Stop the Low-Cal Insanity!
Options
Replies
-
Thank you.
My understanding of BMR is what rate your body maintains its current weight, without added exercise.
Incorrect. BMR means Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the number of calories they would feed you if you were in a coma, just to fuel your basic bodily functions, like breathing, organ function, etc.
TDEE is Total Daily Energy Expenditure, that includes your BMR.... PLUS everything you do during the day, from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, workouts, fidgeting, walking here and there, typing, everything. This is also known as "Maintenance Calories", the number that you wouldn't gain or lose on, it is what you would need to sustain your everyday activity.
If you eat over TDEE, you gain weight. If you eat less than TDEE, you lose weight.
It makes no sense at all to eat below your BMR, you know, that amount you need just to be alive laying in a hospital bed.0 -
Thank you.
My understanding of BMR is what rate your body maintains its current weight, without added exercise.
Incorrect. BMR means Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the number of calories they would feed you if you were in a coma, just to fuel your basic bodily functions, like breathing, organ function, etc.
TDEE is Total Daily Energy Expenditure, that includes your BMR.... PLUS everything you do during the day, from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, workouts, fidgeting, walking here and there, typing, everything. This is also known as "Maintenance Calories", the number that you wouldn't gain or lose on, it is what you would need to sustain your everyday activity.
If you eat over TDEE, you gain weight. If you eat less than TDEE, you lose weight.
It makes no sense at all to eat below your BMR, you know, that amount you need just to be alive laying in a hospital bed.
If you do eat below your BMR, can you body used its stored fuel reserves aka fat to make up the difference?0 -
Totally agree!!!0
-
and I find it annoying how ppl eating 2000 and losing come and try to ¨teach¨ people like if they were a fitness guru.
Yes I eat 1200 cal a day, yes im a shorty, and no i wont eat more than that cause I stop losing thank u.
If you eat 2000 and you lose, GREAT for you :drinker: , if I eat 1200 and lose, GREAT for me :drinker: . What works for you doesnt work for me and viceversa. To each their own, do your thing and stop worrying/complaining about what other people do.
Totally agree with this**** lol0 -
If you do eat below your BMR, can you body used its stored fuel reserves aka fat to make up the difference?
People who are very obese can safely eat below BMR for a time, but that will not continue to work, there will be a plateau and then it will be difficult to break because their metabolism has been suppressed. Also, the whole point of this thread is..... You cannot get the proper nutrition your body needs on such a low level of calories. So, yeah, you might get an initial drop in weight, but at what cost? The point is you want to lose weight to be healthier, you can drop weight the wrong way, by eating too little and in an unhealthy way. Then wonder why your hair is falling out and you are sick all the time.0 -
But according to your numbers above, the difference is over 300 between 10% and 30%. Factor in 1.5 for TDEE and it equals a 450 calorie per day difference. Thus 1200 cals vs 1650 cals for the same results. That is an almost 40% difference in calorie levels. This is my point as to why what works for one person may not work for the next person. Same age, height, weight.
no, it's basic statistics. 1 standard deviation. in this case, with only 3 data points. BMR calculations applied to the population would generate a graph heavily centered around 25% BF (for men) and 40% BF (for women). i don't have the data to weight the numbers accurately, but those are the national averages. so yes, i could have done the numbers above with 3 data points at 35%, 40%, and 45% instead, but i just chose some numbers using your example. anyway, i'm not sure exactly what you're trying to argue. you state that the BMR estimators/calculators are not reliable because everybody is different and then you find extreme corner case scenarios as your proof. are you arguing that nobody should pay attention to BMR or TDEE? or are you arguing that everybody should go to a doctor and get their body fat measured so that a more accurate BMR can be calculated for each person?
here's what i'm saying, you tell me what you don't agree with.
1) everyone should use their BMR/TDEE numbers to figure out a starting point for setting their daily calorie requirements
2) just pulling numbers out of thin air is not a good plan
3) the BMR calculators online are close enough for 90% of everybody who uses them
4) we are not all unique little snowflakes with our own internal laws of physics. people who say "what works for one may not work for another" are promoting a fallacy. we are similar enough that the basic physiology is well understand and statistically works for almost all of us, within a certain error margin.0 -
I agree about the being healthier part, and for me it has made me more aware of just how much crap I was putting down my gut and made me conscience of everything I eat.
