What happens if you eat 900 calories a day?
UmaMageswarymfp
Posts: 280 Member
Hi , so my goal is to lose 15 kg in 3 months because I planned a trip to London. I’ve been eating around 1500 calories and been losing weight slowly . I lost 20kg in 9months. It’s VERY slow so I want to try eating 900/1100 calories to lose weight more and faster. I’m 115kg , 21 and I’m 5ft10. Is it really harmful if I eat less ? I also burn 400 calories from workout. My daily calorie is 1800 so I’ll be saving 1100 calories everyday with food and exercise.
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Replies
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Yes, it is harmful. You can’t get proper nutrition on so little calories.28
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No it is not very slow. You've actually been doing an EXCELLENT JOB, even though, by the sounds of it, you are not allowing yourself to enjoy it!
You've lost 45 lbs in 9 months!!!!! You're on pace to lose 60lbs in a year. This is remarkably, most excellent, happy happy, yeah, win! level of progress.
Yes, technically, your desired rate of loss is not insane given your current energy reserves since you are currently still considered obese per medical terminology.
BUT such an accelerated rate IS insane given your current total daily energy expenditure level.
And yes, it is a very bad idea to only be eating 900 Cal for a prolonged time frame. Not to mention that you're planning to exercise 400 of that away.
It is a bad idea, to begin with, from a nutritional and health standpoint.
But much more importantly it is a bad idea from the point of view of you succeeding with your weight loss and increasing your chance of improving your future health!
You are 21 years old. In that time-frame you have managed to get to a maximum of 135kg and a BMI of almost 43. As someone who was at that exact same BMI when I started trying to get healthier (but at the substantially more advanced age of 48) I CAN tell you that such a level of obesity will EVENTUALLY impact your health.
You WILL also lose out on things in life: both things that you might otherwise do but won't because of your obesity, and because you will miss out on opportunities you might have otherwise been presented with.
AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOSE OUT ON THESE THINGS as you are already well on your way out of the trap using a sane and perfectly workmanlike rate of weight loss!
You've had success so far; but is not going to be a walk in the park to continue losing weight and more importantly, it will likely take some effort for you to figure out how to manage your reduced weight for years to come!
So I am very sorry to say that your priority SHOULD NOT BE YOUR TRIP TO LONDON.
Cancel the thing if you have to because your PRIORITY is YOUR HEALTH!
Sorry. I don't care what your family or anyone around you, including yourself, think.
Your priority SHOULD be your current and future self!
That future self? She will thank you for taking charge of your weight today and not leaving the job for her to tackle down the road!
Successfully reducing your weight to a healthier level and KEEPING OFF that weight is probably in the TOP ONE list of things you can do that will have the most impact on your future health and ability to live life.
Forcing yourself to lose weight faster increases substantially (maybe even exponentially) your risk of a) not reaching your goal weight at all and b) not being able to maintain your weight loss when you get to that goal weight.
Read up @NovusDies 's post about how his diet became unsustainable when he tried to lose weight faster because of an upcoming surgery.
You've done an excellent job so far and are well on your way to establishing a healthier you.
Don't rock the boat too much.54 -
No it is not very slow. You've actually been doing an EXCELLENT JOB, even though, by the sounds of it, you are not allowing yourself to enjoy it!
You've lost 45 lbs in 9 months!!!!! You're on pace to lose 60lbs in a year. This is remarkably, most excellent, happy happy, yeah, win! level of progress.
Yes, technically, your desired rate of loss is not insane given your current energy reserves since you are currently still considered obese per medical terminology.
BUT such an accelerated rate IS insane given your current total daily energy expenditure level.
And yes, it is a very bad idea to only be eating 900 Cal for a prolonged time frame. Not to mention that you're planning to exercise 400 of that away.
It is a bad idea, to begin with, from a nutritional and health standpoint.
But much more importantly it is a bad idea from the point of view of you succeeding with your weight loss and increasing your chance of improving your future health!
You are 21 years old. In that time-frame you have managed to get to a maximum of 135kg and a BMI of almost 43. As someone who was at that exact same BMI when I started trying to get healthier (but at the substantially more advanced age of 48) I CAN tell you that such a level of obesity will EVENTUALLY impact your health.
