Weight loss going well but worried about undereating

Fuuko

Hi all,

Bit of background - I was anorexic in my mid teens and suffered from severe anxiety over food and exercise for several years until my depression got very bad and I ended up with binge eating disorder in my early 20's. In less than a year I put on over 100lbs, reaching my highest weight of 205lbs in 2010. Since then, I've worked very hard to overcome my binge eating problems and slowly but surely suceeded. In November of last year I finally began to lose weight and since then have lost about 65lbs. I still have another 15ish to go until my goal weight but I've recently started to read the forums on here and am now worried that I have been undereating and may be doing damage to my body.

Now, I'm not undereating anywhere near as drastically as I did when I was anorexic but I'm worried now about muscle loss. I'm 5"3 and currently 140lbs. My calorie goal on here is 1200, however I rarely reach that and most days I'm at around 1100. I exercise almost every day, burning about 200-300 calories each time, doing alternating days of cardio and strength. I don't eat back my exercise calories (I never realised you were meant to until I started reading these forums!). In both May & June I lost about 9lbs per month. Is this too much? I'm not starving in my day to day life and I try my best to eat clean most of the time.

To be honest, I'm scared of eating more than I do now because I'm afraid of my weight loss stalling or even putting on weight. The few times that I have eaten more than 1200 calories in a day, my weight loss is usually much less for that particular week leading me to believe that I have a very slow metabolism. But now I'm also afraid of losing muscle and about what will happen when I get to maintenance!

Sorry to ramble on for so long but I've gotten so confused and anxious over my eating habits - I just want to be healthy but I also want my weight gone asap Thanks for any advice!

GauchoMark

2 questions:

1) how fast are you losing weight?
2) when you say you don't usually hit 1200, is that 1200 total calories or 1200 net calories?

Ninkyou

First, weightloss is not a race. You may want to lose it asap, but that doesn't mean it's healthy. Do you have your settings set to 2 lbs loss per week? If you're only 15ish lbs from goal, you should change it to 1 lbs/week or so.

Secondly, you need to increase your calories. I know it's a scarey thing. I started out at 1200 calories too and when I upped my calories I was stressed out about how it would affect my weightloss. Now I wish I had upped my calories sooner. I feel much better and I;m not "Hangry".

Third, if you exercise, you need to eat those calories back. You wouldn't expect your car to run if there's no gas, would you? Your body is the same. You need to fuel it so it can run.

I know it feels scarey about eating more to lose more. It doesn't seem like that could be scientifically possible. But it's solid. It works. You just need to rewire your way of thinking and bite the bullet and just do it. After a while, you'll be thanking yourself for doing it.

Fuuko

1) Well, 65lbs since November (maybe even a bit more than that - I haven't had access to a scale in the last 3 weeks so not sure of my current weight) but most of that was since mid-Jan. As I mentioned, I lost about 9lbs in May and about the same again in June.

2) Ack sorry, not sure what you mean. I eat about 1100 a day no matter how much or little exercise I do.

Fuuko

First, weightloss is not a race. You may want to lose it asap, but that doesn't mean it's healthy. Do you have your settings set to 2 lbs loss per week? If you're only 15ish lbs from goal, you should change it to 1 lbs/week or so.

Secondly, you need to increase your calories. I know it's a scarey thing. I started out at 1200 calories too and when I upped my calories I was stressed out about how it would affect my weightloss. Now I wish I had upped my calories sooner. I feel much better and I;m not "Hangry".

Third, if you exercise, you need to eat those calories back. You wouldn't expect your car to run if there's no gas, would you? Your body is the same. You need to fuel it so it can run.

I know it feels scarey about eating more to lose more. It doesn't seem like that could be scientifically possible. But it's solid. It works. You just need to rewire your way of thinking and bite the bullet and just do it. After a while, you'll be thanking yourself for doing it.

Thank you for the reply

I'm set to lose 1lb/week at the moment and it still has me at 1200 calories for the day.

