Maintaining on 1200 calories? help!

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purple4sure05
purple4sure05 Posts: 287 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Alright I'll try to make this as short as I can and get to the point. For a little over two months I was eating about 800 to 900 calories per day. I lost two pounds per week and quickly reached my goal without any plateaus or holdups whatsoever (though I now realize there were healthier ways to go about it, that's not the topic at hand). Once I lost 30 pounds, weighing 113.5, I stopped trying to lose and began slowly upping my calories to try to find my maintenance. I increased my calories to around 1000 with eating back my exercise calories for a little under two weeks. In that time, I went from 113.5 to 115, but didn't think much of it because I realize that weight fluctuates, etc.

So then I went on a two and a half week vacation to see my family, and I made sure to watch my calories very strictly so that I wouldn't get off track (considering that I had to eat out fairly often and couldn't be as healthy as usual). I ate 1200 a day plus most of my exercise calories.

Every calculator I've tried has given me a TDEE of 1630 to 1750 for sedentary (I just add in my exercise calories manually and eat most of them back) and my BMR around 1310. When I came back, I was 114.5, in the same range as I was when I left.

So my question is, does this mean my maintenance is seriously 1200 calories? I understand the whole "Starvation mode" and "metabolic slowdown," but realistically, I was only on a VLCD for about two months, and in that time my weight loss never slowed down at all, therefore it stands to reason that my metabolism was not damaged; If it were, then I would have gradually lost less and less weight per week.

I was planning on upping my calories to 1500 per day this week, but now I'm nervous, so I'm reaching out to you guys for your input to give me some peace of mind. Should I continue increasing my calories? Or should I wait it out and see? OR increase to 1500 cal/day and not eat back my exercise calories and see how that treats me? I want to get back into healthy eating patterns and maintain my weight, but my perception of diet and calories is a little distorted and I need some outside opinions.

I guess my general question is just- where should I go from here? I don't want to gain weight back, but I want to be healthy and energized at the same time.

Thank you for reading all this and for any suggestions, I really appreciate the support from you guys. :flowerforyou:

Replies

  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    if your intake was 200 below TDEE for 2.5 weeks you're only looking at 1 pound of loss so it's probably a bit early to tell. Bump it up to 1400 for a month and see.

    You might have a few pounds of glycogen and water to replenish which only happens once.
  • purple4sure05
    purple4sure05 Posts: 287 Member
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    if your intake was 200 below TDEE for 2.5 weeks you're only looking at 1 pound of loss so it's probably a bit early to tell. Bump it up to 1400 for a month and see.

    You might have a few pounds of glycogen and water to replenish which only happens once.

    My TDEE is supposedly in the 1600-1750 range though. which would be a 400 to 550 calories deficit per day :/
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    you don't know your TDEE, the calculations are +/- 10% at best and 30% of people are outside of that range without being on a diet at all.

    So if you have a reduced metabolism coming off the diet you may have a BMR of 1200 or something putting your TDEE at 1500.

    Uplift the calories and see if you maintain for 4 weeks.
  • purple4sure05
    purple4sure05 Posts: 287 Member
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    I will try that.

    Does anyone else have any personal experiences with this?
  • savithny
    savithny Posts: 1,200 Member
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    I ate at a defiicit for several months and lost at the rate predicted. Then it stopped. I had my RMR tested and it came back a bunch lower than the math predicted.

    I went to eating at a "Maintenance" level calculated from that BMR. Didn't gain, didn't lose for more time. Started lifting weights and lost more. Kept lifting weights and started eating more, and maintained. The math suggests my RMR is probably back where it was when I started. But it's taken several months.

    And i wasn't at a huge deficit - I was aiming for 500 cals a day deficit, but as I started exercising more, the deficit got bigger. The bigger deficit didn't make me lose faster, probalby because my metabolism started to slow down more at that point.

    The bigger and longer-lasting the deficit, the more likely it is that your metabolism slows down (more than would be expected for the weight loss alone), and the larger the percentage slowdown.

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