Relatively light people trying to get leaner

Steve, the reason there are so many people who have 1200 as their goal is that they're trying to go for the max weight loss MFP is set up for, which is 2 pounds a week. This formula deducts 1000kc from their "maintenance" , but never goes below 1200 a day. So, instead of people entering that they want to lose 1 pound or 1/2 a pound a week, they want it fast...right now...max speed ie: 2 pounds per week. :noway:

Ohhh, that makes some sense. Well it makes sense as to why it works out to 1200 for most people. But the rational behind the calculation doesn't make a lot of sense.

They should change that... I'm not sure if it'd be worth making a suggestion. It's apparent just in this thread that it's leading a lot of people astray.

A VERY general rule of thumb is you can aim for a rate of weight loss of 1% of total weight per week. But even that is sketchy once you get down into the "light population who's trying to get leaner." In my experience, which is shared by a few professionals who've done this for as long as I've been alive, the reality is more like 2-4 lbs per month in lean women trying to get leaner.

That's 2-4 lbs of fat loss. Which, given the wonkiness of water flux in light, dieting females, can be completely masked on the scale.

Eating to generate a faster rate of weight loss will typically lead to "bad things" metabolically speaking. It goes back to that whole "beating your body into submission" bit. So ideally, the calculator on MFP would either disallow someone from selecting something so ridiculous. Instead, they could make it a percentage of total body weight per week. Or just use a simple percentage off of maintenance, say 30% or so. Whatever.

Not trying to bash this place. I love it here. But that doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense and I have a feeling it's leading more people astray than it's helping.

I think 1200 is too low for most people, myself.

Definitely.

They say 2 lbs is the max rate of weight loss, right?

If you're 500 lbs, I'd say that rate isn't high enough.

If you're 200 lbs, it's probably just about right.

The further under 200 lbs you go, the less applicable the 2 lb per week calculation becomes.

Also, the program adds back their exercise calories to bring them up to 1500 or 1600 or so. This is to maintain their deficit. So the average works out to a higher number actually.

Sorry, I'm responding as I read.

But I see so many people around here skimping out on their exercise calories. There seems to be a lot of confusion and I can tell you that a light female trying to get leaner isn't going to do well, more often than not, with a daily deficit of 1000 calories.

Anyhow, thanks again for the clarification.

I also do not agree with the 1000 calorie deficit a day. I'd say 250 for people trying to lose a little weight, and 500 for people trying to shed big weight. I think it leads to the feeling of starvation, so people might give up too easily.

I mean I've run people on protein sparing modified fasts where they deficits were in the thousands of calories per day. But in these cases, I was dealing with, say, a 400 lb client with a total daily energy expenditure of 5,000 calories.

Using a PSMF, their diets consisted of nothing other than protein, essential fats, and unlimited fibrous veggies. These are the basis of health. But this way of eating was temporary for reasons we won't delve into here. The absolute size of the deficit is meaningless in my opinion. The relative size of the deficit is much more meaningful as it will take into account someone's size and therefore total daily energy expenditure.

For those reasons, a reasonable rate of weight loss for a 500 lb person would be 5 lbs per week. Assuming they're losing nothing but fat, that's a deficit of 17500 per week or 2500 per day.

On the flip side, a 125 lb person might see a reasonable rate of weight loss at 1 lb per week. And for reasons already discussed, that's be pushing things.

question # 4,234:bigsmile:

importance of breakfast! Is it really THAT important. i've never been a fan and have trouble eating in the morning. just really need to hear the truth so I can quit worrying or suck it up and find something I can tolerate.

Nope.

It's the totals in terms of calories and nutrients at the end of the day that matter most Check out the intermittent fasting crowd and the people who are seeing amazing results there.

Not only is it important to me just to hit the goal, but I am curious to see how I look and feel at 116 versus now at 125.

But the point is that's not really logical.

You can have 2 people who each weigh 116. One you'd hate to look like. The other you'd love to look like. The only difference is body composition. So is it the number on the scale that matters? Or is it the reflection in the mirror?

