficit of 1000 calories every day for 2 months.

If this is true, I would say that I have been fine on the deficit. My energy has been fine, my hunger cravings have been extremely limited (possibly hidden by an unrelated medication), and I haven’t had any issues until now.

My biggest concern at this point is that I haven’t lost any meaningful weight in a week. I have bounced +/- 0.5 lbs, which is unusual for me. During the journey I have been able to see consistent weight loss throughout the week. I do not know enough about weight loss to assess this, but I am worried I may have accidentally overdone it and ended up plummeting my metabolism. The only other major change has been that my biceps and triceps suddenly got wayyyy bigger, so maybe the water retention in my muscles has skyrocketed? Not sure what that would indicate.

I’m sorry for the long post, but to summarize my questions into a TLDR of sorts:
- What seems to be the accurate maintenance calories?
- Was my deficit too aggressive up to this point?
- Why has my weight loss seemingly stopped, even while maintaining the same diet?
- Is my metabolism shot? If so, what are the steps to repair it?
- Why are my biceps suddenly way bigger and firmer?

Thank you all so much for your time and consideration. If there is any other information I can give that would help, please let me know :)

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