You WILL also lose out on things in life: both things that you might otherwise do but won't because of your obesity, and because you will miss out on opportunities you might have otherwise been presented with.
AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOSE OUT ON THESE THINGS as you are already well on your way out of the trap using a sane and perfectly workmanlike rate of weight loss!
You've had success so far; but is not going to be a walk in the park to continue losing weight and more importantly, it will likely take some effort for you to figure out how to manage your reduced weight for years to come!
So I am very sorry to say that your priority SHOULD NOT BE YOUR TRIP TO LONDON.
Cancel the thing if you have to because your PRIORITY is YOUR HEALTH!
Sorry. I don't care what your family or anyone around you, including yourself, think.
Your priority SHOULD be your current and future self!
That future self? She will thank you for taking charge of your weight today and not leaving the job for her to tackle down the road!
Successfully reducing your weight to a healthier level and KEEPING OFF that weight is probably in the TOP ONE list of things you can do that will have the most impact on your future health and ability to live life.
Forcing yourself to lose weight faster increases substantially (maybe even exponentially) your risk of a) not reaching your goal weight at all and b) not being able to maintain your weight loss when you get to that goal weight.
Read up @NovusDies 's post about how his diet became unsustainable when he tried to lose weight faster because of an upcoming surgery.
You've done an excellent job so far and are well on your way to establishing a healthier you.
Don't rock the boat too much.
Omg thank you for taking time to reply such an informative post!! I appreciate you. Alright , I will stick on my 1500 cal and workout. Hoping for the best 🤞🏽🤞🏽68 -
Love where you're at and how far you've been already. Don't try to sabotage all of it by too much restriction and making yourself unhealthy now. You've worked too hard to make yourself sick.
Enjoy London at your new weight, not as a sickly person. If you feel you have to make any changes, maybe 100-200 calories less but truly, you're doing amazing and you *know* it's working. Enjoy London when you go and how about scheduling another trip when you hit goal weight?? Certainly a great goal to strive for along with goal weight. 
9 -
I agree with the post above - you've made such amazing progress so far! Don't punish yourself for that by trying to go faster when what you are already doing is working great for you! I can understand the impatience, but a crash diet may put you in danger of putting weight back on once you start to eat normally again, and after you've worked so hard that would be a real shame.
I think you should keep engaging with forums to keep a positive attitude because you clearly have the willpower to succeed, if you want to 'speed' up then maybe do things like add in lifting weights in small amounts that you weren't before, and make sure your workout calories are well estimated (i.e things like fitbits can be very off).
But honestly, just well done. Be proud of yourself!
As they said above:
'So I am very sorry to say that your priority SHOULD NOT BE YOUR TRIP TO LONDON.'
Your priority is YOU and you deserve to be kind to yourself after such huge success. 8 -
I also agree with the above but you won't be starving if you decrease your intake to 1200 a day untill your vacation. You just can't go on a binge during your visit to London. Then when you get back resume as you were.3
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Do not do it.
You will be setting yourself up to develop an eating disorder. Take it from someone who battled one for 6 years.
Also, with that few calories, you will experience a lot of symptoms you are not going to like. Dizziness, fatigue, irritability, headaches, heck my hair even fell out. Slow and steady is best.17 -
PAV wrote a wonderful response. He is 100% correct. Please listen--you'll be glad you did.16
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Love where you're at and how far you've been already. Don't try to sabotage all of it by too much restriction and making yourself unhealthy now. You've worked too hard to make yourself sick. Enjoy London at your new weight, not as a sickly person. If you feel you have to make any changes, maybe 100-200 calories less but truly, you're doing amazing and you *know* it's working. Enjoy London when you go and how about scheduling another trip when you hit goal weight?? Certainly a great goal to strive for along with goal weight.
Alright maybe I’ll eat 100-200 less calories compare to before and workout more. Thank you
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awenasangster wrote: »I agree with the post above - you've made such amazing progress so far! Don't punish yourself for that by trying to go faster when what you are already doing is working great for you! I can understand the impatience, but a crash diet may put you in danger of putting weight back on once you start to eat normally again, and after you've worked so hard that would be a real shame.
