1200, VLCD, and EM2WL

EvgeniZyntx

You are 5 ft 5.
I am 6 ft.

I eat at 2000 plus ex. using Dan's formula with about a 1/2 lbs loss per week. So I would get that yours is miscalculated - your LBM data s wrong. Which is likely from your measurements not the formula Dan uses. Before you attack a member, I'd look into that.

AntWrig

And I ask, what is wrong with eating under my BMR, if what I am eating is nutritious and I have vitamins and supplements in my diet?

Eating under BMR for prolonged periods can, and usually does, result in slow build up of cortisol hormone. As this hormone builds up, your organs operate slower than normal, this reduces the amount of energy you expend in a day. It is part of the fight or flight response in which your body determines that certain activities should be temporarily suspended in order to ensure you can survive an immediate threat. It is not a system that we are meant to remain in for prolonged periods.

This is what ultimately causes people to plateau that have been eating under BMR for too long. Note that a few days or a week or two of this is fine. After a few months is when things start slowing down.

The way MFP itself works is it goes SOLELY by numbers. It ignores ALL hormones. The 1200 bottom is hard coded in. It is a "dumb tool". It is useful yes and a great starting point for many, but it is only as smart as the person using it.

Dan typically argues that you should eat UNDER TDEE and OVER BMR. This ensures you'll always be losing weight and also ensures your body's hormone levels do not freak out over excessive stress and too fast of weight loss. It is indeed slower than what most people want, but it is safe, sane, doable, and offers better long term success than crash diets.

EVERYONE here wants everyone else to succeed.

You are free to do whatever you want. Heck, you can stop eating forever and run 23 hours a day at 12mph on the treadmill if you want to. All I ask is that when someone gives you advice, reasonable advice, that you don't make threads basically to declare how stupid, dumb, rude, etc. you think they are.

Very well said. I wish I had your grace.

Personally, I would have told the guy to **** ***. That's me though.

robinaddison

You are 5 ft 5.
I am 6 ft.

I eat at 2000 plus ex. using Dan's formula with about a 1/2 lbs loss per week. So I would get that yours is miscalculated - your LBM data s wrong. Which is likely from your measurements not the formula Dan uses. Before you attack a member, I'd look into that.

Dude - reasoned logic again? You really need to stop that kind of silliness.

originalcookiemonster

And I ask, what is wrong with eating under my BMR, if what I am eating is nutritious and I have vitamins and supplements in my diet?

Eating under BMR for prolonged periods can, and usually does, result in slow build up of cortisol hormone. As this hormone builds up, your organs operate slower than normal, this reduces the amount of energy you expend in a day. It is part of the fight or flight response in which your body determines that certain activities should be temporarily suspended in order to ensure you can survive an immediate threat. It is not a system that we are meant to remain in for prolonged periods.

This is what ultimately causes people to plateau that have been eating under BMR for too long. Note that a few days or a week or two of this is fine. After a few months is when things start slowing down.

The way MFP itself works is it goes SOLELY by numbers. It ignores ALL hormones. The 1200 bottom is hard coded in. It is a "dumb tool". It is useful yes and a great starting point for many, but it is only as smart as the person using it.

Dan typically argues that you should eat UNDER TDEE and OVER BMR. This ensures you'll always be losing weight and also ensures your body's hormone levels do not freak out over excessive stress and too fast of weight loss. It is indeed slower than what most people want, but it is safe, sane, doable, and offers better long term success than crash diets.

EVERYONE here wants everyone else to succeed.

You are free to do whatever you want. Heck, you can stop eating forever and run 23 hours a day at 12mph on the treadmill if you want to. All I ask is that when someone gives you advice, reasonable advice, that you don't make threads basically to declare how stupid, dumb, rude, etc. you think they are.

+1!

Me too.
This has spiraled into something ugly and my head is spinning.

ninerbuff

" A person convinced against their will, is of the same opinion still".

There's really no need for you to post grievances. Do what you think you gotta do.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness industry for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

MoreBean13

You've used a lot of words to thinly veil a thread to start a drama thread about HelloitsDan, who tried to help you, for free and on his own time. You opted not to listen, and put inappropriate settings in to a calculator to 'prove' Dan's error. I can change my settings to make MFP give me a 1200 calorie goal, too. That doesn't make it right

This thread serves absolutely no purpose other than stirring up drama. Whatever you want to eat, do it. If you don't start threads about it, nobody would care or 'attack' you about it. Just do whatever you want. Good luck with your long term Hollywood goals of starving yourself.

DawnEH612

Yeah, he did, he calculated my BMR, and my TDEE, and took 15% off of that, and told me to eat 2100. And I gained. For a month. He didn't say he wanted a 1.5 lb/wk cut, I said that.

I'm not going to be eating like this forever! I long for the days when I reach my goal weight, and can maintain at what a majority of the calorie calculators out there say - somewhere in the neighborhood of 2100-2200.

I'm also a huge advocate for intermittent fasting =0 I think the peer reviewed studies cited by Leangains and other fitness professionals are spot on. Flame away.

