Cals help,

psuLemon

This biggest problem is people don't understand the ramifications of under eating. Like yourself, they think that hungry is a signal of whether or not a person should eat. Well here is the problem with hunger signals, it can be suppressed. All you have to do is go a week without eating higher calories and your body will adjust. Now multiply that out by months and you can see where it gets you. Also, your body doesn't know the difference between a lb of chicken vs a pound of carrots. Quantity is still the same but calories are different.


Now, as a man, you have more nutritional requirements to maintain muscle mass. So what happens when you don't feed your body to run properly... simple, it coverts the amino acids from muscle into energy and stores fat. And what happens when you lose muscle... your metabolism slows down and your body becomes less effective at burning calories. That means, you burn less calories at rest and while being active which makes it even harder to lose weight and even easier to gain body fat. Now, I understand it may be working for you now, but long term, when you are in a healthy range, it's going to be very very difficult to lose the last few pounds. If you want to track your body fat in correlation with your weight loss, you can see how much lean body mass you have lost.


OP,

Below is a good article I suggest you read. It describes the issues I discussed above. Also, you should aim to eat 20-30% below your TDEE (30% is fine until you are within 50 lbs of your weight goal). Simply put, calories are fuel and if you don't feed yourself enough, your body will fight to preserve the calories. You have to remember our bodies are designed to withstand famine, which means it will store body fat when it feels there isn't enough coming in. Now, if you really want to tighten your body and become smaller/slimmer, then you should incorporate weight training. WT will cut more body fat than cardio will and it will help maintain your muscle.

And I would have you eat around 1800 calories (35% carbs, 40% protein and 25% fats).


http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/core_march_8.htm

I'm in agreement with your recs but I don't think that article makes a good case for extremely slowed metabolism. There are many scientific studies that show dieters under-report their intake by huge amounts. He offers the case of one dieter on a self-reported diet. Plus it's all restaurant food. The caloric values in that are based on the 'spec' quantities from corporate. The food preparers usually go way over those. So nothing is measured, even if it is all recorded. It's just not a good example.

Well you always have to consider human error as to a cause for why people aren't gaining or losing. And I agree, there are a lot of variables such as restaurant food but for a sake of an argument, we will have to make some things constant (aka people are measuring right). I will note, from my person experience with designing diet programs for people on this board, increasing calories has helped 99% of the people I have worked with.

mcarter99

I wonder why increasing calories strategically helps so many people but simply overeating never seems to? Are there ever threads about, "I totally blew it last week and averaged 1900 calories when I should be getting 1400, but I LOST MORE WEIGHT?"

And why aren't there actual weight loss professionals getting rich off this amazing discovery- EAT MORE TO WEIGH LESS? It's exactly the magic pill America has been dying to find. It seems to be just a small group of people on this site who have success with it (reportedly). If eating more makes you lose more, how did any of us get overweight to begin with?

psuLemon

I wonder why increasing calories strategically helps so many people but simply overeating never seems to? Are there ever threads about, "I totally blew it last week and averaged 1900 calories when I should be getting 1400, but I LOST MORE WEIGHT?"

And why aren't there actual weight loss professionals getting rich off this amazing discovery- EAT MORE TO WEIGH LESS? It's exactly the magic pill America has been dying to find. It seems to be just a small group of people on this site who have success with it (reportedly). If eating more makes you lose more, how did any of us get overweight to begin with?

There are plenty of groups that exploit the eating more to lose more; BeachBody, Fat2Fit & The new rules of lifting for women. What you have to understand is it doesn't mean eating more calories than your body expends (or your TDEE) but it defies the general assumption of eating 1200 calories is the way to go. And in fact, most dieticians and nutritionist design meal plans similarly.