I think you should keep engaging with forums to keep a positive attitude because you clearly have the willpower to succeed, if you want to 'speed' up then maybe do things like add in lifting weights in small amounts that you weren't before, and make sure your workout calories are well estimated (i.e things like fitbits can be very off).
But honestly, just well done. Be proud of yourself!
As they said above:
'So I am very sorry to say that your priority SHOULD NOT BE YOUR TRIP TO LONDON.'
Your priority is YOU and you deserve to be kind to yourself after such huge success.
Thank youuuu2 -
I agree with the comments above. You've had a fantastic success in losing 44 pounds in 9 months - that's a picture-perfect 5 pounds per month. If you repeated that in the next 9 months, you'd have a stellar 88 pound loss, something few people ever achieve. Maybe you haven't yet taken time to fully appreciate your success and think about nurturing and protecting it now that you're entering a "I want more, faster" phase.
The 11 lbs/month you want to lose for the next 3 months would be excruciatingly difficult and risky. The kind of starvation-dieting and unsatisfying deprivation needed to lose at that pace hardly ever works for anyone and is far more likely to end in a frustration-binge-weight gain-regret cycle than anything else.
But your current 5 lbs/month pace at 1800 calories - just doing what you've already been doing - would yield another 15 pounds lost in time for your trip to London, with no fine-tuning at all! If that isn't enough for you, maybe try cutting 100 calories per day for another 3 pounds lost by the time of your trip. In this way 18 pounds could be lost in 3 months and you won't end up face-planted in a chocolate cake on top of a large pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni, because you'll be doing a comfortable, basically familiar level of calorie deficit that you know will be successful.8 -
What happens if I eat 900 calories a day?
Breakfast. Damn near, anyways.7 -
Stay the course and don't start overcompensating now. Do you know how many people eat it all back after conducting a brutally strict eating protocol. Almost all of them. It's a setup for more abnormal hunger cues when all of the dieting is done. Do you know how many people start over after they've eaten all back and wish they would have listened to sound advice. All of them. Not one of them wishes they'd dropped it like it was hot and then started eating it all back after their motivational event such as a wedding or reunion is all over. Don't do it. Listen to the sound advice and don't change a winning game. You will regret all of it.15
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Diatonic12 wrote: »Stay the course and don't start overcompensating now. Do you know how many people eat it all back after conducting a brutally strict eating protocol. Almost all of them. It's a setup for more abnormal hunger cues when all of the dieting is done. Do you know how many people start over after they've eaten all back and wish they would have listened to sound advice. All of them. Not one of them wishes they'd dropped it like it was hot and then started eating it all back after their motivational event such as a wedding or reunion is all over. Don't do it. Listen to the sound advice and don't change a winning game. You will regret all of it.
Alright I’ll take it slow 💜7 -
Here's a link to the "unsustainable" post @PAV8888 mentioned above: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10762903/how-i-went-from-sustainable-to-unsustainable/p15
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My experience with restriction calories too much is I eventually end up in a binge cycle. Its as if my body turns against me and no amount of will power can keep me from over eating. There has been studies on this too, that its actually a thing where if you deprive your body of calories some people find themselves eating uncontrollably... its like a self preservation thing. Anyway, my point is, you're on a roll, I would hate to see you being one of those people who restrict too much and falling off track because of it. Obviously if youve been able to maintain what you're doing this long, you're doing something right!2
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That's not slow AT ALL. With 900 cals your body won't get the energy or nutrition it needs, and it'll likely end up in overeating as it's really really hard to be that hungry for any length of time.tone1
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You get real hungry real fast2
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Wow... the mods have not locked this one yet? Slacking mods...13
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Read the sticky posts for beginners.
No need to reinvent the wheel.3 -
Hungry, grumpy, tired.....the health risks have been outlined above.
But I genuinely don't know why you would want to do that to yourself.
You have value the way you are, and it's worth taking good care of yourself.6 -
Don't do it, keep doing what you've been doing, slow and steady wins the race. And look how far you've come!0
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psychod787 wrote: »Wow... the mods have not locked this one yet? Slacking mods...
Two possible reasons
1. She's asking a question, not advocating VLCD
2. No one has reported it so they have not seen it11 -
kshama2001 wrote: »psychod787 wrote: »Wow... the mods have not locked this one yet? Slacking mods...
