Stop the Low-Cal Insanity!

I eat 1200- 1250 a day feel better and have more energy then when I was eating 2300 per day. I want to weigh 115 LBS. I'm only 5'1. My cravings are gone and I sometimes have to force myself to eat just to get to the 1200. In 2 months I have lost 17 LBS.

So many people here have chronically restricted calories for so long their adjusted RMR and TDEE is so far from baseline. Then when they make use of prediction formulas, their decreased energy needs are so far off they start to believe that their current intake is what they truly need. Although it's true those formulas may be inaccurate, by people sabotaging their endocrine system, they're making it unnecessarily more difficult and stressful than needed.

Sadly so many focus on the way that works for them alone.

Also, losing weight should be about feeling better, not about quantum mechanics and higher level math. Keep it simple, what works for you works for you. If you can survive on 1200 cal, great. I cannot, i get all moody and mean. 1650 seems to be a good place for me unless I'm on an extreme hungry day.

Just curious, I was eating a healthy diet - 90% homemade, non-processed food (I love cooking) - the rest was eating out - but I did have starches / carbs frequently. I couldn't lose weight - was stuck at 200lbs. I did weight watchers religiously weighing measuring everything at 1200 calories a day and still didn't lose weight after 6 months (and no, I didn't go nuts w/ fruit since I don't particularly like them, just had 2 servings a day). I started w/ a personal trainer for another 6 months and didn't lose. I had to quit when I blew out my knees and needed PT and rehab.

Finally had a Resting Metabolic Rate test at the hospital, and my RMR is 1100 - way under what my endo expected. I kept telling him I wasn't eating 3000 calories a day, but he insisted that I must be to maintain that weight. I had a body fat measurement done and it came back at something like 70% but it was an impedance device not hospital based. My scale at home shows 54% body fat to begin with and is now down to 42%.

I wasn't exercising because I have moderate to severe arthritis in l4/l5 and my SI joints so cardio exercise except for swimming is really painful, even standing for more than 5 minutes is painful. So, I know I have lost muscle mass over the past 3 years.

Does this even make sense?

I just lost 25 pounds on HCG (40 day protocol). I'm in my 2nd week of phase 3 - 1500-2000 calories a day and maintaining the weight so far. I'm fairly happy w/ the food choices - I got rid of my sugar / starch cravings. My diet is even more clean than before because I've added many more vegetables on a daily basis.

Don't castigate me - I've never heard of the concept all of you are talking about - eating many more calories than I would have expected to lose weight. Just curious as to what calorie range I would be looking at to lose 25 pounds more without doing another HCG round.

Very sensible comments!

We’ll assume she needs 1 gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass. Some experts recommend more, some less, but it’s a good middle number to work with. She has 140 pounds of LBM, so she needs 140 grams of protein. Eat too much less than this, and you risk losing muscle. Not good. Since 1 gram of protein is 4 calories, she needs 560 calories of protein every day.

I'm confused....

I recently learned in a nutrition class that the RDA for protein in an average person is 0.8 grams per KILOGRAM and 1 to 1.5 grams per KILOGRAM for an athlete, so where is the 1 gram for every POUND coming from? Multiplying by pounds leads to a protein intake of more than twice the RDA. Calculating using the RDA guidelines, that gives a 140 pound "average" person a protein range of 50 to 95 grams daily (dividing 140 by 2.2 to get 63 kg and multiplying that times 0.8 and 1.5). So a 140 pound woman doesn't NEED 140 grams and 560 calories of protein daily..... Can anyone clarify what I'm missing here????

I am currently on a 1200 cal diet and no I dont eat rabbit food, and no Im not hungry. I dont judge anyone out there and how they chose to do their diets. I dont know whats going on in anyone elses life, as well as noone knows anythnig about mine. So if someone wants to be too quick to judge and delete me as a friend, then it would be their loss not mine. If they cared enough to be supportive they would stay around and find out that I cant work out and am under a doctors care for the last 8 months, and am waiting for surgery. Please dont judge someone just based off their calorie intake.

I am currently on a 1200 cal diet and no I dont eat rabbit food, and no Im not hungry. I dont judge anyone out there and how they chose to do their diets. I dont know whats going on in anyone elses life, as well as noone knows anythnig about mine. So if someone wants to be too quick to judge and delete me as a friend, then it would be their loss not mine. If they cared enough to be supportive they would stay around and find out that I cant work out and am under a doctors care for the last 8 months, and am waiting for surgery. Please dont judge someone just based off their calorie intake.

