Anyone else discovered low calories are their only option?

petstorekitty

I'm small and not really active unless I workout so my TDEE -20% is just under 1300. ((I'm 31 and 5'1" and about 128.))
so yes, netting about that much helps me lose weight (I still have about 16-20lbs to go)

However, while I try to be consistent netting 1300 I go over some days and don't freak. Technically I should be able to eat almost 1700 a day and not gain. Cool whatever. When I'm consistent I lose.

I have a metabolism so could never eat less than 1000 a day. That's just crazy talk! hahaha
But whatever floats your boat.

I will agree with the poster who said about lifting. You said you lift already so good, that should help you out.


Low cals is fine but super low and your body will get used to it and you'll have a very hard time going back to eating normal amounts of food.

acpgee

Have you tried intermittent fasting? I know some people who got off their plateaus with this protocol. It is essentially an extreme version of calorie cycling. Eating two non consecutive days at 500 cals and at TDEE the rest of the week.

JAT74

Danilyn thank you, you sound so similar to me. I've tried the recommended methods and failed like you and each time I gave my body lots of time to adjust to higher calories but in fact I just ended up putting back on the 4 lbs I lost initially when I first joined MFP and ate 1100 calories for the first 2-3 weeks!

To the poster who said I'm starving my body by eating 800 Calories per day you obviously haven't read my posts as I didn't say I was eating that little.

Regarding lifting I have a fully equipped home gym and my boyfriend has been weight training for 25 years so I know about lifting and try and do 3 sets of 6-10 reps generally. I can't lift very heavy yet but am able to use weighs up to 50lbs at the moment and try and increase the weight every week.

love4fitnesslove4food_wechange

Have you tried intermittent fasting? I know some people who got off their plateaus with this protocol. It is essentially an extreme version of calorie cycling. Eating two non consecutive days at 500 cals and at TDEE the rest of the week.

she already said she's planning 5:2.

toutmonpossible

I'm short and fairly sedentary and spent the last year recovering from an exercise injury. I initially followed MFP's guide of 1200 calories a day on average but wasn't losing weight. If I'm in full-on weight loss mode I have to average 1150 or under.

I'm glad you realized the truth. I've been reading this nonsense about eat more to weigh less for over a year on MFP and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

norcal_yogi

#1 eating 800-1000 calories a day..with do SO MUCH damage to your metabolism its ridiculous...please eat.

#2 with this amount of calories, yes you will lose weight, but you're creating an eating disorder and are starving yourself.

#3 You need to eat at least your BMR amount of calories...however with exercise your body needs more.

Please seek a new doctor and or nutritionist. The one you saw obviously doesn't have any idea what their talking about.

not necessarily. these statements cannot be blanketed as truth for all humans.

LiftAllThePizzas

All the failed experiment with road map taught me was where I maintain and that is at 1510 calories per day.

Learning is failure? You know your maintenance level. Since you only have 11 lbs to lose, you would not be needing a huge deficit to lose. You can lose on anything below 1510, including 1400, etc. The funniest part is that you're saying TDEE - 20% doesn't work and you're going to do 1200 instead. But 1200 is your TDEE -20%.

foleyshirley

Yes! I have been on a 1200/day calorie diet for 6&1/2 months now. I was losing weight steadily but I kept reading that I was hurting myself by not eating 15 or 20 % below my tdee. So I bumped my calorie level and started working out and eating back those calories as well. During this period I lost NO scale weight. I also did not lose any inches. I have recently went back to my 1200 cals and immediately lost 2 lbs! Yes, even when I exercise I still eat the cals back. I believe if you are logging correctly, some people still have to eat less to lose anything. Everyone is different and as long as you're not hungry and you are getting sufficient nutrients, do what works for you!

If you eat 20% below TDEE, you aren't supposed to eat back exercise calories because you should have taken exercise into account already.

JAT74

5:2 is intermittent fasting and that's what I'm already doing which is what I meant when I mentioned having 2x 550 calories days. It's supposed to be very good for health and also allows you to eat more on the other days but I've been doing it for 5 weeks now and still no loss.

This is why I am now calculating my overall cals for the week, subtracting the two low calorie days and dividing the remaining cals up for the other 5 days. My weeks total needs to be lower though ie. around 8500-9000 for the week instead of 1000-11000 which I have been eating.

Danilynn1975

All the failed experiment with road map taught me was where I maintain and that is at 1510 calories per day.

Learning is failure? You know your maintenance level. Since you only have 11 lbs to lose, you would not be needing a huge deficit to lose. You can lose on anything below 1510, including 1400, etc. The funniest part is that you're saying TDEE - 20% doesn't work and you're going to do 1200 instead. But 1200 is your TDEE -20%.

GAINING 7 pounds is failure.

My actual TDEE worked out to 2300 a day in calories minus the 20% crap following the links set forth in the road map post.

No I do not lose at 1400, nor at 1300. You forget even with a food scale there is still the margin of error all scales except calibrated yearly analytical balance scales possess and even those still have a variance of .5-1% error rate allowed.

