Anabolic diet with 1400 calories a day - is it sustainable?

Ishy451
Ishy451 Posts: 3 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi, I have a question about my diet.

I'm 5ft 6inch and currently weigh 205 lbs. I've been dieting since January and have lost around 50 lbs.

Recently, I've joined MyFitnessPal and have been paying more attention to my calorie intake across the day. These past few months my diet has been quite low calorie, high volume high protein. Here is my typical day:

Breakfast: porridge and chia seeds with a scoop of protein powder (400 cals)

Lunch/snack: usually a piece of fruit (100 calories)

Workout: 40 min HIIT followed by 20 mins circuits/resistance bands (I estimate it to be 600-700 calories burned)

Dinner: 4 eggs, 300g frozen veg and usually some fish or chicken on the side (700-800 calories)

Snack: protein shake (100 calories)

I also stand at my desk for several hours a day so more calories burned there.

This gives me a calorie intake of around 1400 calories. Having done my research it's leaving me a little bit concerned as it seems quite low. It's not as if I'm starving myself - I never feel hungry throughout other parts of the day with this structure. I think this is because the volume of my food is huge (especially breakfast, have the porridge with a litre of water) and the protein intake is decent (130g-170g).

However, my concerns just come with this low calorie intake. I've read about the problems with it being low, and I don't want to have done all this work just to then put weight on if I were to have let's say a cheat day. It was my birthday last week and I probably ate around 2300 calories (still did the workout) and put like half a pound back on. Further, when I'm 6 months down the line, I want to be able to maintain my weight without having to be so intense (e.g. not working out for an hour every day).

Apologies if I'm coming across like a bit of a rookie, but does anybody have any advice or knowledge for me?

Thank you

Replies

  • Ishy451
    Ishy451 Posts: 3 Member
    Yeah just checked and it seems that I should start off by upping it to 1800 calories - maybe by incorporating some more carbs like rice or fats like nuts?
  • snowflake954
    snowflake954 Posts: 8,400 Member
    Ishy451 wrote: »
    Yeah just checked and it seems that I should start off by upping it to 1800 calories - maybe by incorporating some more carbs like rice or fats like nuts?

    If you're logging your food on MFP, it's all figured out for you. If you look at the bottom of the food columns in your diary, it will give you your daily calories for carbs, protein, fat, and sugar. You can just try and hit those to start and then change them if you want to in the future. Many people just worry about hitting their protein goal, and let the rest fall where it may. Carbs give you energy, so for someone exercising, they are important.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,012 Member
    Ishy451 wrote: »
    Yeah just checked and it seems that I should start off by upping it to 1800 calories - maybe by incorporating some more carbs like rice or fats like nuts?

    Better plan. Still might not be enough, depending on exercise calories. If you set up your MFP profile as instructed (setting activity level based on job and daily life, NOT including exercise), you're supposed to eat back exercise calories on top of your base calorie goal. So, you'd eta that new and better 1800 *plus* the exercise calories

    I shouldn't comment, because I'm not male and your weight, plus probably I'm older (I'm around your height at 5'5', but female, 125 pounds, age 65), so my intuition is bad in your demographic zone . . . but 600-700 calories per hour sounds high-ish as an estimate, if you're relatively new to this type of thing. What's the nature of your HIIT, i.e., what actual thing(s) are you doing, at a high intensity interval pace?

    In your OP, you wrote:
    However, my concerns just come with this low calorie intake. I've read about the problems with it being low, and I don't want to have done all this work just to then put weight on if I were to have let's say a cheat day. It was my birthday last week and I probably ate around 2300 calories (still did the workout) and put like half a pound back on. Further, when I'm 6 months down the line, I want to be able to maintain my weight without having to be so intense (e.g. not working out for an hour every day).

    That half pound was surely water weight (from a bit more sodium and carbs than usual) and temporarily digestive contents on their route to becoming waste (can take 50+ hours for full transit). Your maintenance calories at sedentary ought to be in the low 2000s somewhere, at least, at your current size. You have to eat 3500 calories above maintenance to gain a pound, so 1750 above maintenance to gain a half pound. There's no bleepin' way 2300 calories is 1750 calories above your maintenance calories, especially once you factor in the exercise. Conclusion: It was water weight and food in transit, neither of which are fat, so they're not worth worrying about when they show up on the bodyweight scale. They'll drop off again when you go back to your normal routine.

    With a bit of experience, you'll learn to recognize misleading scale results, of which this was an example. Good read:

    https://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations

    It's your call, but I'd encourage you to settle into a happy exercise routine *before* it's time to maintain your goal weight. I found it extremely, extremely helpful to experiment, find sustainable long-term habits, and groove them in to be near-automatic, while I still had that cushion of a small deficit in the later stages of weight loss. (I'm in year 5+ of maintaining now, after previous decades of obesity). If you don't want to do an intense hour of exercise every day, consider not doing it. Exercise to some extent is a great thing for health, but it need not be some intense thing every day for basic health. (HIIT, generally, is over-rated anyway, as a daily exercise modality, IMO.)

    Best wishes!
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,389 MFP Moderator
    All good advice. And i certainly agree with a more sustainable approach.

    But as it relates to the anabolic diet. Its a named coined by Greg Douchette and his crew. It's a high protein diet which incorporates protein at each meal and promotes a flexibility in the diet. In general, their videos tend to have low calorie high protein meals. They also recommend calorie tracking to align to your stats.

    Overall, it's fairly solid advice.

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