If you do eat below your BMR, can you body used its stored fuel reserves aka fat to make up the difference?
People who are very obese can safely eat below BMR for a time, but that will not continue to work, there will be a plateau and then it will be difficult to break because their metabolism has been suppressed. Also, the whole point of this thread is..... You cannot get the proper nutrition your body needs on such a low level of calories. So, yeah, you might get an initial drop in weight, but at what cost? The point is you want to lose weight to be healthier, you can drop weight the wrong way, by eating too little and in an unhealthy way. Then wonder why your hair is falling out and you are sick all the time.
As I asked before, are those problems from low calories or lack of vitamins and minerals that you can get through a good multivitamin. And if your metabolism is suppressed, wouldn't exercise bring it back? I thought that was one of the benefits of exercise was to help raise the metabolism?0 -
Only if you have significant fat stores. Your body can only burn so much at a time and as the amount of body fat decreases, so does the amount of fat that your body can burn at once, hence the need to "top up" with other sources of energy. If you don't "top-up" enough, your body starts eating away at muscle which is REALLY bad, because that's what causes plateaus. More muscle means higher metabolism, less muscle means slower metabolism.If you do eat below your BMR, can you body used its stored fuel reserves aka fat to make up the difference?
So you can imagine that once your body starts eating away at muscle (which will also give you a nice result on the scale, but is probably the cause for an earlier poster's "spare tire"), your metabolism decreases and you have to constantly reduce calories to keep losing. You can only do this for so long. You'll have to keep going around in a circle to lose weight, because the more muscle you lose, the slower your metabolism becomes and the less you have to eat to keep it up, therefore causing your body to burn even more muscle for energy. Before you know it, you'll be a "skinny fat" person - a person with a low weight, but high body fat %.
If you can prevent your body from burning muscle for fuel (by not dramatically reducing calories), you don't affect your metabolism that much. The weight loss will be slow, because you are "topping up", but it can be maintained for much longer because you don't have to continuously and more "drastically" reduce calories to keep up with your metabolism.0 -
Nice post...why, oh why, would you want to eat as little as possible? Yes, I want to lose weight, but no, I do not want to starve myself forever. I want to learn to eat in amanner that will keep me healthy for the long run and still allow me to eat realistically. if you ae constantly worrying about whether their will celery for you at the next party then food is STILL controlling you.. I think a lot of people who reduce their intake to extreme lows are trying to lose for the wrong reasons. They want to look good NOW and consequences to their health be damned. It's the same mind set that drives people to take risks with diet pills and bizzarre supplements that have been proven to damage the body.0
-
Bump...I want to re-read to OP later and use my own goalsto find my own number.0
-
and I find it annoying how ppl eating 2000 and losing come and try to ¨teach¨ people like if they were a fitness guru.
Yes I eat 1200 cal a day, yes im a shorty, and no i wont eat more than that cause I stop losing thank u.
If you eat 2000 and you lose, GREAT for you :drinker: , if I eat 1200 and lose, GREAT for me :drinker: . What works for you doesnt work for me and viceversa. To each their own, do your thing and stop worrying/complaining about what other people do.
Ditto
I am doing just fine on 1,200 if I burn more then maybe I will eat more. I am very choosey about what I eat so most days I am at where I want my fiber and protein to be at 900-1,000 cals so then I add whatever to get to 1,200 usually after 8pm.0 -
and I find it annoying how ppl eating 2000 and losing come and try to ¨teach¨ people like if they were a fitness guru.
Yes I eat 1200 cal a day, yes im a shorty, and no i wont eat more than that cause I stop losing thank u.
If you eat 2000 and you lose, GREAT for you :drinker: , if I eat 1200 and lose, GREAT for me :drinker: . What works for you doesnt work for me and viceversa. To each their own, do your thing and stop worrying/complaining about what other people do.
I agree with you 100%! I am 5'1" and my doctor is who told me to set my calories per day to 1200. And that's not including exercise. And as of this morning, I have almost lost a full 16 lbs.0 -
everything you say makes sense, and so does the article i just read per your link. so now im up from 1200 cals/day to 1500/day. this scares the crap outa me tho. i can't see how im not going to gain from upping it. im worried cuz i have a xmas party in 1 month and sure don't want to be up 10 lbs by then. i guess time will tell. thx for the info anyways.0
-
and I find it annoying how ppl eating 2000 and losing come and try to ¨teach¨ people like if they were a fitness guru.
