A Nutritionist Once Told me...
LMBelladonna
Posts: 71 Member
A few years ago, I was referred by my General Practitioner to a nutritionist within our clinic (so, certified.) She was one of the most helpful nutritionists that I had been to and even helped me find more features that I had not used on MFP before!
As I was looking to reduce weight, she told me that the amount of calories that you eat per day essentially determines what your goal weight would be. Meaning, if you eat 1500 calories per day it equates to 150 lbs, 1600 cal/day = 160 lbs. and so on.
While this makes sense, I am curious if anyone else has been told this before?
As I was looking to reduce weight, she told me that the amount of calories that you eat per day essentially determines what your goal weight would be. Meaning, if you eat 1500 calories per day it equates to 150 lbs, 1600 cal/day = 160 lbs. and so on.
While this makes sense, I am curious if anyone else has been told this before?
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Replies
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No, and it's not accurate. Your calories for maintenance (which is what she's basically talking about) will be different based on activity and height and muscle mass (to some extent). Also, even assuming one is sedentary (which is not ideal), those numbers seem low except for shorter people.
I am about 130, and my maintenance is not 1300, and I lost down to 125 while eating around 1600 cals per day.23 -
No, and it's not accurate. Your calories for maintenance (which is what she's basically talking about) will be different based on activity and height and muscle mass (to some extent). Also, even assuming one is sedentary (which is not ideal), those numbers seem low except for shorter people.
I am about 130, and my maintenance is not 1300, and I lost down to 125 while eating around 1600 cals per day.
Yes ma'am. I'm 208 and maintain on 3000+ because of exercise and food choice. While using modifications like 10,1,2,14×bw can be a rough ball park, only self experimentation tells the whole truth.6 -
Maintenance plus higher activity levels I can understand needing more. However if you are working on reducing weight...0
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LMBelladonna wrote: »Maintenance plus higher activity levels I can understand needing more. However if you are working on reducing weight...
I would suggest tracking and weighing everything, I mean everything you eat for a few weeks. Don't restrict. Eat how you always would. Seehow the medians of your weight is, then subtract your deficit.7 -
psychod787 wrote: »No, and it's not accurate. Your calories for maintenance (which is what she's basically talking about) will be different based on activity and height and muscle mass (to some extent). Also, even assuming one is sedentary (which is not ideal), those numbers seem low except for shorter people.
I am about 130, and my maintenance is not 1300, and I lost down to 125 while eating around 1600 cals per day.
Yes ma'am. I'm 208 and maintain on 3000+ because of exercise and food choice. While using modifications like 10,1,2,14×bw can be a rough ball park, only self experimentation tells the whole truth.
Yeah, I'm basically the same weight and like you maintain at around 3,000 calories.3 -
I've not heard this one before. There are very active 6'5" men who can maintain their dream weight with 4000 cal aday and sedentary 5'6" women who can lose with 2000 cal aday. There's so many variations and variables. Our mileage will always vary but this really doesn't make any sense to me. It's similar to sizing. A size 16 weighs 160 lbs. A size 14 weighs 140 lbs and a size 10 weighs 110 lbs and a size 8 weighs 80 lbs and a size 2 weighs 20 lbs.8
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Theoldguy1 wrote: »psychod787 wrote: »No, and it's not accurate. Your calories for maintenance (which is what she's basically talking about) will be different based on activity and height and muscle mass (to some extent). Also, even assuming one is sedentary (which is not ideal), those numbers seem low except for shorter people.
I am about 130, and my maintenance is not 1300, and I lost down to 125 while eating around 1600 cals per day.
Yes ma'am. I'm 208 and maintain on 3000+ because of exercise and food choice. While using modifications like 10,1,2,14×bw can be a rough ball park, only self experimentation tells the whole truth.
Yeah, I'm basically the same weight and like you maintain at around 3,000 calories.
