Everyone seems to eat below daily calories??

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  • DumbbellHell
    DumbbellHell Posts: 13 Member
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    Well that's nice and all, I'm going to continue netting between 1200-1100 because I'm a super sedentary college student. I'll be sure to let you know when I start dying.
  • lyttlewon
    lyttlewon Posts: 1,118 Member
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    Except any time you are under your calorie goal it says that you ate below. I'm at 2,000 maintenance calories. You know how obsessive I would need to be to hit exactly 2,000 calories every single day? If I'm short 100 calories one day I'm not going to eat a bunch of carrots to make sure my MFP tracker logs me at the correct count.
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
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    HappyCampr1 wrote: »
    IdLikeToLoseItLoseIt wrote: »
    abatonfan wrote: »
    Did you consider that some people set their goals to maintenance and then leave 250-500 calories remaining each day? I hate seeing the red numbers if I need to go over to treat a low blood sugar (and it also gives me the freedom to decide one day that I'm really hungry and want to eat at maintenance). My blood sugar has been running super high today (and don't like eating until I get down to a lower range), so I'll be lucky if I can reach 1000 calories. I'm irritable and have a killer headache from the high, but I'm going to try to enjoy this bacon-fest.

    From personal experience, I know I'm facing some of the effects of "starvation diets." For three months, I didn't know that my body was unable to metabolize carbs (and a portion of protein due to certain metabolic pathways -yay, type 1 diabetes :neutral: ), so despite consuming at least 2000-2500 calories, my body would only be able to generate energy from about 600-700ish; all the other calories were peed out ("sugar in the urine"). I certainly lost a ton of weight super quickly (about 55 pounds in three months), but I also lost a ton of muscle (and have a lower BMR now because of it). I will never remember the look on my mother's face when she realized how much weight I was losing; her exact words to me were "you look skeletal."

    Setting your goal to maintenance and eating 250-500 below is a very interesting idea! I had never thought of that, so thanks for passing that concept along. I don't know whether that would mess with my head too much, but the beauty of MFP is that I can always try that and then go back to the traditional way if it doesn't work!

    I have a friend who does this. She said she didn't like the guilt when she got red numbers. Now she can feel good when she has a 450 calorie deficit instead of feeling bad that it wasn't 500 if she went over by 50.

    I do this too :smile:
  • lithezebra
    lithezebra Posts: 3,670 Member
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    ndj1979 wrote: »
    ruthfmoy wrote: »
    When your caloric intake is too low you will have several health problems. One problem is reduced muscles mass. Your body searches for sources of energy to just keep vital organs functioning and it will turn to your muscle mass for those energy foods. This is called catabolism. Your metabolic rate will drop dramatically if you eat too little calories and after three days of low calorie intake this will compound your muscle mass loss. When you don"t eat enough calories you become sluggish, develop nutritional deficiencies, and are often highly irritable. If you are lowering your caloric intake for weight reduction, you are actually setting yourself for high weight gain when you do being to eat properly again.

    I am sorry but your body will not start cannibalizing muscle at three days of low intake. That takes months of eating almost nothing to happen.

    Please stop fear mongering and spreading pseudoscience, there is enough of that on these boards.

    I know from a nasty little bout of illness that you can lose a lot of muscle in just a few weeks of eating too little.

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