Yes I eat 1200 cal a day, yes im a shorty, and no i wont eat more than that cause I stop losing thank u.
If you eat 2000 and you lose, GREAT for you :drinker: , if I eat 1200 and lose, GREAT for me :drinker: . What works for you doesnt work for me and viceversa. To each their own, do your thing and stop worrying/complaining about what other people do.
So what of you're short, I know plenty of people that are 5'3" and shorter that eat 2,000+ cals/day and cut. Short height doesn't give you an automatic pass to under eat and potentially lead to an ED. But you're right, why should people care if they see others doing harm to themselves? We should stand back and let them do so, it's their health and body after all, not ours.
^ I agree with the first post about the fact that EVERYONE. IS. DIFFERENT.
I'm losing weight at the rate of 2 pounds a week (or thereabouts) by eating around 1290 calories a day.
I'm short too. That works for us!
I don't agree with the second poster. Again, EVERYONE. IS. DIFFERENT.
You may know people who eat 2,000+ cals/day but that obviously doesn't work for me.
Why say we'll develop an ED? 1,200 calories is the MINIMUM. At least we aren't eating 500 cal/day -_-
Eating 2000 calories a day doesn't work for you because you have destroyed your metabolism by eating so little. Eating that little is not sustainable for the rest of your life and you WILL gain back. Do you think you will be able to eat that when you are 40- 50 or 60 years old and stay the same size?
That's why the people who eat more reset and eat their TDEE for weeks before cutting it by 15%-20% to lose fat. Since I screwed up with 1300 calories for so long. I am having to eat 2501 calories a day to reset my metabolism. Then I will go down to 2000 after a few more weeks.
i ate 1200 cals a day for 8 months to go from 260 to 200.....then when is tarted lifting i bumped up to 1800-2100 now....not only did my hair not fall out.....my body didnt eat all my muscle and my motabolism isnt shot......im bigger and stronger now than i was in college when i was in great shape.....so maybe you shouldnt phrase things so matter of fact0 -
I wish I had the free time and energy to worry about how much other people were eating or not eating.0
-
I love the post, hopefully it will help spell it out for people. I agree that their not necessarily "magic" numbers for everyone, but we need to eat enough to fuel our bodies and for many people, it is more then what they are currently eating!0
-
I think that high calorie diets are a brilliant way to lose weight if you can stick them out, but for me personally, I can't actually fit that much in. If I was to eat 1200, I would be too stuffed to move.
I simply cannot cope with the sheer volume of food.
If that's true, wow? 1200 is a lot of food?0 -
I wish I had the free time and energy to worry about how much other people were eating or not eating.
I wish I had the free time and energy to comment on a post that I think is beneath me.0 -
Great information!!!0
-
and I find it annoying how ppl eating 2000 and losing come and try to ¨teach¨ people like if they were a fitness guru.
Yes I eat 1200 cal a day, yes im a shorty, and no i wont eat more than that cause I stop losing thank u.
If you eat 2000 and you lose, GREAT for you :drinker: , if I eat 1200 and lose, GREAT for me :drinker: . What works for you doesnt work for me and viceversa. To each their own, do your thing and stop worrying/complaining about what other people do.
Thank you! Geez! My body has to realize that it needs to reach into it's fat storage a burn some FAT ... it won't do that if I feed it all the calories it needs. 1200 or 2000 or whatever number someone comes up with this week as the magic number is not magic for everyone.
EXACTLY! I'm petite, if I average over 1400 calories a day over a week I GAIN. Average of 1,200 calories in a week works for me! I lose a safe 1 lb a week when I do this. I don't understand the "push" for everyone to eat more. I say you play around with numbers for a month. Adjust your calorie intake according to the level you see you lose weight. I also have a thyroid issue so I'm just HAPPY that even at 1200 I can still lose weight. TO each their own man!0
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 392K Introduce Yourself
- 43.5K Getting Started
- 259.8K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.7K Food and Nutrition
- 47.4K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 400 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.8K Motivation and Support
- 7.9K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.4K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 990 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.4K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions