Afraid to eat my daily calories as set by MFP

littlebluej

MFP has my daily calories set to 1200. I am honestly afraid to eat that many. This fear comes from the fact that I've struggled with eating disorders in the past, both anorexia and bulimia. In 2010 I "recovered" from bulimia, but the thoughts of needing to eat as few calories as possible still loom in the back of my mind. Since November 2011, I've been struggling with relapsing into anorexia. I rarely eat over 700 calories per day, and my intake has been averaging ~500 since January.

I'm 19, 5'1", and I exercise at least 3 times per week.

Are there any others on MFP who have been in a similar situation? I'm struggling with wanting to eat healthier and lose weight the healthy way, and total relapse. I've seen dietitians and ED counselors, and both have put me on meal plans. They've corrected my weight, but not my mindset, which is the problem. I don't know any "middle ground". I almost feel that I don't know "how to eat". And I am just so afraid that if I do follow MFP and start eating 1200, my weight will increase significantly, which will trigger more ED behaviour.

Please be kind, this is something I've struggled with for 6 years. Thank you!

jazzalea

Believe it or not I think I can relate to your fear of losing control of your eating. It becomes almost like a flight or fight moment..... if I start to lose control I will put my body on immediate lockdown so that it doesn't get away from me.....

I've struggled with Bulimia off and on over the years and it has consistently been the source of my failures in the past.... I would begin a healthy diet, begin losing weight and then hit a perfectly natural stall, or worse a bump and I would panic and throw my body into starvation mode or start purging, which would lead to a cycle of binging and purging which would lead to guilt and shame and ultimately a complete loss of control...

I often have a very hard time reaching that 1200 calorie goal it has set for me, so I do my best to make sure that what I do eat is healthy, and if I can squeeze in some extra calories here and there, I will, and I remind myself that it's ok and my body will handle it.

You should try and concentrate more so on eating healthy than trying to find a certain body weight. If you can try and make yourself healthier instead of a certain body image you really can break free.

Good luck,

moochachip

I have been digging myself out of that hole for the past half a year. Thanks to friends and family, it's made things a little easier but there are days where I look at how many calories I consume and cringe.. It's always under the line though.

If you're exercising, think of it this way: You are eating to help your muscles and endurance develop you into a healthier person. I'm not sure what your BMR is, but 1200 seems rather low when you're exercising.. I focus on exercise, and developing my body to look better then numbers on a scale. I measure myself with measuring tape every other week, and take notes on how much faster I can run as well as how much weight I can pick up.

Not sure if this helps, but good luck. Always up for being friends. Eating disorders are tough despite what some people believe..

DixiedoesMFP

I've never been in that situation, but I feel for you. Perhaps right now you shouldn't be logging calories at all, but simply focusing on nourishing your body with healthy foods.

PediDocChicago

Probably NOT ok to eat less. This number is one of those "conventional wisdom" things that has been around for AGES and hasn't changed at all, which should tell you there's a good reason.
Try to focus meeting the goal with things that you KNOW are good for your body... variety of fresh produce, whole grains, etc...
Honestly this is probably not the best place to spend your time... perhaps you should focus on finding a support group or nutritionist who can help you work on accepting a healthy amount of calories, rather than on here where most people truly are overweight and should be cutting them.
Good luck to you! Its not an easy struggle, but it is worth it. In the end you're talking about YOUR LIFE and you are worth it!!!

LeannSz

I'm on the opposite end with the similar situation I recently lost weight and I am under the daily recommended suggestion I spoke with my nutritionist and have since stopped logging my exercise because it throws off the calorie intake. I try to meet the amount with out logging the calories burned and it has helped I feel better and I started losing again. I tried to do it by increasing calories with out increasing carbs or fat which is hard.

One of my best friends in college had a sever ED so I hope you can take control and learn to change your mindset. I'm sure your a beautiful individual. Best of luck

1shauna1

I think 1200 calories is at the lowest end of what you should eat to lose weight. I totally understand about being afraid that it will make you gain....but you need this much to be healthy! And I think as long as the foods you are choosing are healthy, then it will be okay. Lots of fruits, veggies, lean proteins and whole grains.....with much of this you could even eat MORE and still lose (sorry if that sounds really scary, but it's true!).

