What can I do if weight decreasing stopped after I reached half of my goal?

Question

When I started my diet I was at 82kg now my weight oscillates between 74 and 75kg. I've read that I should target 0.5-1kg weekly weight loss. I tried out a diet with 0.75. I've calculated that my BMR is 1,659 Calories/day and my diet contains food equals to 1600 Calories/day.

A friend of mine who is a dietitian said that I should not decrease my daily calorie intake below my BMR since it can result in an unfavorable response from my body: it can adapt to prolonged decrease in calorie intake and lower its energy needs. I am not a dietitian but I'm stuck with 75kg while my diet in theory should result in a 0.75kg weight loss per week. What could be the problem? Can it be the case described above? If yes what can I do?

Note that I always calculate the weight loss into my daily calorie needs so for example when I was 82kg I was eating something around 1700 calories and now it is around 1600.

I am doing resistance training (2 times per week) and HIIT (2-3 times a week) on different days of each week.

Edit: My height is 168cm and my parameters did not change significantly in the past several weeks (waist/shoulder/etc size)

Answer 1

If you can't lower your calorie intake, maybe you should try increasing your workouts a little bit.

Personally, I find 0.5 kg/week already very taxing on my body, especially when I do it several months, as I'm doing right now. In my experience, 0.5 kg/2 weeks is much more doable, while 2 kg/month is easy. But then, I run more than 60 km per week, requiring over 4000 kcal/day. All I have to do is keep my daily intake slightly below 3600 kcal or so, in other words, eat normal, but no more.

Even so, I don't loose weight gradually. It goes in fits and starts. I expect that might be happening to you as well. Be more patient with the results and don't focus on the day-by-day development too much. It's better to see the bigger picture, by putting your weight in a year graph.