I'm 6'3" average 15k steps and lift 4 days a week. When I was 180 my maintenance was 3400. That's when I was weighing and measuring everything I ate. I have let myself drift up to 210ish 18% bf. Have maintained that on roughly 3700 cal for the past 2 months. OP. If I listened to your nutritionist, I would be ina deficit. We are all n=1.6 -
psychod787 wrote: »Theoldguy1 wrote: »psychod787 wrote: »No, and it's not accurate. Your calories for maintenance (which is what she's basically talking about) will be different based on activity and height and muscle mass (to some extent). Also, even assuming one is sedentary (which is not ideal), those numbers seem low except for shorter people.
I am about 130, and my maintenance is not 1300, and I lost down to 125 while eating around 1600 cals per day.
Yes ma'am. I'm 208 and maintain on 3000+ because of exercise and food choice. While using modifications like 10,1,2,14×bw can be a rough ball park, only self experimentation tells the whole truth.
Yeah, I'm basically the same weight and like you maintain at around 3,000 calories.
I'm 6'3" average 15k steps and lift 4 days a week. When I was 180 my maintenance was 3400. That's when I was weighing and measuring everything I ate. I have let myself drift up to 210ish 18% bf. Have maintained that on roughly 3700 cal for the past 2 months. OP. If I listened to your nutritionist, I would be ina deficit. We are all n=1.
I actually probably eat just as much now as I did when I was obese. I was 255 at my largest and over 40% BF. I'm like 18 to 20% BF now at 195. I eat "cleaner", if you want to call it that -- I'm just more aware of what goes into my mouth and how many calories it is -- and I workout an hour a day, six days a week and my "off day" is very active as well.
I'd guess I eat 3000 calories a day now. That's roughly what I ate before. Take out the 600 to 700 calories in an hour (I've worked up to this level over years of cardio) and that's nearly 1 lb a week. It took me like 8 years to get obese, so it's likely I eat more now than before, assuming just 500 or 600 calories a day in exercise, which is a low estimate for me.
I've been in maintenance for 8 or 9 years. When I lost, my budget was 1750 and I was losing around a half a pound a week then, also very active then (but not nearly as fit as I am now).2 -
Not true for me. One size does not fit all when it comes to weight loss. Take someone at the beginning of their weight loss journey with a large amount to lose: they can choose 1 or 2 pounds per week, say 1500 or 2000. Depends on how fast or slow they want to go and how much they want to cut back their food. That person would thus have a goal weight of 150 or 200. Kind of a big leap there.LMBelladonna wrote: »A few years ago, I was referred by my General Practitioner to a nutritionist within our clinic (so, certified.) She was one of the most helpful nutritionists that I had been to and even helped me find more features that I had not used on MFP before!
As I was looking to reduce weight, she told me that the amount of calories that you eat per day essentially determines what your goal weight would be. Meaning, if you eat 1500 calories per day it equates to 150 lbs, 1600 cal/day = 160 lbs. and so on.
While this makes sense, I am curious if anyone else has been told this before?
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That is downright awful! I am 115 pounds but my TDEE is 2100 to 2400 calories per day on average. Even if I wanted to lose weight, eating 1150 calories or less would make me burn out. I don't think I could last more than a day. I get that sometimes people in the weight loss industry try to simplify weight loss like this, especially to ensure their clients eat at a deficit, but I feel like this is why so many people are unsuccessful with long term weight loss. Slow and steady wins the race!8
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I am 58, female, 5’7” averaging 132 for the past month or two.
I’m very active, and do weight training.
I lost weight steadily and reliably. I started at 1490 and it came off too fast, increased incrementally, finally reaching 2300, at the suggestions of dietician and trainer. I lost weight all those.
I still try to keep my daily still at 2300, as I’m slowly learning that at that level I can handle a heavy day once or twice a week and maintain. I figure my real maintenance averages out to about 2600. (In other words, will “bank” for tortilla chips and chocolate chip cookies!)