With the amount you are currently eating, you must be losing? Your body needs nutrients and proteins to live.....you are hurting yourself by only eating 500-700 per day....you need more

cbl40

Hun, based on your post I applaud you for wanting to get healthy. I think seeing a therapist on a regular basis will help in your journey. I also believe that daily exercise, or at least 5x/week, is better than any anti-depressent or anti-anxiety med on the market. You need to figure out your relationship with food and make your mind healthy first. Best of luck....you CAN do it!! **hugs**

KelliW_runner

You need to build some muscle to increase your metabolism and you're not going to be able to do that under 1200 calories per day. In addition, you will struggle to get all the vitamins, fiber, etc. your body needs to be healthy.

I would suggest ramping up the calories and ensuring your workout regimens are focused on strength more so than cardio. After you get comfortable with that you should be able to trust your body to let you know when it needs more food.

Determined523

Remember that you also have to log your drinks. Those calories add up.
One cup of 2 % milk is like 122 calories.

I wish you the best of luck.

Tarah1218

My mother is in ongoing recovery for anorexia....I say ongoing because the affects of it have never left her. When she was in her 30s and I was a young child she was very muscular, bodybuilder, great physique, 5'8, 135 pds, 12-14% bf, and maintained it well and in a healthy manner. Bodybuilding helped her get over her anorexia as a teen and it stuck with her. When she got into her 40s, and I became a teen, I noticed she started acting differently towards foods and her workouts. She stopped eating except for dinner and a small portion, she did a crazy amount of cardio (2hrs a day) with hardly any fuel in her body, and she started dropping lean mass quickly. Today she is 5'7, 110 pds, 14-16% bf....looks crazy skinny, very underweight, and has some severe health issues now. She gives out wonderful nutrition advice and has a great amount of knowledge in fitness but does not follow it herself. I have tried to urge her to seek out help again, along with my father, but we both proove to be unhelpful. I wish I could tell you how to fix it, but I think anything you may do will just be a bandaid. It will probably be a lifelong stuggle but with therapy, forcing yourself to eat more, and taking on healthy exercise, you will be able to battle it on your own. There are many support groups I urge you to seek out and I am sure there are people who will tell you about some great therapists to help you out.

littlebluej

Thank you all for your replies. After recovering the first time I became overweight, and joined MFP. Now I've come back to it looking for support (because I don't personally know anyone who as an ED or has had one), and because the "help" I got in my last recovery was hardly help at all. I think I've finally gathered enough courage to say that I know what I'm doing isn't healthy and I want to change before it gets worse. I still have a ton of anxiety with food and I'm terrified about the weight gain and not fitting into my clothes, but I've started going to a therapist and hopefully she can help.

Also, no, I've essentially stopped losing even on that low number of calories plus fasting at least once per week, along with exercise. My weight keeps fluctuating in the same 5lb range.

thatlook

hey there, firstly i would like to say good for you that you've spoken out and said that you need help in some way, living with an ED must be an awful thing as you are constantly in a battle with the one thing you need to live, with this i can only empathise, Now on a more serious note i can accross the following a few days ago on here it was posted a few years back but may help you with your troublesome problem, im not saying that this is a quick fix or 'band-aid' as was said by someone earlier but feel that some of the info contained may help your struggle, best of luck with everything :flowerforyou:

Living With Obesity At 700 Calories Per Day!
By: David Greenwalt

I want you to consider a common female client. She's a woman about 5'5" and 185 pounds. A combination of a mostly sedentary lifestyle, quick-fix, processed foods and consistent excessively low calories has resulted in an incredibly stubborn fat loss scenario. Not only has it created a stubborn fat loss scenario but her ability to add body fat is remarkably strong.

Most would believe there is simply no possible way she could be 185 pounds eating mostly low calories. While it's true the average obese American created their own obesity by being a huge over consumer, a sedentary glutton if you will, many are able to maintain their level of obesity with the following formula in very precise ratios: starvation + binges + sedentary lifestyle.

An initial review of this woman's calories indicates she is just above starvation level in the 400-700 per day range. The food choices are mostly protein in this case (low-carb is all the rage you know) and there are virtually no vegetables or fruits to speak of.

Five or six days per week the calories remain low in this range, however, there are nighttime binges from time to time and weekend binges where carbs loaded with fat (doughnuts, rolls, cookies, pizza etc.) are consumed.

So while the calories are very low the majority of the time, there are one to two days per week where this isn't always the case. Even so, the nighttime binges and weekend slack offs don't amount to what you might presume would be thousands of extra calories, thus explaining the 185-pound body weight.

Very few foods are prepared from home. There are lots of fast foods being consumed. Convenience and taste rule.

I must say. Early on in my coaching and teaching career this woman was a real head scratcher for me. Isn't it calories in and calories out? Even if she's not active she's starving!

