Low Testosterone / Diet
Hello,
I have been on a weight loss journey for about 3 years now. I started at 342 lbs and am at 149.4 as of this morning. I started trying to find my maintenance at 1600 calories. I upped it to 1700 on May 1st, and still losing on 1700 cals — is this too aggressive / is my maintenance higher than I think?
29 year old Male, ~150 lbs.
Height 5’9ish.
I lift consistently 3 days per week and stay pretty active overall—average 7-9k steps a day. My weight trend is still drifting downward, even though day-to-day scale weight fluctuates a lot.
Recent averages:
7-day average went from ~151.2 → 150.3
Daily weigh-ins range roughly 148–152
Weekly trend rate is consistently negative
Training:
Lifting regularly
Performance has felt worse lately
Recovery feels poor
Energy feels “dragging” a lot of the time
Other context:
Long dieting history
I’ve become pretty nervous about increasing calories because I’m afraid of fat gain
But at the same time, I’m wondering if I’m actually under-fueling at this point
One thing making me question this is that my testosterone recently came back very low (roughly in the 100–200 range), which has me wondering whether staying at 1700 is digging the hole deeper. I know that I don’t hit the fats that I need to. Some days my fats are 30-40g.
My concern:
Mentally, 1900–2100 calories feels “high,” but objectively I’m still losing at 1700, so maybe my maintenance is actually closer to ~2000–2300?
Questions:
Does 1700 sound too low for a 150 lb active lifter?
Based on the trend, what would you estimate maintenance to be?
Would you reverse diet up slowly or jump straight closer to estimated maintenance?
Has anyone experienced low energy / hormone issues from staying too aggressive for too long?
Trying to find the balance between staying lean and actually functioning well.