Not hungry...

Kristin_1979

I'm running into an issue here... I am not hungry enough to eat the daily calories I require. I mean sometimes I am but is anyone else having trouble with breakfast and lunch? I'm usually hungry by dinner and that's when I make a very healthy meal, but I am also gaining food points for the exercise/activity... So it's adding up.

Can my not eating enough hinder my results in losing weight, even though I am sweating a lot, re-hydrating and staying active?

leslisa

It seems to affect quite a few on here, I'm not one of them. For me, it's eating consistently through the day that is the go/no go. If I only eat 3 meals I don't loose. If I stick to the 6 meal plan I do.

myfitnessnmhoy

Common problem. Honestly, one I wish I had, but at least I'm satisfied now that I've balanced my intake.

OK, so here's the deal. All the numbers on this site are estimates. You've got 40 pounds to go, so you have time to experiment, which is GREAT, because the lessons you learn along the way are going to be excellent for your eventual transition to maintenance.

The other deal is that most of the calories for any sort of exercise here tend to be inflated for most people. So you may not, in fact, be burning as many calories as you think you are. If you're using a heart rate monitor or some other decent method to calculate cardio burn, you'll get somewhat better results. But this is, also, an estimate.

You've got your diary closed (which is fine, so is mine), so I can't evaluate it. But the first thing I'd say is that if you're getting good proportions of fats, carbs, and proteins in your calories, it's OK to go under *if you feel good*. Not a LOT under, but you don't have to slavishly follow the numbers here.

How FAR under are you, exactly? What's your goal for weight loss (what is your daily calorie deficit, in other words)?

Some numbers as an example. According to the site, my 6' 3" 220-pound 43-year old male carcass apparently costs approximately 2,470 calories a day to maintain my "sedentary" lifestyle. I want to lose 2 pounds a week and a pound is 3,500 calories, so the site puts me on a 1,000-calorie-per-day deficit. Meaning my "budget" is 1,470 calories. On a rare day when I don't exercise, no problem meeting that goal!

When I get on Mr. Elliptical and burn 700 calories in 50 minutes (I get my heart rate up around 140-150 and keep it there, so this burn is calculated pretty closely), I now have 2,170 calories to eat. I usually come up a couple hundred calories short of eating that goal on a normal day. I don't worry about that variance, it's probably within the margin of error in my calorie intake and burn calculations anyway.

When I get on Mr. Road Bike and do a 50+ miler, taking 4 hours to do it, I'm toasting off at LEAST 2,500 calories. Possibly more (lots of hills around me, and I'm training for a long ride, so I hate hills but I pick hilly routes anyway). That puts me on a 4,000-calorie day. Now that I've converted to better-quality foods, I really struggle to get 4,000 calories down even my gaping maw in a day. So I do my best, and usually come up 1,000 calories short. I don't worry about that because I'm still eating 3,000 calories, I'm not exactly going to starve!

The only real risk of undereating is loss of energy, and since you're an active exerciser you'll probably see the signs long before you have a problem. If your workout intensity starts dropping rapidly, you start feeling extra-tired (beyond what you'd expect from simply working out a lot), or you start getting dizzy or fatigued all the time, then you need to find a way to increase the calories.

Otherwise, if you're settling into a nice consistent weight loss that matches what you set up (keeping in mind that weight loss in the beginning is usually a lot faster if you've recently upped your water, but it's also a bit slower when you increase your workout regimen due to water retention for muscle building), you're doing fine.

Be patient and experiment. If you've got your carbs/fats/proteins in good balance, and you're drinking plenty of water, your body eventually becomes really good at telling you what it wants, and you'll become really good at listening to it.