i really need to get this off my chest...

jAdorelife

I really don't mean to offend anyone, but there is something that has been working my last nerve. this ongoing arguement over eating back burned cals is out of control. when you put in how much weight you wanted to lose upon registering for this site, MFP automatically set you up with a calorie deficit. (the difference between what you consume & what you burn) i've lost over 50lbs & the only working out i've done is the occasional (& i mean maybe 10 times in the last 3 months) run or weight training to tone. & i've done so by EATING MY CALORIES & EATING WHAT I BURN.

if there wasn't a deficit built into the daily intake goal & it simply said eat your BMR (amount you burn naturally) then there would be no need to eat back burned cals because they would be creating the deficit instead of adding to it. while i know it's tempting to burn 1500 cals a day & then not even bother to make the minimum goal of 1200 it's absolutely ridiculous. the reason water helps you to lose weight is because by putting more water into your body, you're telling it "i got this, go ahead & release excess water cause i'm going to be intelligent & drink more" it works the same with calories, when you eat atleast 1200 after subtracting the burned cals you're telling your body "go ahead & burn this & some fat because i'm going to keep eating"

on the other hand when you drop cals & burn more than you can consume you're telling your body "we don't have enough food for me to eat" & it beings storing fat for later use. now while you'll still lose weight because your body will have to burn something for energy if won't be at the highest rate possible.

now if you burn 1500 cals one day a week & place it properly in a calorie cycling routine & don't eat them back then you'll be alright because your metabolism doesn't catch on after just one day...but after 36 hours it will begin to slow down.

i love mfp, but seeing some of the things people are doing & hearing all the reasons why it's intelligent to burn twice as many calories as you're consuming in one day & continuing like that 6 & 7 days a week makes me sick. i don't want to offend anyone, but at the same time i'm not going to sit here and say good job torturing your body! because the reason you don't feel hungry isn't because your full, it's because your body is not functioning correctly. it's the same idea as your body getting cold when your going into heat stroke.

i reccomend that before you jump into a weight loss plan you either go see a doctor, get a personal tranier or educate yourself. because the way you lose weight determines if you keep it off or not & that's why 95% of people that lose weight gain it back.

i apologize if my language is offensive, but i find the lack of education on a topic as crucial to long term health when it's so easy to obtain ridiculous.



****EDIT*****
right after posting this i saw someone say "if we ate the # of cals we burn we'll stay the same" YOU BURN CALORIES BREATHING SO WORKING OUT LIKE A MAD MAN & THEN SAYING OH I BURNED 1500 SO I'LL EAT 300 TO LOSE WEIGHT IS THE DUMBEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE!

look at it this way if you had only $100 & you wanted to buy something, but didn't know when you would get more money again, would you spend it? probably not, but if you knew you were going to get another $100 tomorrow, you'd be more willing to let go & spend it......that's how your body looks at fat..

afolmar

Very well said...

sandram82

Well said... thats all I can say!!

Meggie_pooh

well said! and it helped me understand it better too :0)

darrenw74

Couldn't agree more.

I wish there was a way to mod up posts like you can on sites like slashdot.

emalay

Like!

katacha999

Wish this site had a "like" button... I like what you said!

bzmom

timidt

very well said

wiggleroom

You're a long way from being offensive! Well said.

My only concern is whether or not MFP is correct in how much it thinks I'm burning. Since I assume they're off, I aim to be under what they suggest by about 100 calories.

This weekend, I bought an HRM so I can be more confident, and EAT!

Here's my pet peeve: watching people eat totally bizarre things, or in totally bizarre patterns (starve at breakfast, gorge at lunch). I think we assume that we're supposed to suffer/eat abnormally in order to lose weight. What we forget is that our OLD habits, that made us unhealthy, are what's abnormal. Our bodies are designed (by a brilliant and loving Creator!) to be in shape if we eat and move NORMALLY.

ChellieIrish

Very well said :drinker:

kjensen15

look at it this way if you had only $100 & you wanted to buy something, but didn't know when you would get more money again, would you spend it? probably not, but if you knew you were going to get another $100 tomorrow, you'd be more willing to let go & spend it......that's how your body looks at fat..

I LOVE this analogy!

jAdorelife

thank you, thank you everyone! i hope this helped anyone that's new to weight loss because i know i had to do a lot of research to understand how my body works & i'm a nursing major so i really should have known enough already hahaha

backinthenines

I think so far this has been the most balanced, scientific and informative thread on the subject.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/135858-the-1200-calorie-starvation-mode-myth

To further start aggressive threads on the subject will serve nothing but drive two camps further into their respective corners with no willingness to listen to all sides of the argument.

RunConquerCelebrate

Thank you for posting this is really good information, It took me a while to figure out how this site worked I had it all wrong. Now I always try to eat at least 1200 or more calories on the days that I exercise.

ohnuts14

lol! i don't know if you read my latest blog but i just wrote one about this. but, for the opposing argument haha. what you said makes sense, it's just hard for me to wrap my head around it. i think i'd be more willing to try it if i could find other articles and studies backing that MFP article up, because i couldn't find anything. I mean, just because i couldn't find anything doesn't mean it's not true, i may just not be looking in the right places. if you have anything for me that would be wonderful! but until i find something, anythinggg to support it, i'm really afraid to try it, just because i have been having success following my 1600 cal diet. I mean, i haven't quite been making it to 1600 everyday but i've been getting close and i've been losing weight. i asked my doctors about it and they said it was all bogus and not to do it. they could be wrong and simply stuck in their ways, sometimes it takes a while before something like this is widely accepted. right now it's not but they may realize otherwise. but i need more than the MFP article to convince me to do it. i'm really glad it's working for you though!

jAdorelife

http://weightloss.about.com/od/eatsmart/a/blcalintake.htm

this quote is from the second page of that article..

