EAT GIRLS! EAT!!!!!!

I thought this was going to be about that cop who wanted to cook and eat a girl for Thanksgiving!

Ok so... I would LOVE to be able to eat 2,000 calories a day. I recently switched to the 1,200 calories a day plan and it's been super freaking miserable. If you look at my diary you'll see I was awesome for about 5 days, and since thanksgiving I've been on a binge. I feel like I'm a mentally stable and bright individual, but there is something I'm missing when it comes to this whole dieting thing. How are you able to eat that much and not gain? I know a lot of women that lift weights eat a lot more, but I'm a stay at home Mom and don't have time to live at the gym. Any advice????

(I'm talking about NET calories in this post)

I find that if I have 1,200 a day, I do lose weight, but quite slowly. If I eat 1400ish, I lose weight consistently and more quickly. If I eat 1600, I maintain. If I eat 1700 I gain. Have tried this for extended periods of time. So don't try and tell me to eat more!

I am starting to think this is me too. I net 1400 now. OP my BMR is just a wee over 1200 so we are all different. If I ate 2000 I'm fairly certain I'd blow up unless of course I earned those extra cals through working out. But I get the sentiment here I am eating more than I thought I could and still losing so it's good to play with the numbers for a while.

Finally someone here mentions BMR! Thank you!

I'm 52 and small and still can't eat as much as the bigger taller girls, it's never going to happen. Just because we are small and can't eat as much as bigger people does not mean we have eating disorders. If there are skinny girls eating too little then yes I disagree with that, but to tell a fat person who is trying to eat on a calorie deficit to eat more?? How do you know what their BMR is or their body fat % and you tell them to eat more?

I am short, petite, small; my RMR is low compared to others. With my doctors approval I had to eat less than or right around 1000 calories to lose weight. We are all different. There is no one size fits all. Even people my height and gender are different and some need more calories than I do. My doctor checked my hormone levels throughout my 60 lb weight loss journey (from obese down to 10% body fat) and everything was fine. I got stronger and stronger at the gym, my running and weight lifting strength improved even while eating on a significant calorie deficit. My DXA scan proved I did not lose lean body mass or go into starvation mode.


While you don’t have to worry about starvation mode when you have significant fat on your body, as you get closer to your goal you do need to increase your calories slightly as you get leaner as here’s why:

The Theory of Fat Availability:
•There is a set amount of fat that can be released from a fat cell.
•The more fat you have, the more fat can be used as a fuel when dieting.
•The less fat you have, the less fat can be used as a fuel when dieting.
•Towards the end of a transformation, when body fat is extremely low you
may not have enough fat to handle a large caloric deficit anymore.

At the extreme low end, when your body fat cannot ‘keep up’ with the energy deficit
you've imposed on your body, the energy MUST come from SOMEWHERE. This is
when you are at risk of losing lean body mass during dieting (commonly referred to
as ‘starvation mode’). This happens at extremely low levels of body fat, under 6% in
men and 12% in women [Friedl K.E. J Appl Phsiol, 1994].

-Brad Pilon and John Barban (from The Reverse Taper Diet in The Adonis Index and Venus Index manuals)

As far as calories…What you need to eat for a deficit is relative to your RMR. If you are short you really don't have much room for up compared to the 1200. If you are taller you will have a higher RMR and can go up or down and still be in a deficit (way above 1200) so you can lose no matter what. All that matters is a calorie deficit.

To tell everyone eat more is wrong.

To tell everyone to eat less is wrong.

To find the exact amount of calories for you to be in a sustainable calorie deficit is correct. Some people can handle a deeper calorie deficit than others. Some people have emotional eating disorders and it comes into play. Even a small deficit puts your body in a state of flux with hormones and such and everyone is different.

You just need to find the correct calories for YOU to be healthy and sustainable and still lose weight. It might require some experimentation and tremendous patience. You can always notch up and down by 100 until you find what is sustainable and still allows you to lose weight.

If you have emotional eating issues than you are not going to be able to handle such a deep deficit and if you eat to low it will backfire. A better strategy is to eat at a shallower deficit, and sometimes give yourself a break from the deficit and eat at maintenance. This is not going backwards, but eating to low and then binging because you can't sustain it is going backwards. It's better to stay forwards even if it is slower. The tortoise wins this race in the end.


If you plug in all your info (typically age, gender, height and weight) into one of those calculators what you get is the average metabolic rate of a group of people who share your age, sex, height and weight. What you DON’T get is YOUR EXACT calorie needs. It's a place to start.

To find the exact calories needed for YOU to be in a healthy sustainable calorie deficit is the right answer. Wait, if you need to adjust by 100 do it, wait, adjust, wait, adjust, wait. The tortoise wins this race.

You want to eat as healthy as you can because it makes you feel better and perform better, and makes you healthier. There are a bunch of tricks and clean eating; reducing sugar (especially HFCS), fiber, white flour vs whole grain, low carb, low fat, on and on. All that matters is calories for weight loss. If you need to eat a certain way for health reasons or to feel better do it, but extensive good food and bad food lists will drive you insane at some point, it’s a constantly moving target. Just eat what you like, mostly healthy, mostly balanced, within a calorie budget. We all know what healthy is by now, just do it.

Also people play mental accounting games with calories just like with finances. Make steps to make sure you are making accurate measurements. Packaged foods can have MORE than they say but not less (they get in trouble if less so they would rather error with MORE).