Calorie Deficit Question

OmegaGator

Hello everyone,

I started MFP around a month ago, to lose some weight. I have been sticking to it well, a few days over my allowed calories a few weeks ago. I am currently 6'7 360lb'ish, I am not all that active all the time, I do go to the gym sometimes but I am on the computer a lot.

MFP suggests I eat 2500 calories a day to lose 2lbs a week. At the beginning it was hard to be under but now, after discovering I really like salads with some chicken, I can easily eat around roughly 1200 calories daily and not be hungry. This leaves roughly 1300 calories that I am supposed to be eating that I'm not. I have seen a few people say its bad to be under 1200 a day, but with my size I think I need to have more. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Dave198lbs

yes.

you need more.

go eat.

now.

monjero

losing 2 lbs a week is very healthy for you. if you continue to eat 1200 calories a day you will drop the weight to quickly and be smaller but it wouldnt be a healthy weight, now when you start adding calories make sure its the right type of calories. fruit, vegetables, nuts and brown rice is good.

megsmom2

for someone your size, that 1200 calories could probably be a good size dinner....lol. Seriously though, that really is a huge deficit, which isn't healthy. You'll drop weight fast for a time, then start having some metabolic problems like "starvation mode". Not good. Eat some more, healthy stuff. You can do this!

nickyrobinson

You're a big dude at 6'7". Just to exist in a coma (your BMR, or basal metabolic rate), you need more than 2700 calories. So 2500 calories as a daily target is more than reasonable.

Believe it or not, you really need to eat more. If you really aren't hungry at the end of the day, start adding some more calorie dense foods into your diet. Things like peanut butter, avocado, nuts (almonds, cashews, pine nuts) and olive oil.

bloodbank

Your TDEE is somewhere around 3500-3800 calories per day - eating 1200 per day is landing you a deficit of somewhere in the neighborhood of 2300-2600 calories each day... which is atrociously large. While you might be able to do so without feeling too much hunger, you're not doing your body any favors by maintaining that large of a deficit.

So yes, eat more. A LOT more. You've gotta fuel the machine.

freder1ck

I was surprised at how much I was eating to maintain and even gain weight (I got up to about 340). I've been doing MFP for 9 months, and have lost almost 90 lbs. I've done it by eating slightly less each week, eating calories gained from exercise, etc (including a lot of walking). I think the biggest surprise at the beginning was the way I was eating was to starve myself all day, and then cut loose in the evening. The question I had to answer was whether I wanted to make regular progress over time (a couple off years) or burn myself out and continue to get worse. I still feel like I'm eating a lot, but I'm still losing, and have had very few plateaus.:)

OmegaGator

Thank you all very much for your responses. I guess I shall be eating more, lol. I need to find more healthy things besides salads I guess! More brown rice and steel cut oats.

neaneawy

I agree with everyone else as well. I wanted to add that when I started I was looking into how much weight loss per week is safe. MFP and many users don't feel that losing more than 2lbs per week is healthy. I was following the suggestions MFP gave me and I was averaging 2.5 at first. I found a few places that said it was safe to loose up to 1% of your body weight per week. So, I would adjust your calories until that's what you see. Remember that the more you lose the slower it will probably come off.

Pebble321

Thank you all very much for your responses. I guess I shall be eating more, lol. I need to find more healthy things besides salads I guess! More brown rice and steel cut oats.

Great idea. The other good thing about eating more than 1200 is that you don't have to feel as though you are on some freaky "diet". You can eat a moderate amount of regular food (well, depending on what your regular food was.... some of my old habits wouldn't be good to continue with!) and it's a great learning experience which can lead you into good habits for eating healthy in the long term. Cutting calories seriously low just teaches you to be deprived and (in my case) grumpy!

There are lots of things you can add for more cals - olive oil drizzled on roast veggies are a fantastic addition to a salad, add some avocado to just about anything, almond or peanut butter to your oats, eggs and veggies and lean meat to your rice to make a fabulous fried rice, full fat dairy (yoghurt, cheese, ricotta etc), add some dark chocolate into trail mix - all delicous and great additions to a healthy diet.