Ok got it Toast .
So long reply here,
But I'm going to share an option.
I'm not saying it's a good option, or that it will work for you, or even that it's healthy but it's something that's worked for me. It contradicts a lot of the weight loss advice out there.
So that option is:
Run the lowest possible calorie deficit that you possibly can while you still feel energized and not hungry. Do not worry about your metabolism.
Here was my lesson:
After about 4 or 5 frustrating plateaus, I've came to terms with two truths.
(1) I generally suck at sticking to calorie targets, (2) my metabolism ends up slowing down no matter what I do.
Oh and (3) most nutritionists giving weight loss advice never in their life were overweight, and *might* unknowingly be giving bad advice because they've never done it (big weight loss) themselves.
I'd do like 1 good week of 1800 valories and then a weekend where I slacked would cancel out all the gains I made. And then even if I did have a good stretch of weeks, after awhile the scale stopped responding.
So I learnt that the best diet was one where even if I slacked and even if my metabolism slowed down, it wouldn't matter because my deficits were so huge I almost couldn't screw it up.
Everyone says slow and steady with diets. But I looked quite a lot at the actual research (peer reviewed) articles and what it actually showed was that the people who had bigger deficits in their diets stuck to them longer and lost more weight (and kept more of it off).
And with your metabolism slowing down (its actually called adaptive thermogensis), your metabolism will slow down by about 200 to 400 calories total on an extreme diet. And the research was showing that EVERY diet people did no matter how conservative or aggressive the calories were, the metabolism would slow down eventually. It was just a question of how much.
I've stuck to that for 4 months and that's where I've had the biggest wins. Out of the last year, almost half of the weight I've lost came from the last 4 months. So it seems to be working. No plateaus (except for the weeks I go way off course).
Like I said it might not work, and everyone thinks that I'm crazy for such an extreme diet. But its working for me and I feel fine.
I'm not doing it perfectly, I still have an issue of countinf calories everyday. But every week without fail the scale is dropping.
There's no 1 diet that beats any other diet. Just find the one that works for you. And maybe the biggest lesson is just keep experimenting til you find something you can stick to forever (if need be).