Do you really think that people who look amazing in Hollywood gain and lose weight for respective roles do so by being outside of the super safe, super healthy +/- 15% TDEE? of course not. Eating below a calorie level for a time is perfectly natural, safe, and proven through centuries of famine and plenty. If I believed what some people on here advocated, I'd believe that everyone in the modeling business and Hollywood were on death's door, that celebrities drop like flies left and right.

My problem is with the cult like atmosphere and blind dedication that some people in some groups on here have to an idea, a theory not backed by anything other than other forum users' undocumented, unproven "experience" and "what they have seen"

If I have found what works for me, and you have found what works for you, why am I the one who should be quiet and drop it? Don't I have a voice too? What right does anyone have to tell anyone else to be quiet? Just because I don't think like you do doesn't mean that I should keep what I have learned to myself.

It certainly doesn't stop you from sharing what YOU "know". I think it has more to do with you being pissed off that I have the willpower and self determination to get to my goals, while so many people on here cannot make themselves UN-eat what they have eaten themselves into.

If you can eat +500 calories per day for years to get where you were at this weight, then you can for sure NOT eat that much and be just fine. I will not let people walk all over me, question my character, or insult me simply because I don't conform to the ways of thinking of the loudest group.

As per your quote "I'm not going to be eating like this forever! I long for the days when I reach my goal weight, and can maintain at what a majority of the calorie calculators out there say - somewhere in the neighborhood of 2100-2200. "
If you think you will be able to maintain your weight loss of 36 pounds on that number of calories AFTER you lose weight and theoretically would need less calories (because you'll weigh less), than why wouldn't you be able to lose weight on that amount, now?
If you were eating at or under your BMR for any significant amount of time, an increase in calories WILL result in a temporary gain in weight. Perhaps using a happy medium (average) of the 2100 plus your BMR, then divide by 2... Dude, you eat less than me: a 43 year old, 5'5.5" female that weights, on average, 137pounds and I've lost over 42 pounds... Something isn't adding up here...

tryclyn

I just wanted to take the opportunity to rebut once again all the posts from another thread where I was told, in the face of scientific studies how wrong I was. The people on here who speak to others with such disrespect, who advocate for eating close to or over 2000 calories per day, without any thought to context or personal considerations need to take another look at what they say to people.

helloitsdan personally calculated my numbers for me, based on his calculators and what he uses in his "In place of a road map" post, and told me that I should be eating around 2100 calories for my cut. I'd buy what he says if it wasn't so incredibly far off from what any other calculator, including MFP calculates for me. I saw a nutritionist and had them calculate my cut, and her numbers are within 5% of what MFP is, about 1350 for 1.5 lbs/week... so I would think that something like the difference between 1300 and 2100 is.. statistically significant.

<image snipped>
That's with a pound and a half a week cut. If I set it to 2 lbs, I get to the much maligned and lambasted 1200!

A pound and a half a week is certainly not anything dangerous or drastic. Yet as I try and give hope to so many people who, either because of their job (in my case) or because of injury or because of their lifestyle, HAVE to rely on diet alone to lose weight, I get shouted down as an advocate for eating disorders, someone who is eating at dangerously low levels, someone who is encouraging "bad" or "unhealthy" habits.

If you want to argue about eating more to weigh less, try doing it on your own site, one who's caloric recommendations are closer to your levels, instead of railing away at THIS website's own advice and calculations. I will continue to tell people who are overweight to eat less, and in the same way I will continue to tell people who are underweight to eat more. Telling people who are overweight and obese to eat more when they aren't hungry is downright shameful.

You're silly.

AlongCame_Molly

Siege_Tank

As per your quote "I'm not going to be eating like this forever! I long for the days when I reach my goal weight, and can maintain at what a majority of the calorie calculators out there say - somewhere in the neighborhood of 2100-2200. "
If you think you will be able to maintain your weight loss of 36 pounds on that number of calories AFTER you lose weight and theoretically would need less calories (because you'll weigh less), than why wouldn't you be able to lose weight on that amount, now?

because I still have body fat to lose? I mean, you have to eat more than you need to gain, and you have to eat less than you need to lose. Eating maintenance and trying to lose weight would be silly, I'd spin my wheels.

And yes, I'll admit that the title of my post was... ok, let's call it what it is, bait. The Eat MOAR crowd can't resist a thread with ANY of those words in them, and throughout today I had had just about enough of the eat moar crowd telling me that the simple, non-specific advice I was trying to give to people was wrong, and then told to keep my opinions to myself. I was mad at the pretentious and the know it all, better than everyone attitude and smugness from some people in some groups. I saw a post where someone told everyone who was eating less than 2000, not logging, and not calculating TDEE as "Doing it wrong" and when I wrote a post to rebut it, it was reported and a moderator locked the thread faster than hell. Promoting eating disorders by showing people the results of documented, reviewed studies is not something that should be locked or shouted down, yet a lot of the eat moar crowd did. So bite me.

You guys make it too easy. Don't yell at someone for eating what MFP recommends, offer your own silly calculations, and then have no more to say to people when they ask why it's not working. "Just stick with it!!"

ldrosophila

I'm starting to hate the number 1200. It looks so cold and bleak wheres the love? Going back to my happy 1800-2200 land of smiles, butter, and cheese.

