Please help me understand how this works.

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gabrielleelliott90
gabrielleelliott90 Posts: 854 Member
edited November 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
If a person starves themselves, gets down to a low weight by eating hardly anything, then eats enough to maintain their low body weight, would they gain all the weight they lost back, or just maintain their weight. If they do gain the weight back, if they gradually upped their calories to enough to maintain, would they still gain that weight back?

I don't plan on doing this, but I was quite curious.

Replies

  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    If you're eating at MAINTENANCE, you're not going to gain weight. Eating at a SURPLUS is what causes someone to gain weight.
  • SergeantSausage
    SergeantSausage Posts: 1,673 Member
    You are confused.

    Maintain and gain are mutually exclusive terms.

    If you eat enough to maintain a low body weight then, by definition, you are not eating enough to gain.

  • gabrielleelliott90
    gabrielleelliott90 Posts: 854 Member
    Yeah, I was confused. Now I get it. 700 calories for example would be enough to maintain a low body weight, any more would be a surplus resulting in a gain.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    gabrielleelliott90 wrote: »
    Yeah, I was confused. Now I get it. 700 calories for example would be enough to maintain a low body weight, any more would be a surplus resulting in a gain.

    No
  • SergeantSausage
    SergeantSausage Posts: 1,673 Member
    gabrielleelliott90 wrote: »
    Yeah, I was confused. Now I get it. 700 calories for example would be enough to maintain a low body weight, any more would be a surplus resulting in a gain.


    700 is a deficit and you will lose weight.... unless you're, maybe 2'4" and, like, 39 pounds. (HINT: Any normal human will be in a LARGE daily deficit at 700 cal a day. )

  • Unknown
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  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
    edited June 2015
    At my current stats (5'5.5", female, 40 years, 125ish pounds) if I were sedentary I'd have a TDEE of 1400-1500 per day. So if I ate 1000/day in theory I'd continue to lose weight, about 1pound per week. Would probably need to lose 15-25 before I started to get 'unhealthy'. Then of course my TDEE would go down. But as someone else mentioned, I can't imagine getting so low in weight that my TDEE would be 700. I imagine eventually it would bottom out around 1000-1200? If so and I started eating more than 1000-1200, I would gain.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    shell1005 wrote: »
    gabrielleelliott90 wrote: »
    Yeah, I was confused. Now I get it. 700 calories for example would be enough to maintain a low body weight, any more would be a surplus resulting in a gain.

    No.

    And as for your original post, I have a hard time believing that you weren't considering starving yourself or you wouldn't have asked. I'm reporting this thread.

    OPs name rings a bell, can't remember why though....
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