Have I got this right? (WARNING: long post!)

BryKate

Hi everyone!
Ok so pre-warning, this post will be long!
Basically this question is about calorie intake when working out (a mix of weights and cardio) 5-6 days a week.
For months and months I thought the right way to lose weight was to stick to around 1200 cals a day. However I was burning off anything from 4-900 cals each workout. I lost a lot of weight but very fast. I went travelling for 10weeks where I did minimal exercise and didn't eat too well at all and BAM nearly all the weight went back on. I now know (after lots of research and really educating myself) that I had caused myself serious metabolic damage. My goal now is to lose weight the RIGHT way. I am exercise 1-2hrs 5x a week as apposed to 3-4 hours 7 days a week and not eating enough.

So now the question! I recently discovered a guy called Dr Layne Norton who is a nutritionist and personal trainer. He has a whole bunch of videos and articles all about metabolic damage and myths behind carbs/protein etc etc. His main piece of advice was that anything less than 1200 is extremely damaging to the system and if you're working out you really should be eating a minimum of 1500cals a day. He said one of the main reasons for this is that if you hit a weight loss plateau, the best way to get past it is by decreasing your cals by around 100-150. If youre only eating 1200 cals anyway then taking 150 off will put your body into starvation mode etc etc, however if you're already on say 1700 then going down to 1600-1550 will get you fat loss results whilst still eating enough. He says that once past the weight loss pleateau you can slowly start adding the cals back. He gives an example of one client of his who maintains her low body fat percentage (can't remember exactly what it was) but from the way he described her she was obviously in very good shape and maintained this on 2000 cals a day and 170g carbs!! He said it took about 2.5 years to get to this point, slowly adding in cals and carbs but she's now maintaining on that. So since watching these vids I have realised that I obviously was not eating enough. I now aim for approx 1400 cals a day with macros P40 F25 C35. I will say though that I don't use the "myfitnesspal" app as much anymore as I tracked every single thing I ate religiously for about a year. It caused my serious anxiety to the point that I wouldn't be able to sleep unless I had logged in everything I would eat the next day and make sure my macros were completely on point. At the beginning of july I decided to stop using it. However I have still been writing down what I eat everyday just not on a calorie/macro counting app. Today I logged into myfitnesspal again and entered a few days worth of food over the past couple of weeks and was pleasantly surprised and how well I have managed to stick pretty close to my macros without using the app and without over stressing about it, so I feel I know enough about protein fats and carbs and how much to eat of which without logging every little thing in.

Now here is the confusion!! I was just talking to a girl who claims to know a lot about nutrition. She said her sister is a nutritionist so she has learnt a lot from her. She told me that since I am still looking to lose weight (roughly 10-15Ibs although I try not to pay attention to numbers as I do a lot of weight training, however I would like to drop a couple of dress sizes and look generally leaner) she recommended I eat 1250-1350 a day. This completely contradicts everything I had learnt from Dr Layne Norton. I asked her "what about if I hit another pleateau and need to reduce my calories" and her response was "that's completely wrong. If you hit a plateau, do not reduce calories. Eat the same amount but of different foods so less carbs and more protein." This seems to make a bit of sense too. But just as I got it into my head that 1200 wasn't enough I am now confused and think maybe I should be sticking to 12-1300 instead of 14-1500... so which is the answer??

Hope this post wasn't too rambly!! I really appreciate anyone who has taken the time out to read this and would be so grateful for a response

Carol_L

Given the choice between advice from someone who claims to know a lot about nutrition but has no qualifications themselves or (soon to be - he's just completing his Ph.D thesis) Dr. Layne Norton, I know which way I'd go.

I am familiar with his work, and have his website bookmarked. Its good to get information from a variety of sources, evaluate it and if you have a question, check around various online forms to see if they've already posted something on the subject. Other places I go for info include carbsanity.blogspot.com, anthonycolpo.com, alanaragon.com, bodyrecomposition.com and nerdfitness.com amoungst others.