Under Eating so I Can Over Eat?

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badwolf4
badwolf4 Posts: 49 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello,
Brief background: recovering from a restrictive ED, but still overweight.
My net calorie goal is 1200 and I'm doing pretty good getting up near there every day, but no one's perfect.
I was wondering if, since my birthday is Tuesday, could I eat very little Monday and/or Wednesday so I could eat as much as I wanted on Tuesday? Would I hurt myself?

Lots of love and thanks,
Amberley
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Replies

  • aDeadlySin
    aDeadlySin Posts: 2
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    If you eat little, your body will go into starvation mode, therefore the next things you do eat, your body will store as fat. I would NOT suggest under eating to over eat.
  • jynxxxed
    jynxxxed Posts: 1,010 Member
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    Since you're already undereating on a regular basis, that wouldn't be a good idea at all. Enjoy your birthday. Even if you overeat, it doesn't take 1 day to gain serious weight. If anything, it may assist you in weight loss since your body is being so deprived on every other day.

    Besides, birthday calories don't exist.
  • Indiri13
    Indiri13 Posts: 104 Member
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    To be honest, since you already aren't reaching your minimum 1200 a day then you already under ate for a few days. No need to take it further, just enjoy your birthday and have some cake. It's only one day.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
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    Brief background: recovering from a restrictive ED, but still overweight.
    My net calorie goal is 1200 and I'm doing pretty good getting up near there every day, but no one's perfect.
    I was wondering if, since my birthday is Tuesday, could I eat very little Monday and/or Wednesday so I could eat as much as I wanted on Tuesday? Would I hurt myself?
    What you're describing is eating disordered behavior. i hope you are under a doctor's care for your recovery.

    1,200 calorie is very low. How much do you have to lose?

    Since it's your birthday, I encourage you to take this day for yourself and have some of that birthday dinner and birthday cake.
    If you eat little, your body will go into starvation mode, therefore the next things you do eat, your body will store as fat. I would NOT suggest under eating to over eat
    The part about starvation mode is not true.
  • 1LoveChips
    1LoveChips Posts: 260 Member
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    If you eat little, your body will go into starvation mode, therefore the next things you do eat, your body will store as fat. I would NOT suggest under eating to over eat.

    I've often wondered about this; is this a fact? Can anyone else confirm or deny this? Would this then mean that a huge meal one day would turn all the poor starving children in Africa into fatties overnight?
  • geekyjock76
    geekyjock76 Posts: 2,720 Member
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    I would not recommend such a decision because it can lead to you trading one ED for another. You should just eat 1200 net throughout the week and enjoy your birthday where you eat whatever. An important part of recovery is periodically increasing calorie goals and meeting them until weight finally stabilizes. Thus, adopting habits that may increase risk of relapse should be avoided.

    It's also advisable to recover with the assistance of health professionals. Doing so alone is quite difficult having very low chances of long-term success without relapse.
  • geekyjock76
    geekyjock76 Posts: 2,720 Member
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    If you eat little, your body will go into starvation mode, therefore the next things you do eat, your body will store as fat. I would NOT suggest under eating to over eat.

    I've often wondered about this; is this a fact? Can anyone else confirm or deny this? Would this then mean that a huge meal one day would turn all the poor starving children in Africa into fatties overnight?
    No. For example, recovering anorexics are rather very resistant to weight gain. The reason is that they become hypercaloric which results in them requiring a significant amount of calories not only to recover weight but also reverse the physiological damage experienced from chronic semi-starvation. It's common for recovering AN patients to have minimum caloric allotments of 2500, 3000, 3500 or even more depending on age and health factors.
  • musetle
    musetle Posts: 70
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    You're recovering from an eating disorder- restricting again on purpose is absolutely a bad idea. Enjoy your birthday and get back into healthy eating the day after. No need to eat significantly less on other days. Please, please don't. It can start a snowball of unhealthy behaviour again
  • badwolf4
    badwolf4 Posts: 49 Member
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    Brief background: recovering from a restrictive ED, but still overweight.
    My net calorie goal is 1200 and I'm doing pretty good getting up near there every day, but no one's perfect.
    I was wondering if, since my birthday is Tuesday, could I eat very little Monday and/or Wednesday so I could eat as much as I wanted on Tuesday? Would I hurt myself?
    What you're describing is eating disordered behavior. i hope you are under a doctor's care for your recovery.

    1,200 calorie is very low. How much do you have to lose?

    Since it's your birthday, I encourage you to take this day for yourself and have some of that birthday dinner and birthday cake.
    If you eat little, your body will go into starvation mode, therefore the next things you do eat, your body will store as fat. I would NOT suggest under eating to over eat
    The part about starvation mode is not true.

    I would like to lose more than I should. My current goal is 40lbs (185 down to 145) and I'm 5'9. I have have been unable to seek much professional help for this disorder. To note: my disorder has always been restrictive and never binging, that's just what I was fed until I snapped. (My mother is the worst binge eater I've ever met).

    At least I'm aware it's a problem? (:


    Thank you so much for the quick responses, I will definitely try to enjoy both the dinner and the cake!
  • 2spamagnet
    2spamagnet Posts: 60 Member
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    You will not hurt yourself. Look into Intermittent fasting (IF), it is something many people do so that they can maintain their weight and eat WTF they want once or twice a week. They are not dropping like flies as some would lead you to believe. Basically you skip breakfast and/or lunch and eat a normal dinner (or make up for what you skipped).

    For your 1200 cal/day allotment, basically you could skip breakfast and lunch, and have a piece of cake and a pint of ice cream for dinner and not be over your 1200 cals.

