Why am I so fat right now?

psuLemon

Just some thoughts on eating less than 1200 calories from research I have done.

There are several institutues that have research the needs of a body to maintain proper body function and all have come back with 1200 calories for women and 1500 for men (this includes the Nation Institute for Health and American College of Sports Medicine). Decreasing your calories to below these standards (which are very low to start with) can affect your long term weight loss. Decreasing below your Basal Metabolic Rate can slow your metabolism, decrease thyroid function, decrease muscle mass, and have adverse affects on several organs, digestion, etc...

When you reduce the calories too low, your body may not go into starvation mode but your body doesn't function properly. Also, over time, if you don't eat enough, your body will store fat due to the metabolism slowing down. Your metabolism is contolled by the amount of muscle you body has. The more muscle, the faster your metabolism is (unless you have a thyroid issue or other medical condition). The AmericanCollege of Sports Medicine suggest 1.2 - 1.4 g of protein per kg of weight.


So for a 150 lb person, that comes to 88-95g of protein


150/2.2 = 68.1
68.1*1.2 (1.4) = 88/95g


Obtaining that much protein would be difficult with 900 calories, considering 400 of those calories would have to be from proteins alone. keep in mind the below.

1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
1 gram of protein = 4 calories
1 gram of fat = 9 calories

Here is a link with some good information.

http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html

Also, keep in mind, when you don't eat enough calories, your body utilizes proteins from your muscles to fuel your body and holds onto the fat. If you want to run an experiement on your, go get some body calipers or get someone to test you to calculate your total body fat. Work out for 30-60 days and go back to see if anything has changed. Even if your weight changes or doesn't, if you haven't been able to decrease your overall body fat, then you aren't gaining lean body mass (LBM). In fact, there are many cases that I have seen women lose 10 lbs but there overall body fat was unchanged. This means, that your body lost weight by losing LBM. The lower the LBM, the slow your metabolism, the lower it will take to lose weight, the quicker you will plateau and so forth. I can't tell you how many people I have worked with that have hit a plateau and each time, we increased their calories and the weight loss started again. You may just have not hit that point yet but I would highly suggest you reconsider your method.

Beside, if you can eat more food and lose just as much weight, why wouldn't you?


Hope this is helpful, I just want to make sure you aren't hurting your body. Below are some links with some good information in them. Enjoy


http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/reference_calorie.asp

http://www.fat2fitradio.com/tools/bmr/

http://www.cordianet.com/calculator.htm

Jesung

How long has this been going on? Are you measuring your body fat % or looking at yourself subjectively?

And you shouldn't worry about exceeding your macros. As long as you are eating an overall healthy diet, eating 155g of carbs and 95g of protein is essentially the same as eating 150g of carbs and 100g of protein. If your sugar came from fructose or lactose, it's ok to go a bit over... just avoid refined sugar.