Again I’m probably unusually active (though not compared to some of the MFP friends who show up in my feed!) so YMMV.7 -
Not true at all, in my experience. I weigh about 110, but I need about 2,200 a day to maintain that. Your lifestyle and exercise are going to make a HUGE difference in how many calories you need each day.9
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My cousin who is a university trained nutritionist told me two women of the same height, age and activity level could eat the same thing and still be at different weights.7
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No it doesn't make sense in the slightest.
What awful advice you got - they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves! That they might be nice and helpful doesn't excuse such ignorance.
With access to all the research driven tools freely available on the internet to get a personalised estimate for your particular situation that is inexcusable laziness on their part. By chance it might work out for some people but there's huge numbers of people it will be miles off. Why wouldn't you make allowances for activity, exercise, age, gender etc. when it's easy to do.
Sacrificing a chicken and measuring the arterial spray might by pure chance get some people a reasonable estimate and this method is hardly any better.
As I maintain on 3,500 - 4,000 cals in summer it's funny that I only weigh 168lbs instead of 350 - 400lbs.
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Total coincidence BUT I'm currently 139 and MFP gave me a calorie goal of 1390
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That's an over-simplification....and that algorithm for weight loss is not one I've seen before.
I'm 135 and maintain around 2000 calories per day. Age, activity level, body composition all play a role in the calories needed to maintain/lose/gain.
I have had success using MFP for weight loss/maintenance/gain. The best advice I can give you is to start with the algorithm that MFP uses and adjust as needed. Use MFP's suggested calorie goal, follow that guideline for a few weeks, evaluate your weight loss, determine if you need to eat more or less, adjust calorie goal for a few more weeks, re evaluate.4 -
I'm 122 lbs. and my maintenance calories without any activity are about 1600. Since I do walk, run, etc. every day, my actual calories are quite a bit higher.2
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God, I hope not. Because, even with having to gain, to get to 105 without extra activity* would mean eating 1050 calories and that's only 30 above my bmr. And also only 1050 calories.
And that just ain't gonna happen.
*my sedentary is truly sedentary because I have a desk job and I'm lazy so if I don't take my purposeful walks, I'd be back to sitting on the couch watching tv and eating all night.3 -
It is obvious not accurate for everyone. I felt it was good advise for the OP. For average height women, if not counting exercise, the number is about right. Also I felt the important take away in the nutritionist advise is to think about maintenance calorie from the beginning. Do not set a goal for an idea weight because you like that number or you see it on a chart somewhere. Set your goal by determining the calorie budget you can live on relatively comfortable for long time, so it is sustainable. Say your goal weight is 140lbs, you lost weight to 150lbs successfully with 1500 calorie, but further reducing calorie make you miserable, or doing lots of exercise is not your thing, then just stop and maintain at 150lbs and find other way to improve your health and well being.1
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I remember hearing about this formula back in the 80s, but I thought we'd progressed beyond it by now. As others have pointed out, this would put many of us at a dangerously low level of consumption. My TDEE averages around 2400 lately (I've gotten a lot more active since I've been working from home) and that formula would have me consuming 1140. Now, I recognize that I am a lot more active than a lot of women, but it's also below my BMR. Nope.7
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skinnyjingbb wrote: »It is obvious not accurate for everyone. I felt it was good advise for the OP. For average height women, if not counting exercise, the number is about right. Also I felt the important take away in the nutritionist advise is to think about maintenance calorie from the beginning. Do not set a goal for an idea weight because you like that number or you see it on a chart somewhere. Set your goal by determining the calorie budget you can live on relatively comfortable for long time, so it is sustainable. Say your goal weight is 140lbs, you lost weight to 150lbs successfully with 1500 calorie, but further reducing calorie make you miserable, or doing lots of exercise is not your thing, then just stop and maintain at 150lbs and find other way to improve your health and well being.
Fair assessment! The take away being- if I want to lose weight, here is what I should calorically shoot for to do so. At that time, I was a sedentary woman weighing in at about 200 lbs. I am 5'7".
