More calories when sick?
sdavis484
Posts: 160 Member
Should I eat more calories when I'm sick? On 1200 right now.
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Replies
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Yes. You need calories to heal7
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Also, unless you are very very short, reconsider 1200 calories in the first place: https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/14
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Depends on the type of sickness. Generally the primary focus should be on staying hydrated.7
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kshama2001 wrote: »Also, unless you are very very short, reconsider 1200 calories in the first place: https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/
While I certainly appreciate your concern, I prefer to read articles from reputable websites that are peer-reviewed by a Registered Dietician/Licensed Dietician - Nutritionist rather than some random guy who has a blog and zero credentials.
1200 is fine. Research even suggests that eating lower calories is beneficial to your health. Thanks again.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326343.php3 -
kshama2001 wrote: »Also, unless you are very very short, reconsider 1200 calories in the first place: https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/
While I certainly appreciate your concern, I prefer to read articles from reputable websites that are peer-reviewed by a Registered Dietician/Licensed Dietician - Nutritionist rather than some random guy who has a blog and zero credentials.
1200 is fine. Research even suggests that eating lower calories is beneficial to your health. Thanks again.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326343.php
Did you read the article you linked? The benefit of eating lower calories was refuted by saying it was an animal study and it is not known if it relates to human.
The article goes on to say that eating a low calorie diet can hinder weight loss. I believe this is talking about the downshifting of BMR to respond to a deficit. I am not aware if it is known whether a higher deficit drives a BMR lower.
If you will only take the word of a professional please see a Registered Dietitian - not a nutritionist.19 -
Seriously? If course it applies to humans. We are basically mammals too.2
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Additionally, there is a ton of (recent) research about how calorie restriction increases longevity.1
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I actually saw a RD 10 years ago who had me on 1153 calories per day. 🤷2
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Anyways, this tangent was not part of what I was asking. The last few instances of posting on the message boards, my questions have hardly been answered but instead have turned into an argument about why I'm eating the amount of calories that this same website that we are ALL using, indicated is the correct amount for weight loss.2
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I always get ravenous when I have a cold and I think that u I d my body telling me something. So yeah, I would think add more food theyekex you feel better.3
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An even better idea is to eat sufficient calories to begin with so you're not compromising your immune system and making yourself susceptible to illness in the first place.
Under eating also leaves you at risk of a number of other things the least of which is lethargy making you less active overall and under-performing during workouts (lowering your calories burned and hindering weight loss or even causing weight gain), hunger induced binge eating resulting in an over-consumption of calories that makes up and exceeds the number of calories cut (increasing your calories consumed again hindering weight loss or causing weight gain) and diet burn out where the unsustainable excessive restriction of calories leads to 'falling off the wagon' and giving up entirely.
In short. Eat more to get well and healthy, then eat more to stay well and healthy.18 -
It's possible that I weakened my immune system I suppose but a much more rational explanation is that my 3 children have each been sick very recently and I have still been cuddling and kissing them.4
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Outside of the issues with the 1,200 calories and the link you posted, my thoughts are yes - eat more calories when you're sick than when you're not. I'm currently just over the worst of a really unfortunate virus and am simply not counting my calories right now. Partially because when I'm sick I have an impressively suppressed appetite which is a problem. Eating today was "a win" because I was able to eat a small amount of chicken a reasonable lunch time rather than forcing myself to eat near the same amount of chicken (but with a small amount of rice in addition) 5 hours after I had intended on doing so. My newish, no more than one sweet a day, personal goal has also gone out of the window because I need to eat and if that means eating a boat load of candied ginger because it's all I can stomach then so be it.5
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I had pizza tonight. I feel ya! Hope you are well soon. This year year been TERRIBLE for my entire family. 🤮5
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I understand that people want one size fits all. People want to simplify things, I get it. 1200 calories is always wrong, the calories you say are correct is always right and that's just the way it is. You guys don't know anything about me. You don't know if I have health issues. You have no idea how my metabolism or body is different than your metabolism or body. You really should think about that before responding with some bogus article that makes everything so black and white. It's very frustrating.2
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I am a little confused at how your article is different to the one posted by @kshama2001 both clearly state they have been reviewed by an RD? What makes yours legit and the other bogus? The writer of your article is a journalist, not an RD themselves, it was just reviewed by an RD too.
To quote the article you linked yourself "However, this data is incomplete. Not all research on animals applies to humans. It is also possible that other factors, such as the specific foods that people eat when following a low calorie diet, may be responsible for improved health."
Noone said 1200 was wrong for you, just that you may want to consider that it might not be right, many of the new users here automatically choose the highest rate of loss and an incorrect activity level which drops them to the lowest MFP will go i.e. 1200 calories. So checking people have taken into account that they may be more active or that a high rate of loss might not be suitable is surely the opposite of saying one size fits all?
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Seriously? If course it applies to humans. We are basically mammals too.
So you didn't read the article. It says otherwise and it is right.
