Paying attention vs. paying compliments

SarahRuth♥

Sarah, it depends on what you're eating. If you're eating lots of protein and veggies then your calorie count might seem low for how full you feel. It is calories in vs. calories out, but the things to remember is your BMR and TDEE.

Your body needs food to function. Base Metabolic Rate is what your body needs to function with zero activity. Add in the activity level for your average day and you get what is needed to do your basic functions and move around. Add exercise and you need that much more to keep the body's energy level up. The calorie goal that MFP gives you every morning has your defecit figured in. 500 per day for each pound you want to lose in one week. It assumes that you won't exercise. When you tell it you did, it adds those cals to your daily goal.

I have read a few books on weight loss and they all say eat MORE to lose weight... the exer cals. All the people on here saying that it's being debated don't ever cite a reliable source if they cite a source at all. I defer to the people who have written books about it based on their experience training thousands of clients as a professional personal trainer and not someone who only says that it is a myth and can't back it up. If you want to read the book I swear by, here are the review links:

http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/burn-the-fat-feed-the-muscle-complete-review.html

http://www.burnthefatblog.com/archives/2009/12/cheating_on_your_diet.php

I reccomend you read these also:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/3047-700-calories-a-day-and-not-losing

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

The person in the OP was not at a "defecit" like we are discussing here, but this was a defecit BELOW TDEE. That is headed toward ketosis. Karen Carpenter died in her thirties from eating so little and exercising her butt off. The body needs energy and it will take it from wherever is closest and that means the internal organs and muscle tissue. As I stated before, I defer to the professionals.

I actually understand most of that. I get that my body needs nutrition to keep going... and I don't starve myself. I just think we should listen more to our bodies signals rather than pushing it to do what we want it to. Like I said, yesterday I went over because I was crazy hungry. But today... I just wasn't hungry. I'm not going to force myself to eat when I'm not hungry because your research, or your professionals, tell you that I should have eaten more. Those 941 calories were enough for me today, based on what my body is actually telling me. Tomorrow may be a different story.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE food. Seriously. I used to eat just because I wanted to, no matter if I was hungry or not. I'm trying to learn to listen to the signals my body sends me. I believe that mother nature trumps "professionals". The professionals give me a basic guideline, that's about it...

runningneo122

I agree with you about listening to your body. I only eat as much as I need to feel full. Some days I'm 300 cals under but most days I'm within 30 - 40 of the goal. I have never said FORCE yourself to eat.

I believe that the person in the OP may not be being honest about the food and exercise in their log.

Self deception is a killer....literally. I've had friends think that their bad habits wouldn't kill them and they turned out to be wrong.

My concern is that people are self-defeating with their self-DIS-honesty.

This started out about blind praise and turned into the eat or don't eat exercise cals topic, yet again.

Lazyboy09

I think the thing to remember here is that there are guidelines that are to be thought of as best practices and these are what people such as Neo share with others because it is the best advice you can give to the majority of people that have a reason to be on this site.

There will always be outliers and anomalies, people that don't follow the guidelines and yet are able to produce great results working with their own biology, just as there are people that smoke and drink heavily daily and live to be 100 or more. It doesn't mean that smoking and drinking heavily daily is something that would be beneficial to most people, but for some it doesn't seem to be detrimental.

If your intake is well below what the majority of your peers uses and it works for you then consider yourself lucky for finding the solution that works best for your own goals. If your intake is well below what the majority of your peers uses and you aren't seeing results, then maybe you could give increasing it a shot, even if eating more calories does seem counter-intuitive to your goals at first.

SarahRuth♥

This started out about blind praise and turned into the eat or don't eat exercise cals topic, yet again.

Sorry for going off topic.

runningneo122

This started out about blind praise and turned into the eat or don't eat exercise cals topic, yet again.

Sorry for going off topic.

No need to apologize. Backinthenines was the one on that one. Good postings to read in this thread, though. Thanks everybody.