Whoever invented 1200 was a cruel master.

taso42

suit yourself, suckah

Siege_Tank

Hell I'll even post it again, and use as evidence to show you that you indeed CAN lose weight over a period of at least 56 days eating less than 2000 calories while maintaining and in some cases even GAINING muscle mass, all without dying or putting your health at risk, as so many eat more people claim.





*disclaimer - these studies were performed by medical professionals and the subjects were all monitored. The results of these studies show that Extreme diets are dangerous and can result in serious risks to your health, and this post is in no way support for, promotion of, intent to promote, glorifying, encouraging, or in any other way support for an individual or individuals to adopt a diet like the ones used in these studies.

These studies are simply scientific studies to support my assertions and ideas about how weight loss works. I dare the Eat More crowd to show any studies that show how eating -15% of TDEE will produce significant loss in weight for overweight, obese, and morbidly obese individuals.

Without that, I'm afraid that I'm not going to listen to arguments made about cortisol levels, hormone imbalances, starvation mode, or any other sort of nonsense at how eating less than your BMR is a threat to your health. Eating more than your TDEE however is always a threat to your health, and shouldn't be done without the supervision of someone who knows something, and for good reason.

I mean even this very website, which you post on at the pleasure of the people who run it, have set it up to say that eating at specific low levels, say 1300 calories, is fine for some people. Yet even in this thread here you don't have to search far for huge claims about how incorrect it is, and how dangerous that it is. You're essentially saying that MFP is advocating dangerous eating habits and unhealthy ways of losing weight.

So, stop telling other people that they are wrong, or hurting themselves when they are doing their level best to better themselves. If I were all of you, I'd feel deep shame for telling people things that may in the long run hurt their weight loss goals, making them feel inadequate and unhappy because of shame for their weight by telling them that they have to lose weight slower.

Do you fit #$(*& people even remember what it was like to be overweight, to feel that shame and that depression about it? People working to rectify their lives to live healthier should be applauded, and encouraged to stay on the right track.

serenapitala

And this is why I got my armband calorie tracker. I really didn't realize how much I burn in a day. I did have to eat more because I was low on energy. It turns out I was eating at about a 1400 deficit (on average) which was why I was tired. Now I keep my deficit lower and I'm much happier and able to workout more. I don't really advocate for EM2WL because I know that everyone has a different daily burn and different goals. I do however advocate for a sustainable plan. It doesn't matter to me what you do if you are healthy and happy, but if you can't keep up your routine for life, then you are giving yourself more hurdles than necessary. I don't know if your plan is sustainable, only you do. I know that I could not keep up a diet under my BMR, but that is me. I do know from being MFP friends with you (the OP) that you seem happy, you workout well and you are motivating. I definitely want the best for you, so of course I hope that your plan is sustainable.
:happy:

Siege_Tank

I certainly try my best. It just seems that, in my mind, there has to be a difference from maintaining and cutting, and even bulking when we try and put on muscle. If there's a difference between maintaining and bulking, and then going through a cutting cycle... then it goes without saying that you'll eat at maintenance when you reach your goal weight and goal body composition.

And you are an inspiration, You've been doing amazing with your weight loss, and all I have to say is "don't stop!"

Johnni0923

RIGHT ON!:happy:

corneredbycorn

I'm a little confused as to why you're posting the results of very low CARB short term diets to support your stance on very low CAL long term diets.

Siege_Tank

I'm a little confused as to why you're posting the results of very low CARB short term diets to support your stance on very low CAL long term diets.

my stance was not about low cal anything, not in the definition of the word low, as measured by MFP. I do advocate for a reasonable caloric deficit, at levels which MFP deems safe - in order to help people get to a healthy weight as quickly as they can. The studies tracked both carbs and calories, and showed that eating less than 2000 calories per day while eating properly and getting sufficient protein can maintain and even gain muscle mass.

I feel like a broken record.

Toumani

I love threads like these

mustgetmuscles1

I'm a little confused as to why you're posting the results of very low CARB short term diets to support your stance on very low CAL long term diets.

my stance was not about low cal anything, not in the definition of the word low, as measured by MFP. I do advocate for a reasonable caloric deficit, at levels which MFP deems safe - in order to help people get to a healthy weight as quickly as they can. The studies tracked both carbs and calories, and showed that eating less than 2000 calories per day while eating properly and getting sufficient protein can maintain and even gain muscle mass.

I feel like a broken record.

Im not sure what you are looking for with these posts. Do you want people to agree with you that crash dieting is the right way to lose weight? MFP "recommends" -1 pound per week for everyone and has hard limit at 1200 calories no matter what you input. That is for their own protection and yours. That does not mean it is anyway healthy or safe.

There are literally hundreds of posts on here with people asking for help on why they can no longer lose weight on 1200 cals. Hundreds more that lost the weight and then instantly gained it back. Hundreds more that lose the weight and then struggle to maintain the loss and are forced to eat at a very low calorie to do so.

I guess some people just have to learn the hard way.