"Lose at a Healthy Rate

A healthy weight loss goal is to lose .5 to 2 pounds per week. Losing more than 2 pounds per week will mean the weight is less likely to stay off permanently. Never cut back to fewer than 1,200 daily calories without medical supervision." ...... "Experts agree that it's easier to exercise than to cut the same number of calories that exercise shaves off. In other words, it's just plain easier for us to be a little more active than to do without more food to achieve the same calorie reduction."

it also says in the article that 500 cals a day is one lb a week. therefore, everyone that has a 1200 cal daily goal & a 1000 cal deficit built into their food diary to lose 2lbs a week should be eating back their burned cals.

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/calorie-intake-to-lose-weight.php

a quote from this article...

"If you want to lose fat, a useful guideline for lowering your calorie intake is to reduce your calories by at least 500, but not more than 1000 below your maintenance level. For people with only a small amount of weight to lose, 1000 calories will be too much of a deficit. As a guide to minimum calorie intake, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 calories per day for men. Even these calorie levels are quite low."

again if you selected the 2lbs per week weightloss goal there is already a 1000 cal difference, so in order to not go below that you must eat your burned cals. again 1200 cals is the magic number......who knew? & it's even higher for men...

http://www.weightlossforall.com/fat-loss-no-deficit.htm

quotes from this article...

"Well guess what?

It has been suggested that a calorie deficit is necessary for WEIGHT loss, but NOT always necessary for Fat loss!

In other words..

It is possible to lose some body fat without a calorie deficit!
A calorie deficit will always cause some form of weight loss, however, whether the loss comes from water, muscle or fat, will depend largely on other factors such as exercise, nutritional state, recovery, etc. This is something we cannot control. Most often any initial weight loss is made up of fluid lost from the body’s use of protein and carb stores. This water is simply replaced once the body adapts to the new energy intake. This means that when you try to lose weightthrough strict calorie reduction it’s very possible that you WON’T burn off sufficient body fat in order to see good results on the scales. This can be one of the reasons why so many people stop seeing any progress after a few weeks of strict dieting."

it takes 2500 cals to burn an lb of muscle v. an lb of fat. so when you dont eat enough cals, you will be losing more muscle than fat because the whole point of the body's ability to store fat is so if you starve (which is what your body will think) it has a surplus to use for energy. therefore, it hold onto that fat as long as it can when it feels it's starving, thus burning muscle first and being completely counter productive to your weight loss.

http://baye.com/calculating-the-daily-calorie-deficit-for-maximum-fat-loss/

now here is an article that explains some people can have more or less than 1200 cals but it's based on the amount of FAT, not how much you weigh....how much the FAT in your body weighs. your organs, blood, bones, muscle, cells & so on contribute to the total weight of your body... they DO NOT count, you must know your exact body fat% & then determine how much that weight is.

"Simply stated, the maximal daily calorie deficit for fat loss is approximately 31.4 cals per pound of fat, give or take about 3 calories, and if your daily calorie deficit exceeds this the difference is going to come from other tissues, including your hard-earned muscle.
Since the maximal deficit would change in proportion to your fat stores, as fat is lost the calorie deficit would need to be decreased. However, even if you were losing over 3 lbs of fat per week this would only reduce the maximal deficit by about 90 per week, so it would be unnecessary to re-adjust daily as long as the deficit accounted for the reduction in body fat."

the article also goes on to explain that for obese weight loss one should be paying attention to the amount of nutrients v. calories because let's be real if you weight 223 (as i do) i would need to eat 2230 cals a day to maintain that (& no working out). so while it's good to build a deicit into your diet, pretty much anyone watching what they eat is going to catch cals before they get too out of hand.

there's also negative calorie foods like celery which is 5-15 cals a stalk generally & burns about 150 cals in digestion (depending) therefore that creates a cal deficit of 135-145 in & of itself.

jAdorelife

it also depends what kind of cals you're eating.. obviously as i said previously there are negative calorie foods that take more energy to burn than consume, these are great for weight loss. on the flip side there are a lot of foods that contains more cals than it takes to burn, thus leaving fat left over to be stored. so if two people both stick to a 1500 cal diet & one person is eating clean, while the other is eating donuts, preservatives, refined & processed foods it's likely that the person eating clean with lose more weight because the food their eating takes less enerygy to break down v. the other person who has left over fat that needs storing after digestion.

so even though calories is a major, major factor on weight loss. 1500 cals of junk v. 1500 cals of healthy clean food does make a difference.

fitbot

good post!!!
i can tell you all from experience that 80% of losing weight is nutrition.
I have been working out regularly for 10 years, and there are times when i dont work out, yet I lose weight because my food intake is healthy. sometimes I work out everyday of the week, arrive home starved and just eat all the calories back and the scale doesnt budge (hell, sometimes it even increases), even tho I am technically in really good physical shape....
so focus on diet first.

wenders123

I think so far this has been the most balanced, scientific and informative thread on the subject.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/135858-the-1200-calorie-starvation-mode-myth

To further start aggressive threads on the subject will serve nothing but drive two camps further into their respective corners with no willingness to listen to all sides of the argument.

This comment is not really helpful.

I agree with this thread - there are alot of people that regularly eat way below their allowance and think that it is going to speed up their weightloss. And I think by the other comments made that it is helpful to have another thread pointing out the foolhardiness of that approach.

As a fairly new member to MFP, I have not scoured all of the past threads and have not seen the one for which you have provided the link. I think ther eis a fair amount of duplicate subjects covered, but I see no harm in that.

jAdorelife

also a good article... http://www.active.com/nutrition/Articles/Eat-More-to-Lose-Weight.htm