How in the heck does she stay at 185 eating an average, including all binges, of maybe 750 calories per day? She's frustrated beyond belief. She sees her friends and coworkers eating more and weighing less. Is she simply unlucky? Is everyone else blessed? And what in the world is she supposed to do to fix this, if it can be fixed?


Why Is She Not Losing Weight?


First, let me tell you why she's not losing weight. Then I'll tell you what she has to do to fix the situation. With a chronic (months and months) intake of less than 1000 calories per day and a 185-pound body weight her metabolism is suffering greatly. It's running cool, not hot. It's basically running at a snail's pace.

Think of it this way. Her metabolism has matched itself to her intake. She could, indeed, lose body fat but she's in that gray area where she is eating too few calories but not quite at the concentration-camp level yet.

If she were to consume 100-300 calories per day her body would have virtually no choice but to begin liberating stored body fat. This is NOT the solution. It's unhealthy and, in fact, quite stupid.


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Not only has her metabolism matched her intake, her body has maximized production of enzymes that are designed to help store any additional calories as fat. Anytime additional, immediately-unnecessary calories are consumed the enzymes are there and waiting to store the additional calories as fat. Her body is starved nutritionally and it has one thing on its mind - survival.

Being mostly sedentary, her metabolism (hormones play a large role here) can do a pretty good job of keeping things slow enough so that the pathetically low calories she's consuming are just enough to maintain.

But since certain enzymes are elevated, waiting for more calories so more bodyfat can be stored, every nighttime binge or weekend mini-feast will contribute to fat stores.

So on the days she's not bingeing her body does not lose fat, or if it does, it's very little. And on the few days or times she does binge a bit her body is quite efficient at storing fat. So, while she may lose a smidge of fat from starving it is quickly replaced with every binge.

Remember, these binges aren't a gluttonous 4000-calorie feast. Oh no, a binge might be 4-5 cookies worth about 500-700 calories. Nevertheless, since the binge foods are mostly carbs and fat it's very easy for the enzymes to shuttle the dietary fat into stored body fat. It's what they were designed to do.


So, What's The Solution?


Well then, now that we presumably know some valid reasons why she's not seeing a scale change and definitely no body fat change how do we fix her? We have to do something she's going to freak out over.

We have to get her eating more. Not only do we have to get her eating more but more of the right, whole foods need to be eaten. Foods lower in fat that aren't as easily STORED as body fat have to be consumed. And we have to warn her.

A Discouraging Start


We have to warn her that since she's been sedentarily living on protein with binges of carbs and fats she is likely to see a weight gain right away. It's true.
Once we begin really feeding her body with nutritious carbohydrates so she can become more active, her glycogen-depleted body will hang on to some of those carbohydrates (in skeletal muscle and liver) so she has stored energy for activity.

When her body hangs on to those carbohydrates it has no choice but to hang on to more water too. For every gram of glycogen (stored carbs) she stores she'll hang on to three grams of water.

This is not a negative response by the body but it will be interpreted by her as quite negative when she steps on the scale.

It's quite likely she'll see a five to seven pound weight gain when she really starts eating properly again. This weight gain will remain for one to three weeks before it starts moving in the other direction.

For argument's sake let's assume my Calorie Calculator and Goal Setter at Club Lifestyle suggests a 1500-calorie per day average in week one for a one-pound loss per week. First, she is going to freak out about this many calories.

For months she's been eating less than 1000 and usually around 400-700 in one to three feedings total per day. To her 1500 calories is a ton of food. And if she even begins to eat less fast and packaged-foods it will be a ton of food.

There is no doubt whatsoever that she will resist the increase. This resistance may take one to three weeks to overcome. During this period no weight loss will occur. She is too fat already in her mind and believes it will only hurt her to increase her food intake.

I mean, after all, isn't that how she got fat to begin with? In her early stages of fat gain this was probably true. She overconsumed. But as I've said already, that's not why she's staying heavy.

In addition to a freaked-out mindset about adding more food to her already overfat body she will simply find that it's all but impossible to eat four or more times per day.

She's just not hungry at first. Makes sense when you think about it. Why would she be hungry three hours after eating a 300-calorie, balanced breakfast? Her body is used to 400-700 calories per day!

So, even though she gets a plan and begins using my nutrition analyzer to log foods and meals she finds after having a balanced breakfast of 250 calories she couldn't force herself to eat meal number two on time.

It'll take several more days of realizing what is going on and being one-hundred percent honest and diligent with her logging and planning before she begins to eat her meals as planned no matter what - even if she's not hungry.

By now two to four weeks have passed and the only thing she's seen on the scale is it going up--not very encouraging if I say so myself.

