Eating more to weigh less or eating less to weigh less? .

Because although seen as unhealthy by most, I feel like theres no doubt that if you eat less, you'll weigh less. You might feel ****ty & lose a bit of muscle along with it, but you'll still weigh less.

this is what I'm saying... LOL..

saying "eating less will make you gain (or not lose)" makes no sense to me.

Because your body wont let go of fat because you are not eating enough for it to let go. What's so hard to understand about that? It will hold on forever to that fat and never let it go. this is why every single day people are writing in about their 6 month plateaus and can't figure it out.

Here's my current opinion.

First of all, I'm generally against VLCD's in individuals that don't understand implementation or are using it out of either ignorance or as a short-cut out of impatience. I think for "most" people, a reasonable ~20% reduction from TDEE with macro sufficiency will result in favorable body composition whereas a crash diet will not.

But that being said, adaptive thermogensis is a big culprit in the reduction in both BMR and NEAT/EAT. But you can't directly say that it's tied to acute caloric intake as much as it's tied to fat mass.

Eating at a massive deficit may cause AT to happen faster but it also causes more rapid weight loss.
Eating at a reasonable deficit may cause AT to happen gradually but it also causes slower weight loss.

I believe the latter is favorable (I want to be clear on that) for body composition purposes but just generally speaking, I don't buy into the idea that the reason one is not losing weight is that they are "eating too little and their body is hanging onto fat because of it".

The only way I see this is possible would be if an increase in food increases expenditure by a greater amount than the caloric increase in food.

+1

Sidesteal for the win... Everything I've read suggests the above to be true. Those in doubt should do some reading of Lyle McDonald's blog, Body Recomposition.

Saying that, I understand the desire to decrease calories and lose weight faster. Lets face it, it takes a bloody long time.

In before a certain person thread jacks the thread with links to her own threads

A short, 51 year old, someone...with 12% bodyfat maybe?

I totally knew who you guys are talking about. I'm glad I'm not the only person who noticed that happening a LOT.

THAT person, has helped a lot of older women that were completely frustrated and confused by everyone telling them to eat more, resulting in them gaining weight. I would much rather listen to someone in my own situation that has succeeded, than to listen to a bunch of 20 somethings who think they know everything because they read it in a muscle magazine.

Find out what a person's situation is before telling them to eat more.

+1

Sidesteal for the win...

Results of someone who ate 500 calories a day for two weeks. He still lost weight but it was because he was exercising... Exercise keeps your metabolism up no matter how low you go on the calorie intake.
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=121060001&highlight=psmf+day+results.

all the arguements of 'when you eat less, you body holds the fat and won't let go of it'-- if that were true, there would be no skeleton skinny anorexic people. but there are...

I regularly eat below 1200 calories a day (maybe 4 or 5 days of the week) and I have and continue to lose weight. That being said I always get a daily work out and have a moderately demanding job in terms of physical activity. I know it's been said a 1000 times so i'll be 1001st person to say it but it's what works for you that counts not what everyone else tells you to do. From personal experience and from seeing family members who have lost weight i'd say the starvation mode thing is either a myth or is a very rare occurance. I actually think sometimes people use this whole starvation mode thing as a reason to just be greedy whilst giving the illusion both to themselves and to others of actually doing something healthy!

Less calories + More exercise = weight loss. Should be one of the easiest formulas to understand so it amazes me that some will swear the opposite.

Honestly, eating around 1800 calories a day results in very slow progress for me and my TDEE using one of those calculators is 2800 with moderate activity levels and 3000 at my current activity levels. I really wonder if I actually directly measured my energy expenditure if it would be much lower. It's easy to say, just be patient, but when you're someone who has 100 lbs to lose (like I did) losing 0.5 lbs a week just won't cut it. You can say well just "move more" but 45 minutes on the elliptical machine might only burn 300 calories if the person is 260 lbs and out of shape. Even 5 days a week that's barely a drop in the ocean.

I'm not saying starve yourself, that's counter productive in most cases because it's very difficult to control the desire to eat. Biological imperative and all that. However, eating less will result in losing more in the long term, ignoring short term fluctuations which are likely caused by fluid retention.

I'm a fan of a few different approaches. Intermittent Fasting can be a good way to cut calories without feeling too deprived, alternatively keeping calories low most days and then having a cheat day/meal can also be a good approach for some. A few will argue that this has some benefits relating to leptin signalling as well, but that's neither here nor there. I think individuals can find an approach that works for them, so you can still be in a large deficit but successful.