In short, "no more slamming 2500 calories of complete crap and sitting on my tail." Lol. Now I am lightly active and tracking macros/calories in MFP carefully. Let's see what the future holds!1 -
Not even for weight loss. I'm 5'5', age 64, lost most of 50ish pounds (183, which was class 1 obese, to 120s - 129 today) at 1400-1600 (before exercise). I'm sedentary outside of exercise (3-4k steps daily), and am losing ultra-slowly now at 1850 calories plus exercise. I maintain in the low end of the 2000s plus exercise, at current weight.
Most people cluster close to averages for their characteristics. Some don't, for reasons that aren't always obvious - for sure, not just activity level alone as the difference.
I've seen things that said people ought to lose weight at 10, 11, 12 (or somesuch) calories per pound of goal weight, which is pretty much equivalent to what your nutritionist said. It's still IMO a ridiculously inaccurate rule of thumb, when - or so it appears - it's supposed to cover everyone from a bricklayer's apprentice who carries hods of bricks all day and trains for triathlons for fun, to a reference librarian who mostly sits at a desk all day and knits for fun - male, female, etc.
Once upon a time, there weren't online calculators that would give *much* more personalized estimates than that. Now there are. Even in the bad old days, those rules of thumb were sub-ideal. Now they're ridiculous. (And I say that as someone for whom the calculators are often very materially wrong.)
An calorie needs estimate is a starting point, not a definitive answer. (No, not even from your fitness tracker.)7 -
I would see a Registered dietitian, not a nutritionist. Anyone can take a 2 day "certification" and call themselves a nutritionist, but Registered Dietitians actually go to college and get a Masters Degree in nutrition.12
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skinnyjingbb wrote: »It is obvious not accurate for everyone. I felt it was good advise for the OP. For average height women, if not counting exercise, the number is about right. Also I felt the important take away in the nutritionist advise is to think about maintenance calorie from the beginning. Do not set a goal for an idea weight because you like that number or you see it on a chart somewhere. Set your goal by determining the calorie budget you can live on relatively comfortable for long time, so it is sustainable. Say your goal weight is 140lbs, you lost weight to 150lbs successfully with 1500 calorie, but further reducing calorie make you miserable, or doing lots of exercise is not your thing, then just stop and maintain at 150lbs and find other way to improve your health and well being.
When I was overweight, I would have absolutely freaked if you told me I needed to be on 1,100 calories a day to be at the weight I wanted. I never would have gotten started. But here I am at 110ish pounds and I never had to eat anywhere near as low as 1,100 to get there or maintain it. For many people, this is going to result in an artificially low level of calories.
It's either going to discourage people from even trying or cause people to eat less than they need.10 -
skinnyjingbb wrote: »It is obvious not accurate for everyone. I felt it was good advise for the OP. For average height women, if not counting exercise, the number is about right. Also I felt the important take away in the nutritionist advise is to think about maintenance calorie from the beginning. Do not set a goal for an idea weight because you like that number or you see it on a chart somewhere. Set your goal by determining the calorie budget you can live on relatively comfortable for long time, so it is sustainable. Say your goal weight is 140lbs, you lost weight to 150lbs successfully with 1500 calorie, but further reducing calorie make you miserable, or doing lots of exercise is not your thing, then just stop and maintain at 150lbs and find other way to improve your health and well being.
Frankly, I don't even accept the premise that we can all predict in advance whether we could maintain comfortably on calorie level X, when we're far from the body weight that calorie level would support.
I know that there are many complex factors involved (adaptive thermogenesis, hunger/appetite hormone settling issues, etc.). Still, if a person can make it through a potentially challenging early phase of sensible maintenance, some of that stuff does (IMO) tend to settle down a bit to a new normal.
I'm doubtful that the thinner person will *necessarily* feel dissatisfied with her lower number of calories, from a hunger/cravings standpoint, at least, because the smaller body requires fewer calories. That requirement is not the only influence on appetite, but surely it's one of them.
