Having difficulty with calories

allthatjas515

Hi, I am relatively new to MFP. I consulted with a dietician in June about why it is so difficult for me to lose weight. She said I was not eating enough. I was consuming about 1100 calories per day. She gave me information & told me to eat 1200-1500 calories per day. I eat clean & healthy but my diet is limited due to health issues. I plan & log every day but I am finding difficulty reaching 1200. If I plan what I consider to be a good day where I am satisfied with my meals, I still don't get to 1200 & I am adding foods just to get to a number. I am 70, this is not my first rodeo. I was lifetime Weight Watchers for years. Any thoughts? I have protein @ 30%, fat @25% & carbs @45% Thank you

AnnPT77

If the dietitian suggested you eat 1200-1500, I'd suggest that it's a good idea to give that a fair trial.

Are there foods you can eat (and like) that are a little more calorie dense, but that you don't find over-filling? I don't know your limitations, but some common generic choices would be nuts, nut butters, avocados, seeds, olive oil, cold-water fatty fish (high in Omega-3s).

One concern is that if your calorie intake is low, you may not be getting ideal nutrition, even if you're hitting the right percents. In particular, be sure you're getting that 90 or so grams of protein daily, and 33g or so of fats. (Protein and fats contain "essential nutrients" our bodies can't manufacture out of any other intake. Carbs are more flexible.)

If you hit reasonable minimum gram goals for protein/fats, and eat some varied, colorful veggies/fruits for micronutrients and fiber, but still come up short on calories, I personally think it's also OK to have some small calorie-dense treat food (something you can moderate).

IMO, it's OK to add food "just to get to a number" . . . I think it would be a good idea to at least run that experiment for a month or two, minimum, and see where weight settles out. Calories are the foundation of thriving, truly - not the whole story, but the essential base.

I'm not saying 1200-1500 is the right number for you - it's hard to say, but that's what your dietitian (an actual expert) told you, so if it were me, I'd try it for a fair-length trial.

Our bodies tend to figure out how to limp along on too-few calories if we stay there for a while: They can't tell a diet from a famine, so they adapt - slow things down - to keep us alive. I figure anyone who loses on higher calories is winning, because I think that's a path to actually thriving (more robust health).

Just for context, I'm not some blithe 20-something suggesting this. I'm 68F, so in a close demographic to you. I tend to have unusually high calorie needs for women our age, I admit: I lost most of my weight on 1400-1600 plus carefully-estimated exercise calories, and maintain on 1850+exercise calories at (today) 135 pounds and 5'5".

Best wishes: I'm cheering for you to succeed!

allthatjas515

@AnnPT77 I truly appreciate this.

Blueberries59

@allthatjas515 - First, @AnnPT77, above, is a long-timer and I believe her very quite knowledgeable and super fit. Me, I'm a repeat offender winging it with a loose plan.

As a comparison and double check you can get your calories online. I found my calorie total daily energy expenditure on a TDEE calculator website. I'm 65, sit at a desk all day, but get regular daily exercise. I happen to know my body fat from the Y's InBody machine. So I plugged in my data, (65",138 lbs., and 33% BF ), chose moderate exercise (being 3to4 days of exercise, but that was the best fit). It gave me a daily expenditure of 1978 calories to maintain. From there, just divide 3500 (appx calories in a pound) by the number of days you're willing to wait to lose one pound in order to get your daily deficit, and then subtract that number from your total. In my case I want to lose one pound every 10 days, giving me a deficit of 350 per day, and a daily calorie goal of 1628. In my case this amount of calories includes my exercise. I don't add exercise points. I've been at it for a couple of months and losing an average of a 1.9 lbs every 10 days so I'm ahead of the game. That includes the early wins. I imagine it will taper off.

1978 TDEE - (3500/10 days) = 1628 Daily calories

I say all this, not to doubt your professional registered dietitian, but to encourage you to eat your due. After all, if a 60-something desk jockey can lose at 1600+ calories, 1200 sounds chintzy. Also of note, the calculator awards a much higher number of calories as your BF% goes down (therefore lean% goes up), even at a lower weight, which is a real incentive to get some exercise and perk up that appetite.

With my new clean eating mantra, some days it is hard to get to that number, so I have a handful of favorites to work into the daily planning, be it snack or meal add-ins: chia seeds, avocado, half a banana or apple dipped in a dap of almond butter, slices of chicken breast, sun-dried tomatoes, plain Greek yogurt as topping (like on chili or Mexican) or with fruit , roasted Brussels, legumes. These are my nibble foods. I'm afraid to add in a cookie or chocolate as it might open the flood gates. You'll have your own likes and limitations.

Good luck. Check out the discussion group, "Just Give Me Ten Days" (currently on Round 275), as it is a lively bunch with a variety of joys and struggles.