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.

Here is the danger of all the Eat More people telling everyone what they should do.

There are numerous people struggling to lose weight on here. They are told that their BMR is like 1800 and their TDEE is like 2500 so they should be eating like 2200 per day.
Other people tell them that they MUST eat back their exercise calories.
So they ride their stationary bike for an hour and MFP tells them they burned 700 calories. Yippee! They now have 2900 calories they can eat per day! They think that sounds like way too many calories, so they only eat 2400 calories per day. That should give them an extra 1 pound loss per week, right??
After the first week or 2 of extra water weight they lose, they stop losing and even start gaining. People tell them they need to add weight training, so they go to the gym a couple days a week and lift a few weights. Ok, now when they gain weight, people can tell them that it isn't fat they are gaining, it is muscle. That is a good thing.
Other people tell them that since they are 'exercising' so much, that they now need to eat even more. So they do. And they continue to gain 'muscle'. Meanwhile, 3 months have passed and they have not lost 1 pound of the 80 pounds of fat they needed to lose.

They now get discouraged and decide that 'diets don't work for them' and quit altogether.

But hey, they have at least taught themselves how to eat 3000 calories per day so they won't go into 'starvation mode' and lose all their LBM!


Good job Gurus, good job!

So perhaps that is a little bit of an exaggeration, but hopefully you see my point. Seriously, right now I am watching several women who are getting so discouraged because they are eating around 1700-1800 cals per day and not losing any weight at all. The BMR calculators give them way too high of a number to start with and are convinced they have a TDEE of 2500. Then the MFP exercise calculators give them a number two times the number of calories they are actually burning, so they can't understand why they aren't losing weight. Now they have people 20 years younger than they are, who spend hours a day in the gym, telling them that they just need to eat more, don't worry you are gaining muscle not fat, just wait, give it more time and you will start losing, etc.
I feel horrible for these people because I understand their frustration.

If someone has 50 pounds of fat to lose, losing at 1-2 pounds per week is completely safe and healthy. Whatever calorie level puts you losing at that amount, and you are getting the right amount of nutrients where you are not starving all day and have zero energy, then eat at that amount. There is no magic number. Whatever number is working for you, is the right number. If after the first 2 weeks you stop losing and don't lose for a month, then you are eating too many calories.
PLEASE note that I am not directing this towards someone already at a healthy weight. This is for those who have a lot to lose. I also do not condone calories lower than 800 per day for anyone, long term. The CDC states that 800 is the minimum calories for most women and 900 for most men, to get in the proper nutrients and lose weight safely. AGAIN, I am not saying that everyone should eat at that low of a level, but if an overweight person is eating that low for the purpose of treating obesity, then leave them alone and let them and their doctor worry about it.

That is a bit of an exaggeration.

1. The outcome of the person "rage-quitting" because they gained all this muscle in the process of all this exercise they are doing is a billion times better than the person "rage-quitting" after spending months conditioning their body to get used to excessively low calories with some potential permanent impact to their metabolism because their body has started eating away at muscle.
2. Your body can only "chip away" at fat so fast, especially when you start losing weight and you don't have much more fat left to lose. It might work well to start off with, but it will all come crashing down eventually.

Excessively low calorie diets are absolute madness, because once you stop "losing", it is a difficult process to get your metabolism to actually "fire up" again. As another poster pointed out earlier - if she eats at 1500 calories, she gains weight - this is a sure sign of a metabolism that has slowed down (probably due to prolonged periods on low calorie diets). That's why people can be "skinny fat" - high % body fat with low weight, because of lack of LBM. THAT's what low cal diets cause. Less muscle means slower metabolism.

Another major problem with these low calorie diets is that once people have lost the weight, what then? How do you suddenly survive - the moment you start eating what a "normal" person should eat, you will simply balloon again and you are forever trapped in this vicious cycle. Low calorie diets are almost like self-fulfilling prophecies - the less you eat, the less your body can burn, the less you should eat, therefore proving that low cal diets "work". But it's just an endless trap that's really difficult to get out of.

I 100% agree and see your point...but when you have lived for a very long time on a low calorie diet it can be very difficult to adjust to eating more than you're used to. Especially if you dont feel hungry, which i guess is a result of your body being used ot getting the amounts that it does. Just like some people find it difficult adjusting to diets that have less calories than they are used to, it can similarly be as hard the opposite way

I am not by any means saying that very low calories diets are healthy though, or right for everybody