why is 1200 cal/day too low?

Lol well that touched a nerve!

So at higher cals you didn't lose any fat or weight.
Training was perfect and nutrition was perfect?

How long did you attempt the higher cals?

Yes, I find it extremely frustrating that people treat a number that is, at best, an estimate based on averages and mathematical modeling as an absolute when I (and plenty of scientific researchers) have found that it is often off. Mathematical modeling cannot and does not take into account all variables and will probably never be able to account for genetic differences. Additionally when your post is so single purposed as to completely ignore all other scientific measurements that show significant progress for me, it is irritating. 1200 calories works for me. (Please note the 'for me' part of this as I have no doubt that it would not work for everyone).

I had tried 1800 calories (upon the recommendation of my PT) for about 3-4 months in the early part of last year (starting around March and quit that around June/July). Was nutrition perfect? No, it never is. Was I counting calories as accurately and recording as rigorously as I am now? Yes. Was training perfect? Again, no it never is. Was I training as hard as I am now? Absolutely. I experienced some LBM gains but no BF loss. In fact, I gained a bit of weight. I gained about 3-5 lbs over that period of time and by my best calculations, it was almost evenly split between body fat and lean mass. At that time, I was not having DXA scans done so I couldn't actually tell you with any certainty what the split was there.


I'm more than satisfied on 1200 calories (physically and mentally) and as long as I'm not losing LBM (which I'm not) I am satisfied with the results. The next time I go in for a DeXA scan, I will probably try to get my RMR actually checked so that I can work out the numbers for maintenance. I am not planning on going back in until I hit my goal of 155 which should put me at about 19%bf.

How do you not lose body mass? That's insane..

Last month I ate anywhere from 1600-2000 cals a day, lifted + cardio everyday and lost 6% BF.. the month before that, I lost over 10%!! Something is amiss

It depends on your situation entirely.. I'm 5'1', 91lbs and my BMR is 1100 calories a day. 1200 wouldn't be too little for me to eat when I'm NOT trying to lose weight.

You are demonstrating that you'd rather use word salad instead of giving us facts.
Answer the simple question or stfu about it.

You don't have to take my advice but I've personally pulled people out of the metabolic slump you proudly display as being normal and okay.
So for now I'm calling this witchcraft and wizardry!

Pro bodybuilders have the hardest time doing what you claim you so effortlessly do.
So give us the stats!
You must be the enigma!
The special snowflake!

Its funny how people give so much resistance to the one guy who offers selflessly his services.
Sheesh!

Anyone who doesn't have metabolic disease can lose fat eating the ways I suggest.
Personally I'd love to eat the proper amount of food as opposed to slowing their metabolic rate.

I used to sit for hours running numbers for the early crew.
I did it on my free time and its certainly thrilling to get an email gearing one of your girls no longer has to rely on insulin shots or leg pressed 1000lbs.
I wrote the road map to help people figure their own numbers out and show the new mfp members that 1200 isn't the answer.
So if people don't want to read the road map and do their own numbers then yes ill dedicate the time to run them.

My last question to you is this:

With the most important machine in the world, your body, why would you insist and defend giving it the absolute minimum amount of nutrients to survive?
Why would I ever suggest anyone do that when I myself have proven that higher calories work.
Its worked for about 400 of my members.

Enjoy your 1200 cal diet.
Its certainly made you an enjoyable person to chat with.

But really, for every study you find where they didn't have problems (and some of those studies comment specifically on using participants that have never dieted before. Most of course try to use otherwise healthy folks, some studies don't comment one way or another), you can find studies where there are changes.

Some have to do with where you are on the journey. Bunch to lose, huge window of opportunity. Later on, great chance of difficulty.

The question is for people - where is your body going to sit in the scheme of easy, or difficult?
If it's easy, great. If it's not, starting on the low end really just causes the problems.

Perhaps the advice would be, don't start at 1200, start reasonable. If you have no weight loss and not doing tons of new exercise that would actually cause body improvement and gain, then slowly lower, wait 3 weeks and see what really happens. It beats having 3-9 month stall and slowly moving up until you start losing again, after already having lost muscle mass because you also did the exercise and protein aspect worst way it could be done.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18198305
Body weight is defended in non-obese participants during modest caloric restriction, evidenced by metabolic adaptation of RMR and reduced energy expenditure through physical activity.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18842775
TEE, NREE, and (to a lesser extent) REE were significantly lower in the Wt(loss-sustained) and Wt(loss-recent) groups than in the Wt(initial) group. Differences from the Wt(initial) group in energy expenditure were qualitatively and quantitatively similar after recent and sustained weight loss.
CONCLUSION:
Declines in energy expenditure favoring the regain of lost weight persist well beyond the period of dynamic weight loss.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11010936
The TEE inside Biosphere 2, assessed 3 wk before exit, averaged 10700 +/- 560 kJ/d (n = 8). Within 1 wk after exit, the adjusted 24-h EE and spontaneous physical activity were lower in the biospherians (n = 5) than in 152 control subjects (6% and 45%, respectively; both P: < 0.01). Six months after exit and return to an ad libitum diet, body weight had increased to preentry levels; however, adjusted 24-h EE and spontaneous physical activity were still significantly lower than in control subjects.
CONCLUSIONS:
In lean humans, an adaptive decrease in EE appears to occur not only in states of life-threatening undernutrition, but also in response to less severe energy restriction sustained over several years.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11430776
May recover, and lucky for women perhaps.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20054213
Only about half the women got off lucky in this one.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17260010
This issue has been documented in recent studies that have shown in obese individuals adhering to a weight reduction program a greater than predicted decrease in EE, which in some cases was quantitatively sufficient to overcome the prescribed energy restriction, suggesting a role for adaptive thermogenesis in unsuccessful weight loss interventions and reduced body weight maintenance. As also discussed in this paper, this 'adaptive thermogenesis' can be influenced by environmental factors, which have not been frequently considered up to now. This is potentially the case for plasma organochlorine concentration and oxygen desaturation in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. It is concluded that health professionals should be aware that in some vulnerable individuals, adaptive thermogenesis can be multi-causal, and has the capacity to compensate, at least partly, for the prescribed energy deficit, possibly going beyond any good compliance of some patients.