I 100% understand that some people in maintenance *are* unsatisfied with their calorie goal for a variety of reasons.
All I'm saying is that I don't think those aspects are predictable from the get-go (and I suspect that in a limited number of cases, the expectation of dissatisfaction has at least a small role in creating the dissatisfaction).
Fortunately, there's no need to figure out ultimate goal weight up front, so some of those issues can work themselves out along the way. The caveat is that deciding firmly, later in weight loss, that a certain calorie goal is the minimum satisfying amount, and stopping loss, may still not have full advantage of knowing where hormones/NEAT/BMR and other influences will settle, after some of the post-diet effects work out . . . and those effects will land a little differently, I suspect, depending on the bodyweight chosen. We don't know what we don't know.
Also, the drama in the numbers isn't always that huge, IMO. Sailrabbit's sedentary average estimate for me at 120 pounds is 1571. At 130, a fairly meaningful weight difference, it's 1664, 93 calories different - less than half a serving of peanut butter daily, or about 2.5 miles (5000-ish steps) of walking (conservative net calorie estimate at .3 x Weight x miles, at the lower weight).
For people who are even moderately off from "calculator" calorie needs estimates, that 93 calories may not even be real. For people further from average, it might be ridiculously far off, and a poor basis for decision-making at starting weight.
(Personal example, more detail: I'll continue using Sailrabbit, although it's sedentary multiplier is a little different concept from MFP, because TDEE vs. NEAT. I've been losing very slowly for several months now at a pre-exercise calorie goal of 1850, from upper 130s to upper 120s bodyweight. Best guess at pre-exercise maintenance, in the stay-at-home pandemic era, is 2000-2100 at around 130 pounds, not 1664 . . . and I thought my "metabolism was slow" when I was obese, because I was very athletically active for over a decade, eating mostly healthy foods, and still stayed obese! I was wrong.).
Naturally, I'm biased by that, into thinking that all of this is not as predictable or deterministic as some (possibly nearer-average) people think.
This prompts a question about what I'd suggest, rather than setting goal weight based on presumed satisfying calorie level, I guess. Personally, I think an experimental approach is about the best we can do, and even that has pitfalls.
There's no reason we need to have a firm goal weight in mind at the start of weight loss. In the MFP world, the goal weight setting has literally no effect on the calorie goal MFP will give you. It asks for a goal weight so it can give you supposedly helpful progress updates and "attagirl" type feedback along the way. You can change it 87 times along the way, and the only effect might be that if you re-run guided setup when you do that, you'll trigger MFP to re-evaluate your calorie goal based on then-current weight sooner than it might have done that normally. Goal weight doesn't matter, until we reach it, as a practical matter: The process is the same, no matter the goal, as long as goal is below current weight. Goal weight just tells you when to stop having a calorie deficit, that's it.
My suggestion: Sure, have a starting goal, for your own motivation. Be conservative, be aggressive, whatever suits you motivationally. As you go through the process, and get closer to that provisional goal, you'll get a better idea how you'll need to eat, how you'll feel, how you'll look. You can reconsider then, with more information. You can even reconsider once you get into maintenance that weight X is too high and you could live happily on fewer calories (or more activity, or a combo) . . . or that weight X is unsustainably difficult, after a fair trial. You can decide at any point, as long as you keep your hands on the steering wheel.
P.S. If it makes any difference in considering the basis of this theorizing, I'm in year 4+ of maintenance, after 3 decades or so of obesity previously. In 2016, I maintained for 6 months or so at my initial/final 😉 adjusted goal of 120 pounds (around BMI 20), then started drifting upward, not so much continuously/gradually but rather in maintain-then-increase cycles, hitting around 138 (BMI 23) in late 2019. Since October, I've been intentionally drifting ultra-slowly down again, to 129 (BMI 21.5) today. (I'm 5'5", age 64, still slowly losing while generally thinking of myself as in maintenance.)
