Not eating enough calories

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  • meggonkgonk
    meggonkgonk Posts: 2,066 Member
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    Losing weight requires you eat enough calories to fuel your basic functions. My suggestion is to eat to a calorie RANGE not to a single calorie goal. This can be almost endlessly specific to you, your body and your lifestyle but the quick and dirty way:

    Range high- Maintenance (+ Exercise calories) This can be found by going to your goals page and adding together your current goal and your current deficit (and of course your exercise calories).

    Range low - BMR (+ Exercise calories) look up your BMR using the Apps section of this site. Eat this as your minimum (+ what you burn off in exercise).
  • Outlawhorses
    Outlawhorses Posts: 23 Member
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    I'm having this same problem
  • NGFive
    NGFive Posts: 125 Member
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    In my experience the only thing that permits me to lose weight is to not exceed my 1200 calorie limit set by My Fitness Pal. When I exceed this number, the scale always reflects it with weight gain...
  • SnicciFit
    SnicciFit Posts: 967 Member
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    One thing you might want to consider: the percent of your daily food that comes from fat.
    If you eat enough calories and keep your fats no higher than 25% of your total calories, you will lose weight.
    Here's how to calculate: Take your total fat grams, multiply by 9, and then divide by the total number of calories.
    An example: If I ate 1500 calories and the total number of fat grams was 25, then 15% of my calories came from fat.
    Perfectly respectable number.
    Try it - see how it works.

    I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with this. Fat is fuel. Think of it this way, you can fuel your fire with paper (burns fast like carbs) or hardwood (burns slow like fat & protein). Which is better? I eat roughly 65% of my cals from fat and lost 2.9% body fat in a short 26 day period in January. I'm not saying that 65% is a magic number for everybody. Everyone is different, but low-fat diets obviously don't work. Look what they've done to the health of American people over the last 2 decades or so...
  • akaMrsmojo
    akaMrsmojo Posts: 764 Member
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    Lot's of good posts here but I thought I would chip in with some personal experience.

    About ten years ago I lost weight cutting calories and some exercise. I didn't really follow any advice I was just doing my own thing. I was successful but I found I would have to keep cutting to carry on losing weight. I got to 144lbs, I'm 5'10" and this looked terrible on me. I was also eating around 600-700 calories a day max, if I was eating at all this went on for a couple of years. My body shut down and I could barely function, I was bed bound for 6 months, diagnosed with CFS.

    When I started to eat a little more I gained weight, I was eating around 1000-1200 calories a day. This led to years of yo-yoing, weekdays I would eat around 1000 calories a day sometimes less, weekends I would go up to 2500 calories. This still isn't that much extra but I just kept gaining.

    You need to look at the long run, if you are planning to cut calories severely, lose weight quickly and then go back to eating normally then it won't work. It's best to follow the guidance. I've been poorly and unable to exercise, actually housebound since last October instead of panicking and cutting calories I actually decided to raise my calories to maintenance for a while, I now have a slight cut but my main goal is to get better. I haven't gained any weight though.

    I just think for long term loss and health it is best to have a sensible diet with a bit of what you fancy.

    Thanks for sharing. My mom went through a similar experience. Because of that, I have always ate back my calories.

    I wish everyone would read your story.
  • crjohnston12
    crjohnston12 Posts: 76 Member
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    I'm totally ignorant about achronyms...what is TDEE?
  • jacksonpt
    jacksonpt Posts: 10,413 Member
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    I'm totally ignorant about achronyms...what is TDEE?

    Total Daily Energy Expenditure... all the energy (cals) your body needs for everything you do throughout the day, from breathing and pumping blood to running errands and doing housework to exercise and working out.
  • karlalband
    karlalband Posts: 196 Member
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    BUMP
  • crjohnston12
    crjohnston12 Posts: 76 Member
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    I'm totally ignorant about achronyms...what is TDEE?

    Total Daily Energy Expenditure... all the energy (cals) your body needs for everything you do throughout the day, from breathing and pumping blood to running errands and doing housework to exercise and working out.

    Thank you...and how does one calculate that (I'm sorry to be so ignorant).
  • 3dogsrunning
    3dogsrunning Posts: 27,167 Member
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    I'm totally ignorant about achronyms...what is TDEE?

    Total Daily Energy Expenditure... all the energy (cals) your body needs for everything you do throughout the day, from breathing and pumping blood to running errands and doing housework to exercise and working out.

    Thank you...and how does one calculate that (I'm sorry to be so ignorant).

    There are any number of online calculators. This is popular post here that explains it all
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12
  • madhattedmadness
    madhattedmadness Posts: 8 Member
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    If you don't eat enough calories your body will go in to starvation mode...not just that but your metabolism will slow itself down. your body is begging you for more energy. I know this because I am going through the same thing. I work out 6 days a week and I eat about 1400 calories a day... your body needs about 1200 just to function, but each person is different.. take in to account the more u work out the more calories you need. there is a balance.
    read this please.
    http://www.coachcalorie.com/not-eating-enough-calories-to-lose-weight/

    there are personal trainers on there that can answer questions too.

    hope this helped.

    also, if you don't consume enough calories... and by calories i mean healthy ones.. then your body is going to take from your muscle mass and just eat away at that.. when u work out. which is counter productive.

    Have a good one :)
  • ydelvalle47
    ydelvalle47 Posts: 3 Member
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    very helpful thanks!

    ;) congrats
  • dwolfman90
    dwolfman90 Posts: 8
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    ultimately having the body you desire requires manipulating the metabolism correctly and efficiently.. this is actually the main goal anyone here should have.

    how people mess up this process is the reason people can get morbidly obese without even trying.. basically drastically cutting calories, doing excessive cardio and creating a gigantic energy deficit will greatly damage the metabolism. after they do this they find that any "cheat" day they have or if they go back to eating "normal" they have greater fat gain results because of the damaged metabolism.

    facts are that any energy deficit will result in slowing the metabolism if dieting for an extended period of time.. and eating more food (particularly more carbohydrates and lesser extent protein) will increase the metabolism. so basically everyone who is trying to lose weight on this site is gradually slowing their metabolism.

    what people need to understand is that they also need to do some sort of 'reverse dieting' (important google it if you dont know what it is already) along with strength training to create a better environment for losing body fat.. and having higher carbohydrate days while dieting can also help metabolic rate as well...

    BMR and TDEE are moving targets depending on tons of variables so the biggest thing to monitor is just your caloric/macronutrient/micronutrient intake.


    This is what People need to realize this guy knows his ****, thanks dude!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  • jacklo
    jacklo Posts: 17
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    I am not reading any of the responses posted as every time I see someone raise "starvation mode" as a reason another might not be losing weight, it makes me want to...well... you get the picture. That said, I'm glad you raised your original point.

    For what it's worth, I thought this article made a lot of sense:

    http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/starvation-mode/

    Wishing you continued success....
  • alisonlynn1976
    alisonlynn1976 Posts: 929 Member
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    It doesn't, except in cases of actual starvation, which is rarely to never what's happening to people on here. What happens is that people who say they eat very low calories and are gaining anyway are wrong about how much they're eating and actually eating considerably more or they do eat very low calories some of the time but can't handle it and binge every so often, creating an overall calorie surplus.

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