For that last one, besides genetics - what else is going on in life that could be stressful?
Which perhaps is the reason for the difference in study results. Besides their weight, how stressed are the participants? And for those that did different types of exercise, usually at reasonable levels, what would have been the results at what is observed to be little more unreasonable levels, 6 x weekly for 1 hr daily intense something?
What if these folks had 60 hr jobs too, and care-giving, ect?
I dare say for some of these studies, the folks that have the ability to give that much time to being locked up for couple days at a time may not have much else going on in life, except perhaps stress over needing a job.

For more information on variances in BMR between individuals, this study is very interesting:

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/5/941.full

Like all previous studies (50–55), we found enormous variation in between-subject BMR (26%) that was not explained by differences in body composition or age (or sex). This variation could not be attributed to either within-subject error or analytic error, which together only summed to 2% of the total variance (less than one-tenth of the unexplained variation). In part, this unexplained variance may reflect the inadequacies of our characterization of body composition into only 3 compartments (FFM, FM, and bone mineral content).
...
Like many other studies, our work has indicated a large between-individual variation in BMR that cannot be explained by morphologic characteristics, including sex and age.

Basically, there was a 26% variance in BMR between individuals not related to LBM (or ffm whichever you prefer), age, sex, or fat mass.

If I take this and extrapolate with a number given for bmr, let's say 1600 for the sake of round easy numbers, I would get a variance of 416 cal/day.

416 cal/day for BMR alone, so the differences in TDEE would be much higher. 1600 x 1.55 (for moderately active) would give 2480. If the BMR measurement were over by 416 cal/day actual BMR would be 1184, 1184 x 1.55 would give 1835 for TDEE.

If I used the higher number (the online estimate) when in fact my BMR was actually 26% different, and I did the TDEE-20%, it would tell me to consume 1984 cal/day which would be 149 calories higher than actual TDEE causing me to gain a pound every 23.5 days.

My point in all of this is that without actually going and having my BMR or RMR tested, they are all estimates that can be pretty far off. If this were the method I wanted to follow, I would go have my RMR tested so that I would know where to set my goals. There have been other studies that showed BMR to be closer to 30% different than estimates.

If the variance is 26% (nice article) the actual estimated difference you should see from the mean is less than 13% (ie +- 26%). Given that the distribution is likely Gaussian, I'd say there is a 99% chance that personal measures fall within +- 11%.

So a TDEE -20% is still at least TDEE-9% to TDEE-31% for 99 out of a hundred people.

Feel free to correct me or do the actual standard deviations.

The thought crossed my mind but in this particular article, it compares people to people not people to estimates (given by mathematical modeling). The people to estimates articles which I have read (and I cannot find them right now, but they are out there) showed a greater variance so for the purposes of simplicity, I assumed that the person at the highest end was at the estimate. There are very obvious problems with this but I wasn't shooting for a real number so much as trying to demonstrate issues with basing everything on a number that could be off by quite a bit in either direction (again, this article doesn't state what the variance from the estimated value is, it only measures the variance between people).

So yes you are more right but I think the actual number for measured BMR to calculated BMR was more like 30 something percent (but again, I couldn't find the article right now and I'm trying to spend some time actually doing homework in addition to responding to this )

Does IPOARM come with a extra dose of arrogance, Dan?

You give good advice but the consistent attitude of "I know better for everyone" gets old even for those that agree on the overall basics of your method.

Variability is part of the normal - so to call someone that has a TDEE which is 20%-30% below the calculated TDEE as being not normal or metabolically damaged or having an eating disorder is incorrect. Without identified biological makers or actual biological issues there is no medical issue that can be diagnosed solely from a drop in BMR or even a low, long term actual BMR.

And given that the best of these equation only calculates residual variance of LBM to be 70% of the overall BMR in a generally healthy population, it pretty clear from dozens and dozens of metabolic estimation studies that significant variability exists and more so for obese individuals (with or without hormonal factors like circulating T3 and other hormones or diseases like diabetes)

BTW - a couple of questions on your "biological function of fat"

- how does fat protect from insulin resistance? It is my understanding that lipids induce insulin resistance via protein Kinase C activation. Is this wrong?

- estrogen decline - I have not seen the work that describes that fat protects from estrogen decline - doesn't mean it isn't true but I find that very interesting as the role of estrogen in a variety of aging functions and metabolism is primordial. It would suggest that fat tissue would protect from neurological decline and increase metabolism from this alone.

- fat has several other biological functions - the first is actually as a reservoir for all tissues of lipids for cell function. Lipid storage is essential. No lipids no life. So you can't "eliminate the reason for its existence". Another major function of fat is hormonal - leptin production, hormonal regulation, etc... essential and GOOD. Eating disorders, amenorrhea are all partially driven by fat tissue hormonal disfunction.

Keep up what you are doing, it is great, but no need to be insulting with the people that don't agree with you.