TL;DR: What one thinks, at starting weight, about the satisfaction from a thinner self's calorie goal, is not a very sound way to set a goal weight, IMO. I'd go with a more experimental approach, deciding when closer to maintenance, and even then keeping an open mind in maintenance about where the balance is between bodyweight satisfaction, food-consumption satisfaction, and activity level satisfaction. It's complicated, and none of these decisions are irrevocable.6 -
musicfan68 wrote: »I would see a Registered dietitian, not a nutritionist. Anyone can take a 2 day "certification" and call themselves a nutritionist, but Registered Dietitians actually go to college and get a Masters Degree in nutrition.
I agree with seeing a college-trained professional with a Master’s degree. I just want to point out that these forums are used by thousands of people from all across the world, these professionals are called a different name in different places, and not everyone speaks English as their native language.
I don’t, and I didn’t learn that what I would refer to as ”nutritional therapist” was actually equivalent to Registered Dietician until earlier this year when I mentioned seeing one here on the forums, and got that exact comment. I saw the kind with the Master’s degree, and certified and supervised by the government health officials. I just didn’t know what the American equivalent was called.6 -
Never heard of it2
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Nutritionists are not certified. Registered Dieticians are. What she told you is not true.0
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The Nutritionist may have been referring to your specific metrics. So, perhaps she/he wasn't saying anyone who eats x calories will drop down to y weight. But, given your activity levels, height, etc... you will have a number of calories that will maintain a certain weight and your body will adjust.1
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QuilterInVA wrote: »Nutritionists are not certified. Registered Dieticians are. What she told you is not true.
It really depends on where you are, but I agree one should be aware of the qualifications of anyone one goes to for nutrition advice. It's possible that the person in question doesn't actually believe that everyone 150 maintains on 1500 calories and the like, but was giving it as a basic starting point for weight loss because she didn't think the patient (or whatever) actually was interested in a more accurate explanation -- one issue I have is dumbing down information -- but it is so oversimplified and likely to be wrong, even as a weight loss number, that I would be skeptical of that person's advice.
Anyway, here there are certified nutritionists (also referred to as dietitian-nutritionists), and uncertified "nutritionists" are not legally able to practice nutrition services.
"To qualify for licensure in Illinois as a nutritionist, candidates must possess one of the following:
A bachelor’s or post-bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), in one of the following majors:
Dietetics
Foods and nutrition
Food systems management
Human nutrition
Nutrition education
A bachelor’s or post-bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university in an equivalent major course of study recommended by the Board and approved the Department.
To receive a recommendation from the Board and an approval by the Department, the bachelor’s or post-bachelor’s degree must include the following coursework (and meet a number of other requirements):
At least 9 semester hours in biological sciences (must include human anatomy, physiology, and microbiology)
At least 6 semester hours in chemistry (must include biochemistry or the equivalent)
At least 6 semester hours in behavioral sciences (such as educational psychology, psychology, counseling, or sociology)
At least 6 semester hours in management (must include institutional management, food service management, or the equivalent)
At least 25 semester hours in foods and nutrition, which must include:
Diet therapy, clinical nutrition, medical dietetics, or the equivalent
Nutrition through the life cycle, applied nutrition, advanced human nutrition, or the equivalent
Food science or the equivalent
Candidates for nutritionist licenses in Illinois must also complete at least 900 hours of experience with a 5-year time frame. The experience must have been with a supervisor who meets one the following requirements:
A registered dietician with the Commission on Dietetic Registration
A licensed dietician nutritionist
A practitioner who holds a license in nutrition care
An individual who holds a doctoral degree from a regionally accredited college or university with a major course of study in human nutrition, food and nutrition, food systems management, dietetics, or nutrition education
An individual who obtained a doctoral degree outside of the U.S. and has his or her degree validated as equivalent to a U.S. doctoral degree."4
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