another question about calories

Crumpet_Girl

OK I read a lot of discussion on here about "myths" and "bro-science" and it got me wondering... I apologies if this is a repeat/stupid question!

From what I have read it seems like "starvation mode" is not really a thing. That losing weight is a basic science for most people - eating less and moving more so they are in deficit.

Which made me wonder if there is such a thing as slowing your metabolism down by eating too few calories? I remember years ago being told not too eat too few cals because my body will think I am starving it and hold on to the fat. So is this true or false? If I chose to eat low cals (still a healthy amount - say a 1500 cal deficit) am I damaging my future chances of weight loss or not?

bpetrosky

The general advice is to not go below ~1200 for a female. Eating at too severe a deficit puts you at risk of nutritional deficiencies that can cause serious health issues. Vitamin deficiencies can be nasty.

Your body's metabolism may slow down mostly because you won't feel like moving around as much. If you die, your metabolism goes to 0, so there's that, too.

missiontofitness

bpetrosky wrote: »

The general advice is to not go below ~1200 for a female. Eating at too severe a deficit puts you at risk of nutritional deficiencies that can cause serious health issues. Scurvy and ricketts aren't fun.

Your body's metabolism may slow down mostly because you won't feel like moving around as much. If you die, your metabolism goes to 0, so there's that, too.

True that. As long as you're still breathing and your heart is beating, your metabolism is still working.

Lottiotta

I've never seen my weight loss slow from eating too few calories - but I have been so close to my goal weight and my deficit is always really small!

On that note, it might be worth mentioning that if my deficit is too big (more than 100 kcal per day), I feel very hungry and tired and miserable, and I end up eating snacks and going over my calorie "allowance". The only way I can reliably lose weight is to have a deficit of about 50-100 calories per day. It takes ages and ages but I get there in the end.

It's kinda weird because a few days ago I walked 23,000 steps around London in two days, and on those two days I felt fine and just ate normally, when I was hungry. I had a deficit of 800 kcal for those two days instead of my usual 100-150 - and once I got home I was so hungry that I had to eat most of it back again. So my body knows what's going on, even if there is a 48-hour delay. If I had eaten more on those two days of extra activity, I wouldn't have eaten so much junk on the following days and I'd probably have managed to keep a bit of that extra deficit.

Whitezombiegirl

bpetrosky wrote: »

The general advice is to not go below ~1200 for a female.

Maybe it's from my stats that i entered but as a petite 5ft female the message I get on this site when I close my diary (under cals -even by 2 cals!) is that woemen should eat no less than 1000 cals.

Sued0nim

insaneXgirl wrote: »

OK I read a lot of discussion on here about "myths" and "bro-science" and it got me wondering... I apologies if this is a repeat/stupid question!

From what I have read it seems like "starvation mode" is not really a thing. That losing weight is a basic science for most people - eating less and moving more so they are in deficit.

Which made me wonder if there is such a thing as slowing your metabolism down by eating too few calories? I remember years ago being told not too eat too few cals because my body will think I am starving it and hold on to the fat. So is this true or false? If I chose to eat low cals (still a healthy amount - say a 1500 cal deficit) am I damaging my future chances of weight loss or not?

there is a thermodynamic adaptation

it is not significant enough to worry about

do not eat below 1200 due to nutritional requirements

a 1500 defecit would equate to 3lbs weight loss per week and is excessive unless you weigh over 300lbs to begin with and even then you need to be careful because you are approaching the level at which things like gallstones happens due to rapid weight loss

yarwell

If your body gets less fuel it tends to adapt a little, to the tune of a hundred or maybe two hundred calories a day at most.

You can be nutritionally complete on formulated low calorie diets where the calorie restriction outruns any adaptation.

It would make no sense at all for your body to "hold on to fat" at the very time it needed to utilise that fat for survival.

yarwell

Whitezombiegirl wrote: »

bpetrosky wrote: »

The general advice is to not go below ~1200 for a female.

Maybe it's from my stats that i entered but as a petite 5ft female the message I get on this site when I close my diary (under cals -even by 2 cals!) is that woemen should eat no less than 1000 cals.

that's a revision, it used to be 1200 but the "short woman thing" led to a relaxation - especially as the 1200 was implemented badly in the MFP mathematics.