1200 calories is right for some people and for all I know you may be one of them. The reason it throws up a caution flag because it has become a magic number to which people default. It also causes a lot of people to fail and with weight loss efforts failing the overwhelming majority of the time it doesn't hurt to have people care enough to at least mention a potential problem.
Anyway. Feel better. Having more energy may or may not directly help with your illness but it should perk you up a little and make it slightly less miserable.
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Seriously? If course it applies to humans. We are basically mammals too.
Humans are “basically” mammals? Hmmm...
Sorry you’re feeling rubbish. I have a sick kid and husband right now too. It’s no fun. You need to take care of yourself and all of them, stay hydrated, eat what you feel like - in my experience CICO tends to take care of itself when you’re not feeling well and you can get back on track when everyone is healthy again.
With regards to your 1200 cal deficit - it’s just that the minimum number of calories isn’t usually necessary to eat that low in order to lose. And you haven’t mentioned exercise but moms are rarely sedentary. The 1200 calories is a NEAT goal, meaning exercise isn’t factored into it so if you are exercising, or more active then sedentary, you should be eating more.
As a wise rabbit in here used to say “the winner is the one who eats the most and still loses the weight”.
Good luck feel better!16 -
I would eat more, your body needs the nutrients to recover from sickness.
Sorry your post turned out like this, when I was a new member many of mine took this spin due to eating at 1200 cals a day (the minimum that MFP offers) I did not factor exercise into my number, I took exercise as a bonus and for a few years ate at 1200 and worked off about the same on most days **red light red light**
I was rewarded with hair loss, it took a while to happen but happen it did
For the record I am 5ft 6 I now eat at 1800 (which is what a 140lb, 5ft 6 woman of my age should eat) but I am currently not exercising as vigorously as I would like to, due to recovering from a herniated disk, and I seem to be maintaining at 193 .. I'm not too bothered about that thou, because my hair is recovering. I am thinking on dropping to 1700 and maybe even 1600 further down the line but after that I think I will make the difference up with exercise, as I wish to keep my hair and have it growing in crazy thick again
Please consider this information from a real live human test .. (me)
I don't want this to come across as nasty and have re worded it several times in an attempt to make it appear like its meant as a caring post to stop someone doing what I done
** just to add, you may be fine on 1200, it really does depend on you height/build/age .. I don't know this because I don't know anything about you other than the cals you are consuming
Good luck with your journey and I hope you and your kids get well soon
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Seriously? If course it applies to humans. We are basically mammals too.
so all mammals can all have the same diet and should be okay? Tell that to my vet! If I fed my cats nothing but the same diet one would give a horse, my cats would be suffering greatly from malnutrition. I can eat grapes and raisins as a snack if I'd like, but give them to my cats, and I'll be poisoning them. I enjoy chocolate; give chocolate to a dog or a cat and you're risking them going into heart failure. And so on. A human baby needs human milk or formula made as close a possible; raise an infant on nothing but cow's or goat's milk, and you will be doing serious harm to the child. Baby cows and goats, however, grow up healthy and strong.
Being built on the same basic blueprint certainly does not mean we're all alike. Put regular 87 octane in a nascar race car and tell me how well it will run in the race.10 -
Anyways, this tangent was not part of what I was asking. The last few instances of posting on the message boards, my questions have hardly been answered but instead have turned into an argument about why I'm eating the amount of calories that this same website that we are ALL using, indicated is the correct amount for weight loss.
You're giving too much credit to the system. You'll get 1200 calories depending on how much you tell it you want to lose per week. The system does not determine if the rate of loss you chose is optimal.
Many people mistakenly choose an overly aggressive rate of loss, which can lead to this:
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Anyways, this tangent was not part of what I was asking. The last few instances of posting on the message boards, my questions have hardly been answered but instead have turned into an argument about why I'm eating the amount of calories that this same website that we are ALL using, indicated is the correct amount for weight loss.
A popular misconception, but no...no it didn't. MFP is a calculator. It takes your inputs (ht/wt/gender/goal/ect...) and runs it through an equation and spits out a number....that number is to hit the goal you entered + your stats to figure out a calorie goal, and MFP "bottoms" out a 1200 for females.
If you put in an aggressive goal of 2lbs per week, odds are the calculator hit its default basement (of 1200) and that's what you got, unless you're very..very short, close to goal weight and quite sedentary.12 -
Seriously? If course it applies to humans. We are basically mammals too.
First, not basically, we just are mammals.
More importantly, that doesn't mean everything in a rodent study or even anything in one applies to humans.
Off the top of my head, I know research on de novo lipogenesis was dead ended - we thought it common because rodents do it, but humans can better store glycogen and have a brain that burns glucose heavily, so we don't tend to turn carbs into fat but rodents do for storage.
Research on rodents also doesn't even pan out on things like cancer that share common pathways. Research on rats would say a lot of things in high doses cause bladder cancer from artificial sweeteners to vitamin c. Doing the research on more closely related primates establishes it isn't likely the same in humans.