    Have a great birthday!
  • alisonlynn1976
    alisonlynn1976 Posts: 929 Member
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    I do eat less the day before or after if I know that I'm going to be eating (or drinking!) a lot on a particular day. You want to be careful with that if you have a history of an eating disorder, though. Make sure you're getting enough weekly calories.
  • KarenJanine
    KarenJanine Posts: 3,497 Member
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    I would not recommend such a decision because it can lead to you trading one ED for another. You should just eat 1200 net throughout the week and enjoy your birthday where you eat whatever. An important part of recovery is periodically increasing calorie goals and meeting them until weight finally stabilizes. Thus, adopting habits that may increase risk of relapse should be avoided.

    It's also advisable to recover with the assistance of health professionals. Doing so alone is quite difficult having very low chances of long-term success without relapse.

    This.

    By denying yourself to make up for enjoying yourself on your birthday you're setting yourself up for getting into a cycle of punishing yourself for enjoying food.
  • channi_c
    channi_c Posts: 47 Member
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    Its great that your aware of your problem!! :)

    I have personally found eating more often with the right foods has helped me boost my weight loss. to stay healthy we should be eating a minimum of 1200 calories. If you stick to your goal for the week and have a day off this shouldnt massively effect ur weight loss if at all. As your recovering from a ED have you tried small portions more often rather than big meals?

    i try and stick to mine daily but still have a takeaway at the weekend to satisfy my cravings and I loose weight still.

    x
  • albertine58
    albertine58 Posts: 267 Member
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    If I was going to eat less the day before a splurge day, I'd eat 1200 cal minimum - I wouldn't go lower than that. The whole starvation -mode-store-more-fat thing is bogus, but it's absolutely true that most people's bodies won't function as well below 1200, and it's very hard to get proper nutrition lower than that.

    I don't look at it as 'saving up' calories, but I tend to eat 1200-1400 cals sunday-thursday, and then eat more fri & sat (usually a meal out & a few drinks with friends). I average 1500-1600 most weeks, and I've lost a 2 lbs per week pretty consistently doing this (lost 12 lbs, two separate times...it works very well for me as long as I stick to it!)
    Averages are what matters! I track my weekly averages in an Excel spreadsheet.
  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 5,948 Member
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    If you eat little, your body will go into starvation mode, therefore the next things you do eat, your body will store as fat. I would NOT suggest under eating to over eat.

    This is not true...
  • neandermagnon
    neandermagnon Posts: 7,436 Member
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    Just eat what you want on your birthday, and forget about trying to "compensate" for it. You need to eat 3500 calories over and above your TDEE to gain just 1lb of fat. If your TDEE is 1800 cals/day (for example) to gain 1lb of fat in a day you'd have to eat 5300 calories in one day. That's actually really difficult. So you're not going to gain any significant amount of fat in one day of overeating. It's your birthday, enjoy it. If you see a weight gain, then it's most likely to be water weight from eating more sodium than usual, you can get rid of it by including more fruit and veg in your meals the next day, plus drinking plenty of water. i.e. nothing to worry about.
  • msf74
    msf74 Posts: 3,498 Member
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    Eat the cake on your birthday and eat according to your plan the rest of the time. You'll be fine.

    You need to be consistent, not perfect.

    If you have a problem with restrictive eating then read "How to have your cake and your skinny jeans too" by Josie Spinardi. It will be right up your street.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
    Options
    You will not hurt yourself. Look into Intermittent fasting (IF), it is something many people do so that they can maintain their weight and eat WTF they want once or twice a week. They are not dropping like flies as some would lead you to believe. Basically you skip breakfast and/or lunch and eat a normal dinner (or make up for what you skipped).

    For your 1200 cal/day allotment, basically you could skip breakfast and lunch, and have a piece of cake and a pint of ice cream for dinner and not be over your 1200 cals.
    Bad advice. She is recovering from an eating disorder.
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
    Options
    Brief background: recovering from a restrictive ED, but still overweight.
    My net calorie goal is 1200 and I'm doing pretty good getting up near there every day, but no one's perfect.
    I was wondering if, since my birthday is Tuesday, could I eat very little Monday and/or Wednesday so I could eat as much as I wanted on Tuesday? Would I hurt myself?
    What you're describing is eating disordered behavior. i hope you are under a doctor's care for your recovery.

    1,200 calorie is very low. How much do you have to lose?

    Since it's your birthday, I encourage you to take this day for yourself and have some of that birthday dinner and birthday cake.
    If you eat little, your body will go into starvation mode, therefore the next things you do eat, your body will store as fat. I would NOT suggest under eating to over eat
    The part about starvation mode is not true.

    I would like to lose more than I should. My current goal is 40lbs (185 down to 145) and I'm 5'9. I have have been unable to seek much professional help for this disorder. To note: my disorder has always been restrictive and never binging, that's just what I was fed until I snapped. (My mother is the worst binge eater I've ever met).

    At least I'm aware it's a problem? (:


    Thank you so much for the quick responses, I will definitely try to enjoy both the dinner and the cake!
    If you are 5 ft. 9 and 185 pounds you need to be eating much more than 1200 calories. Probably more like 1,500 of 1,600 to lose weight, but I can't be sure. Also, I suggest you start off setting a goal to lose 1 pound per week, then when you get down to the last 10 or 15, up the goal to lose a half a pound a week.
  • SerenaKitty
    SerenaKitty Posts: 142
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    I don't think eating whatever you want is a good idea for anyone with a past of disordered eating. To me, that would mean eating far past the point of fullness. Restricting and binging should NOT be an option for those of us recovering.

    Please reconsider - I recommend upping your daily calories. That way, you can fit in sensible amounts of all types of food, even cake and ice cream :)

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