Aside from what Tamago said about fat loss not being linear (which is true), let me give you my two cents in the form of another explanation why your body can respond like this...
(Sorry if it's going to be a bit of a long post, but I believe this can help...)
First of all, in a nutshell, it's true that you may have taken in more calories than you might have burned, but the story is not as simple as that, and that's simultaneously the whole crux if trying to lose weight.
The thing is that the body is an intelligent device that can adapt to the circumstances it's exposed to.
For example, if you start a diet and take less calories than you're actually burning up, your body basically thinks:
" Good lord... there might be a period of famine coming up. I'd better take some measures to ensure survival and sustain myself."
(This is obviously a completely subconscious line of thinking that stems from the time that we were still cavemen...)
Anyway, the way your body adjusts is as follows:
- First of all, it'll start burning up some stored fat to compensate for the energy shortage. But the body knows that's not a sustainable measure. After all, it would only takes so long for all the storages to be burned up, and what to do after that? No, it thinks it needs to take more drastic measures...
- So what it'll try to do, is to ensure that it starts burning LESS calories on average, so that it needs less energy to sustain itself, and so it could survive on less (after all, there's famine coming up).
- This means it needs to get rid of inefficient stuff that basically only wastes energy. The first type of tissue that will be broken down is muscle mass. The body can probably do on less, other systems (like organs) are more essential, and besides, muscle mass burns up a lot of energy. So with long-term survival in mind, it's a good idea to get rid of this first.
- The consequence is, as was also the plan of this approach, that your body now burns LESS calories on average. In other words, its base metabolic rate has decreased, and is more or less adjusted to the level of energy input (the number of calories you get from your food).
- And so it thinks: job well done, survival ensured.
Now that's all fine and dandy and a nice mechanism when there's indeed famine coming up, but the truth is, that that's not the case. There's no famine, you just want to burn up your energy reserves (i.e. lose fat).
So here's what happened to you:
- Your body has adjusted to your impulse.
- You've put in in "starvation mode", because you're giving yourself way too little calories for longer periods of time.
- To make things worse (and don't get me wrong, because no offense is intended...), you're doing way too much cardio. With that much cardio, you may be burning up fatty acids, but you're also starting to break down lean tissue.
(Take a look at the appearance of marathon runners for example... That's what happens to your lean mass with a LOT (perhaps too much) lower-to-medium intensity and long cardio).
So here's what you can do about this in my opinion:
1. With regard to exercise:
- Do more weight training at the expense of cardio. Make weight training your foundation. It'll maintain or even grow your muscle mass, which means you'll increase your base metabolic rate (you'll burn more calories all the time, even when you sleep). Besides, weight training has a greater 'afterburn' effect than relatively low intensity cardio. And in addition, it'll improve your appearance and strength.
Do this at least 3 times a week, and I'd go for 45 minutes or something. Don't do any of that crap with too many repetitions. Anything between 6-12 reps will work, just use some variation.
Do this first. Later on you can add some other elements with supersetting and some other tricks. But let's save that for later.
- You're obviously willing to put in a lot of effort, which is awesome. In addition to the weight training, feel free to add cardio. But no more 1 hour and 15 minute sessions. It's simply not efficient, but not even very effective either (as you've seen).
I'd go for 45 minutes max. I'm not sure what kind of intensity you're using now (I'm guessing relatively low or moderate, since you're going for so long).
Something I personally used to great success is this:
- 30 minute sessions
- 4 minutes moderate intensity (70% - 75% of max heart rate)
- 30 seconds to 1 minute of high intensity (sprint).
You can apply this to various machines or forms of cardio.
The sprints will be tough, but you'll get back on track during the 4 minutes of moderate intensity.
The advantage is this:
- It takes less time.
- It's not as mentally exhausting as HIIT.
- You'll both burn a lot of calories during your session, as well as for hours afterwards, because of the high intensity elements (sprints).
You can do this for 45 minutes as well.
If it's too intense, you can spread the sprints more widely and take more minutes at moderate intensity. But try to build up and make it more intense over time.
But remember, this is *in addition to* strength training as a basis.
2. Nutrition:
- Obviously, focus on whole foods.
- Do a couple of days at lower calorie levels.
- But don't give your body the opportunity to adjust because it thinks periods of famine are coming up. That means that you don't stay in dietary calorie deficit too long. The way you do that is simply take a day every now and then on which you eat even a *surplus* of calories.
Don't overdo it of course, but some more calories won't hurt. After all, you're exercising a lot, so overall, you'll still stay in energy deficit because of all the work you do.
But most of all, your body will think that there's plenty of food available, and thus that it's safe to keep burning calories and maybe even adjust up (by increasing muscle mass a bit (although this doesn't really happen that much when you're in a calorie deficit).
Anyway, this way you can keep burning fat. You're simply not giving your body the chance to adapt. So you can keep creating energy deficits by design, and force your body to apply its energy reserves.
For example, you eat 3 consecutive days low in calories and create an energy deficit, and 1 day higher in calories and create an energy surplus. Or you do 5 consecutive days in deficit, and 2 consecutive days in surplus.
Overall, you're in deficit for much longer than in surplus, so the net effect is that you lose fat.
Here's something important to remember:
Don't take a 'day-by-day' approach to creating calorie deficits. Take an approach that uses a period of a week.
For example, let's say my "maintenance" level of calories is 2500 calories a day. That means to not gain fat and not lose fat, I can have 2500 x 7 = 17,500 cal.
Now let's say I eat like this (while also doing the exercise as above of course):
Monday: 1700 cal
Tuesday: 1700 cal
W'day: 1700 cal
Thursday: 3000 cal
Friday: 1700 cal
Saturday: 1700 cal
Sunday: 3000 cal
Week's total: 14,500 cal
Over the course of a week, I have now created an energy deficit of 3,000 calories through diet alone. That's more than 1 lbs of fat.
Any calorie expenditure from exercise and other activity that I add to that is added benefit, and will be taken from my fat, particularly when I'm maintaining muscle mass through strength training.
And the best thing is, that I'm not giving my body the chance to adapt. So I can go on and on like this, until I'm satisfied with my results.
All I need to make sure is that I keep giving my body incentives through exercise as well.
Whereas if you create a daily calorie deficit and keep it like that, your body will eventually adapt to that, as explained above... which means that your fat loss will come to a halt, but not just that, but even worse:
Your body is burning less calories to begin with, so it's far easier to get into an energy surplus again... which as you know very well results in fat storage... which is the very thing you don't want.
So this is an explanation of why your body can respond like that.
Obviously, the above requires that about 90% of the food you eat comes from whole sources that your body responds well to. This scheme doesn't work if you're feeding your body junk predominantly.
However, on the 'higher calorie days', you could add a meal with some junk.
That'll help you mentally to keep up with your plan. And besides, this allows you to plan times that you can loosen up on your nutrition plan when you know it's going to be hard.
For example, plan your drinking with friends on a day like this. Believe it or not, but it might even work in your benefit this way.
Anyway, this approach works for me...
There are some tricks to add to this, but it's best to start with the basic idea first and then optimize as you go.
Hope this made any sense... ;-)