Rodent studies are good ways to generate questions and avenues of investigation. Due to the risks, they're also decent for research that would caution us away from some substances. They don't actually demonstrate how something works in humans.9 -
Wow, so many opinions! I appreciate everyone's helpful and not so helpful advice. If I could *possibly* live longer and reduce diseases like cancer while also losing weight on 1200 calories, I'm all about it. You are welcome to eat however many calories your body chooses. It's ok if we have different opinions! I'm going to the doctor in a few weeks. I will ask him about eating 1200 to lose weight but can almost guarantee that he will be good with it. Unless you are a medical doctor or have other relevant licensure, I am not going to take your word over professionals. My best friend was recently on the HMR diet and on 800 calories per day under the care of a medical doctor. Everyone is different!1
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Wow, so many opinions! I appreciate everyone's helpful and not so helpful advice. If I could *possibly* live longer and reduce diseases like cancer while also losing weight on 1200 calories, I'm all about it. You are welcome to eat however many calories your body chooses. It's ok if we have different opinions! I'm going to the doctor in a few weeks. I will ask him about eating 1200 to lose weight but can almost guarantee that he will be good with it. Unless you are a medical doctor or have other relevant licensure, I am not going to take your word over professionals. My best friend was recently on the HMR diet and on 800 calories per day under the care of a medical doctor. Everyone is different!
Make sure your doctor knows you are planning on actually eating 1200 calories, as doctors know patients tend to have issues with compliance, so will lowball in order to get the calorie target they actually think is appropriate.
Also, since doctors tend to not get much nutritional advice, you'd be better off asking for a referral to a registered dietitian, who will have a lot more training than a GP.10 -
kshama2001 wrote: »Wow, so many opinions! I appreciate everyone's helpful and not so helpful advice. If I could *possibly* live longer and reduce diseases like cancer while also losing weight on 1200 calories, I'm all about it. You are welcome to eat however many calories your body chooses. It's ok if we have different opinions! I'm going to the doctor in a few weeks. I will ask him about eating 1200 to lose weight but can almost guarantee that he will be good with it. Unless you are a medical doctor or have other relevant licensure, I am not going to take your word over professionals. My best friend was recently on the HMR diet and on 800 calories per day under the care of a medical doctor. Everyone is different!
Make sure your doctor knows you are planning on actually eating 1200 calories, as doctors know patients tend to have issues with compliance, so will lowball in order to get the calorie target they actually think is appropriate.
Also, since doctors tend to not get much nutritional advice, you'd be better off asking for a referral to a registered dietitian, who will have a lot more training than a GP.
Good advice. Just to be clear I eat more than 1200 calories per day if I exercise which is 75% of the time.1 -
1200 calories is always wrong
If we are reading the same thread, no one said this.the calories you say are correct is always right and that's just the way it is.
I didn't see anyone recommend any specific calories, but instead people pointing out that although MFP gives 1200 as a default (due to math) for basically all women who put down sedentary and sometimes lightly active and aren't unusually large and ask for 2 lb/week, that it is not necessarily a good choice for many, and also that many don't understand that they are not actually sedentary (as MFP actually uses it -- someone with young kids normally would not be) and that MFP's goal is PRE any exercise. I think this added information is helpful, whether you choose to rethink it or not, or even if you rethink it and decide 1200 is right for you. (I took in this information and changed my goal to 1200+exercise cals, but I thought 1200 net was right for me during the first part of my weight loss).
With respect to the claim that 1200 = healthy because there's some possible longevity benefits from lower cals, its of course much more complicated than that, and the article you cited does not talk about it in a scholarly way at all, I'm surprised you consider it some kind of authoritative source.
There is some evidence that reduced cals or occasional fasting has positive effects in other animals, and some efforts to test that in humans. This is not "the lower the better" or "this means 1200 is right," of course, and has nothing to do with weight loss at all. The reduced cals (and optimal nutrition!) for weight loss is more like a mild deficit (here is one example with a 15% deficit) where the expectation is that eventually you will lose a little weight and the metabolism will adjust such that it's maintenance (which is not exactly what the average person losing wants -- a lower metabolism). A lot of the research about it seems to be about the effects of lower protein too, not merely lower cals. Here's one piece: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180322141008.htm
I'd also suggest that if eating a very low cal level like 1200 for any extended period of time and IF the goal is health, not just weight loss as fast as possible, that logging somewhere where you can really watch micronutrients is a good idea. They can be harder to get in on 1200. (That's why VLCDs tend to be doctor supervised and often involve supplements.)
Of course, it all depends on actual rate of loss. Many doctors will recommend 1200 routinely or tell people who say they aren't losing on 1200 or 1400 to try 1000 (a number that most would not think people should actually be eating) on the assumption that they just are tracking poorly, as many do.
Anyway, I don't think 1200 (net!, at least for those who do any meaningful exercise) is inherently bad, it was fine for me for a reasonable period of time (and I had a couple of debates with others about it back in the day), but I think that looking at reasons why it might not be ideal for all and considerations in setting a cal goal are not bad things to do and that suggesting that is hardly something that should be responded to with hostility.9 -
I felt that I was responded to with hostility. And as mentioned before, I do eat back half my exercise calories.1
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