So yes, it was a failure. I just wasted 6 months of work. the original 3 to lose that 7 pounds initially and then regained it over the next 3, so by the time I get them back off 9 months of my life will have been spent in vain efforts of weight loss.

toutmonpossible

#1 eating 800-1000 calories a day..with do SO MUCH damage to your metabolism its ridiculous...please eat.

#2 with this amount of calories, yes you will lose weight, but you're creating an eating disorder and are starving yourself.

#3 You need to eat at least your BMR amount of calories...however with exercise your body needs more.

Please seek a new doctor and or nutritionist. The one you saw obviously doesn't have any idea what their talking about.

Eating 800 to 1000 is not damaging to your metabolism. The issue is whether you will commit to a diet with that few calories long enough to lose weight.

People have been on medically supervised diets of 400 calories a day. A few have consumed virtually nothing (again, medically supervised, I'm not suggesting that anyone do this on her or his own). An eating disorder is psychological/mental. You have to have a predisposition for it. If you have problems, obviously you should follow a conservative diet.

You can eat below your BMR if you want. There's an expert (Registered Dietitian) who posts here periodically who said it is not unhealthy. The issue is whether you will keep it up. Some can, some can't, some will, some won't.

toutmonpossible

All the failed experiment with road map taught me was where I maintain and that is at 1510 calories per day.

Learning is failure? You know your maintenance level. Since you only have 11 lbs to lose, you would not be needing a huge deficit to lose. You can lose on anything below 1510, including 1400, etc. The funniest part is that you're saying TDEE - 20% doesn't work and you're going to do 1200 instead. But 1200 is your TDEE -20%.

GAINING 7 pounds is failure.

My actual TDEE worked out to 2300 a day in calories minus the 20% crap.

No I do not lose at 1400, nor at 1300. You forget even with a food scale there is still the margin of error all scales except calibrated yearly analytical balance scales possess and even those still have a variance of .5-1% error rate allowed.

So yes, it was a failure. I just wasted 6 months of work. the original 3 to lose that 7 pounds initially and then regained it over the next 3, so by the time I get them back off 9 months of my life will have been spent in vain efforts of weight loss.

I love this. ONLY on MFP would gaining 7 pounds not be viewed as a failure and a signal that it's time to try something else. FWIW, I try something for 30 days and if there's no change, I move on.

The reasonI shoot low is for precisely the reason you mentioned, to factor in error. I roughly track my calorie intake, weigh myself a few times a week, try to get in some activity (although I ignore the calorie burn estimates, which are usually too high). It's really not that hard if you're willing to monitor your progress and think for yourself.

And eating more to lose more sounds counterintuitive because it is. The people advocating it are not elite athletes who need to challenge their systems; all they have to do is consistently create a calorie deficit and they would lose weight.

JAT74

I know how you feel! Part of me also feels like I've wasted 4 months when I would have been at goal weight and maintaining by now. I listened to the advice and it didn't work for me. Not everyone is the same and I actually suspect that my true BMR and TDEE are much lower than for some other people the same age, weight and height as me.

I am also interested in other theories too like what my body is able to tolerate ie. Carbs vs low carbs, fat etc. My mum was at yet thinnest of 111 lbs and 5 foot 6 aged 64 when she ate a diet of rice, oats, potatoes, some vegetables, fruit, plain steamed chicken and fish for medical reasons.

LiftAllThePizzas

All the failed experiment with road map taught me was where I maintain and that is at 1510 calories per day.

Learning is failure? You know your maintenance level. Since you only have 11 lbs to lose, you would not be needing a huge deficit to lose. You can lose on anything below 1510, including 1400, etc. The funniest part is that you're saying TDEE - 20% doesn't work and you're going to do 1200 instead. But 1200 is your TDEE -20%.

GAINING 7 pounds is failure.

My actual TDEE worked out to 2300 a day in calories minus the 20% crap following the links set forth in the road map post.

No I do not lose at 1400, nor at 1300. You forget even with a food scale there is still the margin of error all scales except calibrated yearly analytical balance scales possess and even those still have a variance of .5-1% error rate allowed.

So yes, it was a failure. I just wasted 6 months of work. the original 3 to lose that 7 pounds initially and then regained it over the next 3, so by the time I get them back off 9 months of my life will have been spent in vain efforts of weight loss.

No, your actual TDEE is 1510. TDEE is by definition the amount you need to maintain. Sorry that your life was wasted and you were unable to do anything else during that entire time or enjoy living or anything. But your TDEE is not 2300. And yes you would lose at 1400. You wouldn't lose as quickly as you would at 1300 but you would still lose. Yes there is a margin of error but the error goes both ways, and you've also already 'calibrated' the relative values of your TDEE and your scale's inaccuracy.

Mharren

For your eating habits to qualify as a clinical disorder they must meet specific criteria. These criteria are mostly psychiatric in nature (See the DSM-IV-TR). Some people have eating habits that qualify as 'disordered eating' in that they eat more calories a day than makes sense according to our current measures of metabolism and neither gain weight or have weight issues. The same can happen with people who eat <900 (general rule of thumb for adult starvation).

