Anyone else discovered low calories are their only option?

What is wrong with people on here. Just because you've had one particular experience and YOU are able to eat a certain amount and still lose weight, be fit, lean etc. you seem to think that one rule fits all but unfortunately it isnt' the reality for some of us.

What I don't get with people who seem intent on telling someone like me they're starving themselves is that you haven't bothered to listen to anything I've said about the months I've tried to eat a lot higher calories and have only seen negative results.

Can't you understand that I only got to be this weight in the first place over the course of 2 years of eating higher calories? Doesn't that compute in your brains? You can ONLY lose weight by eating less than you were previously or burning it off through exercise and that's a fact. We don't really know how accurate calorie burns are on HRMs anyway and we don't know if the labels and calorie counts of foods we put into MFP are truely accurate either. Combine that with not knowing how much our bodies are individually capable of burning off and that amounts to a lot of room for movement.

How can any of you say that it's unhealthy to think that lowering body fat through diet is a bad thing? You try living in a relatively 'thin' body made up of 31% fat and tell me that's healthy. It's not just for vanity purposes but for health purposes and whichever way you look at it it's just not healthy to carry that much fat. Unfortunately if the only way to get it off is to eat low calories for a while while continuing to train then so be it. Once I've achieved that I've said all along that I will start eating more, at least at maintenance which I've already said is probably around 1500-1600. That's hardly an unhealthy amount of food to eat and hopefully given the amount of weight I want to lose I'll be able to do that in a few months time. Eating 1100-1200 calories for 5-6 months is not going to be the end of the world now is it?

You also seem to totally ignore all the people in the Western world who are not members of MFP and who don't religiously count calories or even know how much they're really eating. I know many people who fall into that category who may well be eating under the 'recommended' level for long periods of time. For example someone I know works in a restaurant and she works most days from 5pm-1am. She therefore only ever eats breakfast and a normal lunch and when she finishes work at 1am she goes home and eats a bowl of cereal so she probably eats no more than 1000 calories, though unintentionally. She has a lot of muscle (although she doesn't exercise) and her body fat is around 22%.

One of my neighbours eats only once a day and normally only has a sandwhich which is a form of intermittent fasting (although obviously very low calorie). He's in his 70s and is healthy. This supports what was said on a BBC TV documentary which gave the example of an Indian man who ran a marathon aged 100 and also only ate once a day. He swore that his good health was due to this way of eating. Another neighbour who's 46 weighs 115lbs and doesn't exercise, she's also healthy. She regularly skips meals and eats more when she goes out for meals with friends and at special occasions like birthdays/Christmas etc. She's getting married in 4 months so she's switched to eating salads mainly and again isn't lacking in muscle definition.

There are most likely many examples of people around all of us who eat less than TDEE -20% some low carb, some high carb and many other combinations but most of them are totally unaware of how much they're eating.