Oh, one more thought. I, too, am a lapsed WW Lifetimer. The point system had me starving and then got so complicated. I ended up on MFP just to figure out what to eat and was loosing at 1600 calories back in the day.

allthatjas515

@Blueberries59 I thank you for this. Based on this formula, my daily calories would be 1250 which is exactly what the dietician said. It's just a struggle. If I could exercise more, I'd be good.

singsongsmile

@AnnPT77 @Blueberries59 @allthatjas515 I'm in a similar boat. Rapid weight loss due to stress. Forgot to eat. Food had no taste. Now that I'm eating again, I'm still not eating enough. I'm no longer concentrating on low fat foods or diet foods. I'm just trying to make sure I EAT food. Not worried about whether the milk I have is low fat or whole milk. Doesn't matter right now. I take a few exercise classes (strength training & line dance. I also walk a lot.) Am concerned about sagging skin (a friend and I both of similar age/60's and rapid weight loss have both noticed the extra skin we now have.) I am down 4 sizes from a year ago. The first 15# I lost was on purpose. The 17# was stress. Just joining back up to MFP this morning and after putting in my info, the website recommends I eat 1480 calories per day in order to gain weight. I will log in my foods to see where I'm at the end of a day, calorie-wise. Is there a MFP group that focuses on these diet issues (getting the right amount of nutrition/calories) during our senior years?

AnnPT77

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singsongsmile wrote: »

@AnnPT77 @Blueberries59 @allthatjas515 I'm in a similar boat. Rapid weight loss due to stress. Forgot to eat. Food had no taste. Now that I'm eating again, I'm still not eating enough. I'm no longer concentrating on low fat foods or diet foods. I'm just trying to make sure I EAT food. Not worried about whether the milk I have is low fat or whole milk. Doesn't matter right now. I take a few exercise classes (strength training & line dance. I also walk a lot.) Am concerned about sagging skin (a friend and I both of similar age/60's and rapid weight loss have both noticed the extra skin we now have.) I am down 4 sizes from a year ago. The first 15# I lost was on purpose. The 17# was stress. Just joining back up to MFP this morning and after putting in my info, the website recommends I eat 1480 calories per day in order to gain weight. I will log in my foods to see where I'm at the end of a day, calorie-wise. Is there a MFP group that focuses on these diet issues (getting the right amount of nutrition/calories) during our senior years?

One thing I'd say, as someone who lost weight (around 50 pounds) at 59-60: I had more loose skin when I reached goal weight than I did once I was several months into maintenance. It kept shrinking at least into year 2 of maintenance, maybe longer . . . but it got harder to tell after that because the rate of shrinkage gradually slowed. It's pretty much the case that loose skin really only starts shrinking once there's enough fat lost from an area that remaining fat is no longer conspiring with gravity to keep that area stretched.

I'm not saying I have zero loose skin now (at 68, year 8 of maintenance). I have some. But it's much less than it was when I first reached goal. I posted about it around year 4 of maintenance, FWIW. (https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10809632/loose-skin-50lbs-loss-at-60-4-years-maintenance#latest)

To answer your actual specific question: I'm unaware of any group or thread focused on nutrition for seniors. Personally, I'm not sure I'd enjoy such a thread, even though nutrition is important to me. There are so many "food religions" here on MFP that have pockets of true believers who will proselytize, and always some percolating level of belief in the latest blogosphere myths, or a tendency to major in the minors. It can get tiresome.

Personally, I think that the majority of nutrition, the most important points, are somewhat generic. There are some tweaks for seniors, but (with one exception) I don't feel like there's much point in focusing on the tweaks until the more general basics that apply to everyone (the foundations) are in place. The one exception is protein: I believe protein timing is more important for seniors than for younger people.

https://www.jamda.com/article/S1525-8610(13)00326-5/fulltext

Other than that, get enough protein, enough healthy fats, and IMO eat a good lot of varied, colorful veggies and fruits for micronutrients and fiber - ideally getting all those things mostly from whole foods - and most of the bases will be covered. Maybe bonus points for pro- and pre-biotic foods, reasonable Omega-3/Omega-6 balance, and that sort of thing. (But that stuff applies for all ages, IMO.)

At all ages, the calories question is individual. I don't know our relative sizes, and in one sense it doesn't matter. You are eating 1480 calories to gain weight now. I'm eating around 2100 or so to maintain weight (5'5", 130s pounds). You are struggling to eat enough. I need to manage my hedonistic inclinations in order to avoid gaining weight. In theory, we need fewer calories as we age, but the actual metabolic decline is fairly slow for quite a while, and doesn't really start happening until our 60s.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8370708/

Some of that decline in calorie needs is intertwined with the tendency to lose muscle mass as we age. To some extent, that loss is a choice: Strength training remains helpful lifelong. Response to it does decline with age, but the difference it can make can be very material. It's not just about muscle burning more calories at rest: That's pretty trivial. I think it's more about the fact that when we're stronger and fitter, movement is easier and more fun, so we do more of it. Moving burns calories. I know sadly many people my age who've long since given up on being active, to their own detriment. I know a few who did exactly the opposite, and have benefitted big time. I know which of those I want to be more like when I grow up.

Best wishes!