I wasn't worried about eating too little since I don't feel particularly hungry or weak or anything like I remember from being anorexic. However, when I came on here I started reading all this stuff about fueling your body like you say and started to worry!

I guess I should try a small increase and see how that goes?

janinealfke

I think if you are hitting 1100 calories a day it could be all right. Have you spoken to your doctor? Get a referral to a nutritionist and see what they tell you. Since you have had an eating disorder, I think I would just want to make sure you're doing all right with those calories, but I'm betting it's all right...I have had weight loss surgery and hit around 700 calories a day on a good day and even though it puts me into malabsorption and malnutrition....it's working and is deemed acceptable by my surgeon. Make sure you drink enough fluids as it will keep your metabolism better able to process what you're doing. Also if you drink ice water your body has to work harder to warm it up so it can use it and it kicks your metabolism into high gear. 2 or 3 in the afternoon eat something with fiber...a small baked potato, or some wheat crackers because your metabolism is slowing by that point in the day....and fiber makes the body have to work to process it, which increases metabolism again...you can do it. Double check with your doctor about the 1100 calories....but I think it will be ok.

Best of luck

Janine Alfke

Frelling_Tralk

1) Well, 65lbs since November (maybe even a bit more than that - I haven't had access to a scale in the last 3 weeks so not sure of my current weight) but most of that was since mid-Jan. As I mentioned, I lost about 9lbs in May and about the same again in June.

2) Ack sorry, not sure what you mean. I eat about 1100 a day no matter how much or little exercise I do.

If you enter your exercise calories on the MFP app then it should take that off your overall calories for the day and tell you to eat more to make up the right amount

GauchoMark

You definitely need to increase your calories. You are currently losing over 2 lbs/wk and are not eating even your BMR. I'm guessing after exercise, you are only netting about 800-900 calories a day.

First off, your BMR is 1445 calories a day. This is how many calories your body needs for proper organ/brain function if you were in a coma. No matter what, you need to make sure that you at LEAST eat 1445 calories a day.

If I conservatively assume you do 1-3 hours of light exercise a week (I am guessing you do more, but this is safe), to maintain your current weight you would need to eat about 1987 calories a day. To lose weight, you need to NET less than that.

Now, net calories versus eaten calories. On MFP, you are supposed to log your exercise. So, lets say that you have a calorie goal of 1500 calories. You exercise and burn 200 calories that day. When you log it, MFP adds the calories to your goal. So, if you eat until your "Calories Remaining" is zero, then you actually ate 1700 calories, but your net calories is still 1500 (because the exercise cancels it out), so you will still lose weight at the same rate as if you had not exercised (theoretically).

A little philosophy now - Losing weight is all about eating less calories than your body burns over time. It really doesn't matter if you exercise or not, or if you eat "clean", or do intermittent fasting, etc., you can still lose weight if you eat less than your burn. However, it is important to exercise to conserve muscle mass. The more muscle mass you have, the easier you lose fat and the better you look in the end. So, quit thinking of exercising to burn calories and thing of it as exercising to get fit.

Also, and this is a well documented, proven fact, they faster you lose weight, then more muscle mass you are going to lose as well. For someone your size, losing over 2 lbs/wk, probably about 1 lb of that is muscle. Maybe more depending on how much protein and strength training you are doing.

Go to "My Home -> Goals -> Change Goals" and walk through the wizard. Choose a weight loss rate of 0.5-1 lb/wk as a max. Then just eat until your calories remaining are zero and log all food and exercise. It will work. Oh, and if you can't eat that much food, cut back on the cardio exercise and eat more calorie dense foods such as peanut butter, avocados, guacamole, cheese, beef, etc.

skatermom503

Gaucho Mark has given you excellent advice. Please follow it. You have done an amazing job working through your eating issues so far. Don't let the number on your scale define you. You want fit and healthy. Everything else will fall into place. If nothing else, add a protein shake (I drink Premier Protein shakes from Costco...160 cals with 30 gms of protein.) Best of luck.