Weight is such an arbitrary number when you're dealing with average/normal weight folks that it's almost pointless to pay attention to. I'm not knocking those who do. But to have it as a goal at this stage in the game just because "a goal is a goal" is a bit misguided if you ask me.

Ideally goals change as people change.

Not knocking... just adding some objectivity to the mix. If you don't like it, just tell me to shut up!

I've definitely hit a bit of a wall though, as things have really slowed down. I started out doing the basic recommendation of 1200 per day from MFP and the longer I'm here the less I'm sure that it's the best thing for me, but it has gotten me this far so I've stuck to it. I think I'm going to take some of the info you've had in here to try and recalculate for myself and give it a shot.

It truly is amazing to me how many folks here are consuming 1200 calories and are stuck. It's unfortunate too.

wow -- thanks -- that is what I thought -- and I don't binge because I'm hungry. I just don't feel hungry right away. I have my coffee at 6am but truly don't feel hungry until about 10am. I feel like I am better off to listen to my body than to eat just for the sake of eating. Thanks for the input!!!! As always, thanks for sharing your knowledge. I'm off to think of more questions :bigsmile:

There are some studies that show a satiating effect of coffee. Might be something going on there in your case.

But in the meantime if you would like to elaborate about intermittent fasting....

There are many different intermittent fasting protocols out there. Suffice it to say that they all have you eating nothing for a chunk of the day and piling your nutrition in another chunk of the day. The most vocal proponent of IF is Martin Berkhan, of leangains.com. He's a great guy... very knowledgeable.

His approach calls for, I believe, 16 hours of fasting followed by 8 hours of feeding. I've not looked at his data in a long while, so I could be off slightly. He'll also manipulate carbohydrate consumption depending on the strength training schedule.

In fact, let me go grab the link to his explanation.

Here ya go:

http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html

I think Intermittent Fasting is GREAT for someone who is stuck. I also like it just for a change up once a week.

Interesting. I've not considered that.

What I get the most success out of with my small female clients is the implementation of refeeds.

For those who aren't familiar with refeeds, without going into all the minutia...

A refeed is a very structured period of overfeeding where fat intake is minimized, protein is held constant, and particular carbs are consumed in large quantities.

There are various reasons for this but suffice it so say that some of the primary hormones associated with metabolic rate are responsive to carb intake.

Frequency and length of refeeds vary due to fat mass, diet, etc.

I also cannot believe the amount of people who still eat 1200 calories every day, do an hour of exercise a day and wonder why they have stopped losing weight.

I made a recommendation in my blog here at MFP the other day of a book. It's called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. It's witty, and better yet, it's amazingly informative and well written. People need to understand that we can't strong arm our bodies into changing. Attempting this is going against everything that we're biologically hardwired to resist.

You wouldn't blow spit balls into the face of a hurricane, would you?

I have been there. Eating less than the recommended amount of calories will eventually stop working.

And that's the kicker really. Most of these people, primarily women, start out with too low of calories and they realize relatively easy results. Of course. Your body is reactive so it simply hasn't caught on yet. Once it does though, things tend to come to a screeching halt.

You might be asking yourself, "Well who cares... results are results and I'll deal with plateaus when the arise."

The problem is, the psychology of a "dieter" sucks in general. Once they back themselves into a corner by consuming too few calories and hit a wall.... the stuff they need to do to move to the next level directly opposes their psychology. It typically means bumping calories up. Reducing some of the endless cardio many of these folks tend to be doing. Adding strength training into the mix since for some reason, nobody ever seems to include that initially. It means preparing yourself to possibly add a few pounds.

All these things sound like hell to the psychology of the typical dieter.

So what we're left with are people who struggle for ridiculous periods of time. Some will become obsessive and this is where eating disorders are born. Others will remain determined and sit where they are in terms of weight and body composition never really changing. Others will go down the yo-yo path where they give up for a while only to return using the same flawed tactics next month.