Do I really need to eat this much?!?

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  • run2bfree
    run2bfree Posts: 108 Member
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    Probably water weight.

    If you eat more, you will decrease your deficit and therefore, long term, will not lose weight quicker. When you diet, you retain water. The larger your deficit, the more water you retain. You have higher calories, that water will be released, at least initially. It will stabilize.

    I am not saying that a large deficit is a good thing - it is not for the most part. However, eating more will not cause you to lose more unless it impacts long term adherence.

    ETA: to clarify, low calories are generally not a good idea and can have a slew of negatives associated with them, including increased risk of LBM loss, hormonal imbalances, being cranky, nutritional deficiencies etc.

    THIS - keep eating and feeding your body healthy clean food. The more hungry you are the more your body is telling you its working right!
  • geekyjock76
    geekyjock76 Posts: 2,720 Member
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    You have two key players that assist in hunger and satiety feedback: hormones that regulate energy balance and portions of the brain responsible for self control (reward vs aversion) and gauging hunger and satiety. The latter becomes compromised after long-term malnutrition.

    Serum leptin can decrease after 24 hours of undereating which demonstrates how quickly your body adapts in regulating energy balance. The result is that you no longer feel hungry after eating less for a few days. Once you decrease the deficit, and return energy balance closer to maintenance needs, serum leptin recovers to near baseline concentrations leading to regained hunger response.

    If underfeeding persists chronically, the brain itself mutates and areas responsible for self control and gauging hunger and satiety become affected. Through fractional MRI studies on recovered anorexics, scientists have discovered that these areas have greatly altered and remain so even long after recovery. To illustrate the severity of these changes, consider the below different responses.

    Healthy person - This person eats a small amount of calories for a meal and experiences hunger within an hour. The brain accurately assesses the degree of hunger. Along with the area of the brain responsible for reward thinking, it assumes you are hungry because you haven't met energy needs. Thus, to maintain weight, you know you must consume more calories.

    Anorexic person - This person eats a small amount of calories for a meal and experiences hunger within an hour. The fact that hunger subsides (even if only for an hour) convinces the anorexic they have truly eaten enough. Thus, when they experience hunger again, the brain is genuinely confused. So instead of acknowledging this as a reward scenario, it instead switches to aversion out of fear of getting fat.

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