There may not be anything medically wrong with the OP the leads to her needing mathematical calories deprivation to lose weight. All measures in clinical science are 'ball park' and have margins or error: wiggle room. Like fever's. It's not automatically a fever at 38.0C but it could be a fever at 37.5. If the base line is 36.2C, a clinically 'normal' temp of 37.5C is a fever, and 38.0 is even worse, because we have wiggle room, and that's 1.0C change in temperature, not strict set values.

Why am I babbling about fevers?

A calorie in dietary application is an arbitrary value, like a dozen, or a mol. If you've ever had to study chemistry you've probably gone 'wait a minute, what the hell, the back of my candy bar makes no sense." This being said, lets say starvation is <800-1000cal/day (someone posted that here). Let's apply wiggle room of 100-300cals for a given person. If the OP needs to wiggle her room below the 'normal' or 'acceptable' range, that doesn't mean she's pathological (like the fever thing). And it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with her.

That being said, because the OP is aware of their low calorie intake, it is highly advisable that during regular medical check-ups the OP inform the physician of their restricted diet. This allows the physician just to 'keep an eye out' when interpreting routine screening tests to make sure that all is operational and restricted intake can continue.

Without a psychiatric component and no present physical disorder, there is no 'Eating Disorder', clinically speaking. But there is reason to keep tabs on the health of the individual as it is a feature that deviates from the norm of regular patients.

If you keep checking out healthy, than arbitrary numbers are no cause for concern.

Cheers,
-Mharren

toutmonpossible

I know how you feel! Part of me also feels like I've wasted 4 months when I would have been at goal weight and maintaining by now. I listened to the advice and it didn't work for me. Not everyone is the same and I actually suspect that my true BMR and TDEE are much lower than for some other people the same age, weight and height as me.

I am also interested in other theories too like what my body is able to tolerate ie. Carbs vs low carbs, fat etc. My mum was at yet thinnest of 111 lbs and 5 foot 6 aged 64 when she ate a diet of rice, oats, potatoes, some vegetables, fruit, plain steamed chicken and fish for medical reasons.

There's nothing wrong with trying things, but it's important to move on when progress is not evident. I suppose i'm less susceptible to some of the odder suggestions on MFP because I've never been overweight nor have I ever had trouble losing weight when I set my mind to it. I ate less and lost. As I've gotten older, I find my caloric needs keep decreasing. it sucks but that's common.

Danilynn1975

All the failed experiment with road map taught me was where I maintain and that is at 1510 calories per day.

Learning is failure? You know your maintenance level. Since you only have 11 lbs to lose, you would not be needing a huge deficit to lose. You can lose on anything below 1510, including 1400, etc. The funniest part is that you're saying TDEE - 20% doesn't work and you're going to do 1200 instead. But 1200 is your TDEE -20%.

GAINING 7 pounds is failure.

My actual TDEE worked out to 2300 a day in calories minus the 20% crap following the links set forth in the road map post.

No I do not lose at 1400, nor at 1300. You forget even with a food scale there is still the margin of error all scales except calibrated yearly analytical balance scales possess and even those still have a variance of .5-1% error rate allowed.

So yes, it was a failure. I just wasted 6 months of work. the original 3 to lose that 7 pounds initially and then regained it over the next 3, so by the time I get them back off 9 months of my life will have been spent in vain efforts of weight loss.

No, your actual TDEE is 1510. TDEE is by definition the amount you need to maintain. Sorry that your life was wasted and you were unable to do anything else during that entire time or enjoy living or anything. But your TDEE is not 2300. And yes you would lose at 1400. You wouldn't lose as quickly as you would at 1300 but you would still lose. Yes there is a margin of error but the error goes both ways, and you've also already 'calibrated' the relative values of your TDEE and your scale's inaccuracy.

The road map thing that people around here love to push as gospel and follow it, follow it, follow it or die by starvation! gave me that number as did Helloitsdan via PMs. I followed it, gained weight.

But ya know what you are so determined to be right when you don't know me, my lifestyle, stress level or jack diddly about me.

SO here's your "YOU ARE RIGHT!" gold star darling! Go back and play in your precious it's right thread for eat more to weigh less playground.

But for the record, GAINING WEIGHT IS A FAILURE.

JulesAlloggio

This guy is an actual Doctor...feel free to educate yourselves by watching this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY1DsZMNfNw

toutmonpossible

This guy is an actual Doctor...feel free to educate yourselves by watching this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY1DsZMNfNw

Based on the quality of your prior statements I will not waste my time. Everything you said was inaccurate.

JAT74

Mharren I'm not eating less than 900 calories and have no intention of doing so, my primary goal for weight loss is to lower my body fat to a healthier level as it's current around 31 percent. At the least I'll go down to 1100 calories but I'll keep experimenting from where I am now and see if I can lose at 1300 and if not I'll lower my cals again.