Two possible reasons
1. She's asking a question, not advocating VLCD
2. No one has reported it so they have not seen it
Thank you!! 🤨🤧
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I think the most likely scenario is that you manage to eat 900 calories a day for about 3 days. Then break and binge on about 3500 calories, then 'get back on the wagon' for a day and eat 900 calories followed by a 2 day binge of 3500 calories each day before deciding to be 'REALLY motivated this time; and stick to 900 calories for the next 2 days only to decide that its all too hard and give up.
So aiming for 900 calories a day is likely to result in a "diet" where you're real calorie intake is close to 2300 calories per day that lasts for 2 weeks before you just go back to old habits.11 -
I think the most likely scenario is that you manage to eat 900 calories a day for about 3 days. Then break and binge on about 3500 calories, then 'get back on the wagon' for a day and eat 900 calories followed by a 2 day binge of 3500 calories each day before deciding to be 'REALLY motivated this time; and stick to 900 calories for the next 2 days only to decide that its all too hard and give up.
So aiming for 900 calories a day is likely to result in a "diet" where you're real calorie intake is close to 2300 calories per day that lasts for 2 weeks before you just go back to old habits.
This ... but that binge is likely to be for much more than 3500 calories, leading to weight "mysteriously" being up a few pounds after a week of yo-yo starvation and gorging, leading to puzzlement and a feeling that "diets don't work". Next stop: keto, eaten in a 4 hour window. When that doesn't work, a 1 hour window. When that doesn't work, protein powders and meal replacement shakes and intense feelings of deprivation; at that point the dieting phase is over and it's back to just getting fatter. A year later, the cycle begins anew.
Or, just go to the MFP Goals tool, tell it how much weight you want to lose, and eat exactly as many calories as it says to eat, every day, and lose the weight.11 -
Likely to lead to an eating disorder or even worse, depression, if not done in a sustainable manner OP. Like others mentioned, if you choose to continue VLCD for an extended period of time, please consult with your doctor, and schedule follow-up visits.
With that being said, I actually utilized a similiar VLCD program (1000 calories per day) for 6 weeks with the goal of getting shredded (sub 8%) while maintaining a social life..... markers and checkpoints i put in place:
1. Bi-weekly physical with thyroid check
2. 2 social days a week, one planned for maintenance where i enjoyed alcohol/subpar nutritional meals (2200 calories) and another day not tracking anything, complete freedom from caloric goals for the day.
3. Both days involved physical activity outside normal life (work, etc,) one was a 35 minute cardio session, the other was a full body workout session (roughly 45 minutes).
Each day, i ate a meal of 2 large chicken breasts with apple whiskey sauce, steamed mixed veggies, and a small package of cashews...only planned meal for the day (OMAD=One Meal A Day) diet. This took place at 8:30am, 6 days a week. Throughout the remainder of each day was mostly flavored sparkling water and coffee.
This felt strangely comfortable and easy to stick to, knowing i had more than just one day to ease up a bit. I was able to stay on track of roughly 1.2 to 1.4 pounds lost per week.
However, I would never recommend this to anyone as a solid program, quite risky actually. There are much healthier, sustainable diets to get the results you are looking for.2 -
I think the most likely scenario is that you manage to eat 900 calories a day for about 3 days. Then break and binge on about 3500 calories, then 'get back on the wagon' for a day and eat 900 calories followed by a 2 day binge of 3500 calories each day before deciding to be 'REALLY motivated this time; and stick to 900 calories for the next 2 days only to decide that its all too hard and give up.
So aiming for 900 calories a day is likely to result in a "diet" where you're real calorie intake is close to 2300 calories per day that lasts for 2 weeks before you just go back to old habits.
And that can also happen with 1200 calories for women who are not very very short and sedentary:
https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/
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OP - I'm glad you see (now) that this is not a good idea.
Just to add because I didn't see it mentioned. Even if this were okay for a person's current statistics.....they are not do-it-yourself plans. Doctor prescribed, doctor managed, usually a set of medical conditions.2 -
Good job on your weight loss so far, you've done a really good job. You're losing at a very reasonable rate. Faster isn't better.2
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