Raising The Grade


After the first two to four weeks have passed she's probably beginning to consume her meals as planned although not quite like an "A" student yet. That is coming. She feels better because she's working out and is more active.
And she feels like she has more energy throughout the day because she's feeding her body more calories and the right kinds of calories.

She has finally begun eating the right kinds of fast foods (low in fat, moderate in protein) and less packaged food overall. She is making more meals from home and taking them to work for lunch rather than always grabbing something quick from a vending machine or the break room that always has some treat another employee brought in.

After another two weeks or so she's moved from a "B" grade to more consistent "A"s. She's planning her days one day ahead in the Nutrition Analyzer; she's consuming fresh veggies and fruits on a daily basis.

Her calories are almost ALWAYS in line with what is recommended by my Lean Account and she has seen her first signs of the scale moving in the right direction.

She is now dropping from 190 pounds (her high after reintroducing food and carbohydrates again) to 189.3! "Progress at last!" she says. In actuality, the entire process was progress. But that's not how she saw it in the beginning.






With a total of two to four weeks of increased caloric intake behind her and eating more consistently the right kinds of foods her metabolism has truly begun to rebound.

She didn't kill it as she thought. She only wounded it. And since our metabolisms are like kids (they are quite resilient) and she doesn't have thyroid issues or diabetes or any known wrench that could be thrown into the spokes of fat loss, she will begin, for the first time in months or years, to see results that make sense and that one would expect of someone who is active (30-60 minutes five or more days per week) and consuming a caloric intake of 1300-1500 calories per day.


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Avoiding Sabotage


This process is in no way easy. I think you can see a plethora of ways it could be screwed up, sabotaged, given up on too early and so forth.
A key to success for this very common woman (men too) is not giving up too soon, having faith in the fix, and moving sooner rather than later to the increased, quality food intake.

It's going to take effort to overcome the mental hurdles of eating more food as well as the increase in scale weight that is going to occur in weeks one to three or so. It's disheartening, however, to charge hard down the weight-loss field only to get to the one-yard line and decide it's time to quit.



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Many don't realize they only had one more yard to go and they'd have had a touchdown. You gotta hang in there with this plan. It's going to take some time for the glycogen levels to be replenished and level out. It's going to take some time for mental adjustments to occur.
It's going to take some time before hunger signals are restored to anything close to normal. It's going to take time for the metabolism to rebound and not be in its protective mode.

Giving A Stubborn Body The Message


In certain, very stubborn cases, it may be necessary to eat at a eucaloric (maintenance) or hypercaloric (over maintenance) level for a few weeks to ensure the metabolism does get the signal that everything is alright and you aren't going to kill the body.
Remember, your body could care less about your desire for fat loss. It just wants to survive.


Some Take-Home Points



The most common cause of obesity is Americans are sedentary overeaters/drinkers. Nothing in this article should be construed as to say that under eating is the root cause of obesity. It's not.

It IS common for many men and women to be under eating with sporadic binges as I described here. This creates a perfect environment for continued obesity even if total caloric intake is quite low on average.

Low-carb followers or "starvers" WILL see the scale go up when calories are consumed at reasonable levels again and carbohydrates are reintroduced. Live with it. Deal with it. It's going to happen. 98% of the gain will be water.

The time it takes for mental acceptance and other adjustments to occur will vary but one should expect a two to four week window for these things to take place. Being forewarned with an article like this may speed this process up some.

Once the right types of foods are consumed and the right caloric intake is consumed and the right ratios of carbohydrates, proteins and fats are consumed on a consistent basis, then, and only then, will metabolism begin to be restored and the key to fat loss be inserted into the lock with a noticeable drop in the scale resulting.
This may take an additional two to four weeks to occur. Your metabolism is never dead or broken for good. But it may take several weeks of proper eating and activity for it to be restored.


From day one, until the first, noticeable drop in the scale occurs may be four to six weeks--maybe one to two weeks longer. Those who give up on the one-yard line will never see the scale drop as will occur when intelligent persistence and consistency over time are adhered to.
David Greenwalt

gleechick609

I can understand where you are coming from. I battled with a combination of anorexia and bulimia for 3 years in high school. It was hard to come out of the disease but when I stopped getting my menstrual cycle, started having eye problems, migraines and an under-active thyroid, I had to make the decision to get healthy for the sake of my own life.

The ED took a horrible toll on my body. After getting clean, my weight loss turned into a weight gain (almost double) and I found out that my reproduction system is complete mush and I have premature ovarian failure. If I knew then what I knew now...I really regret letting it get that far.

If you want help with a calorie goal, PM me