How Far Under Calorie Goal Is Too Far?

if you are at 1200/day then stick to that, it does not offer much wiggle room for cal cycling, I am not sure on your details but here is my recommendation which has worked for a lot of my friends on here who started out with that low a cal count.
1) do not go over 1 lb/wk weight loss, you did not put it on overnight you are not going to lose it overnight.
2) be patient, make small changes and tweak the diet accordingly. Small changed will stick, going stupid will not.
3) get the body working for you not against you which is why I advocate the clean eating diet, if you prescribe to that you will drop the weight in a healthy way and that will be true fat loss not muscle loss.
4) ditch the scale, only weigh in once a week max, any more and you are going to frustrate yourself, scales do not tell the fat loss story so you only are getting half the story which is why I call it the "dirty car salesman of the weight loss world"
5) get measurements from day one, this is where you will see positive results when the scale does not move.
6) eat back all your exercise cals its counter-intuitive to the uneducated but it works.

starvation mode is a myth. do the research. i have.

you dont have to eat back those calories you burned..otherwise why bother even working out? really. you work out to burn calories to lose weight.

EXACTLY!!!

I am not big on following the starvation mode model but I do know what happens to the body when you work out and do not feed it right, it will start to feed on itself meaning muscle loss and not fat loss and slowing the metabolic rate, its not hard to understand. 99% of ppl on 1200 cals/day I can almost guarantee you are not feeding their bodies properly.

and the "starvation mode" debate, round 2,475 begins!

starvation mode is a myth. do the research. i have.

you dont have to eat back those calories you burned..otherwise why bother even working out? really. you work out to burn calories to lose weight.

EXACTLY!!!

No. NOT exactly.

MFP already calculates a deficit for you in your calorie goals. If you do not eat back at least part of your exercise calories, you increase that deficit to potentially unsafe and unsustainable levels. That said, a hundred calories here or there will not harm you. Just get reasonably close, most of the time.

I am not big on following the starvation mode model but I do know what happens to the body when you work out and do not feed it right, it will start to feed on itself meaning muscle loss and not fat loss and slowing the metabolic rate, its not hard to understand. 99% of ppl on 1200 cals/day I can almost guarantee you are not feeding their bodies properly.

I agree here with her...1200 calories a day is just fine and okay so u don't eat your calories your burn.whatever ur choice....But look at what u are eating....It must be balanced!

Yes, eat them back....some at least if you can't them all back everyday.......if you don't you will teach your body to live on too few calories. Not really a great way to live and enjoy life.

Much success to you.

:flowerforyou:

I'd say somewhere around -5000 is probably stretching it. One might tend to get a bit crabby eating 2 turkey sandwiches on whole wheat for a day and then physically purging it on the elliptical for about 5 hours... then doing that for about 2 weeks.

I am usualy beween 100-200 under my goal of 1300...when my goal was 1200 for a week or two I was always 100-200 underthat too...oh well...My answer to you though has a few questions...Do you actually measure the food and know with certainty that you had exactly 1 cup of fruit or do you eyeball portion sizes? Do you log every nibble that goes in your mouth? If you don't make super accurate measurements and log every single nibble of food then I think the 100-200 under goal is a good pad to the lick of pb off the knife when I make the kids sandwiches and the 1.05 cup instead of 1 cup and the taste of this or that....that I might have during the day...if you know with certainty that you are really really accurate iwth your logging then I say eat your all of your cals to as close to your goal as possible.

starvation mode is a myth. do the research. i have.

you dont have to eat back those calories you burned..otherwise why bother even working out? really. you work out to burn calories to lose weight.

...you know that MFP builds in a calorie deficit for you, right? Depending on how much you said you wanted to lose?

the biggest problems with undereating, or starvation mode are these: your metabolism slows down, your body will function less efficiently and you will have less overall energy, you will lose muscle mass.

The point where this effect happens depends on the person. A large overweight male can handle a much larger calorie defict than a smaller woman with only a couple dozen pounds to lose. Heavy dudes can eat 2500 cal and still have deficits over 1000 calories. If your goal is 1200 cals and you earn exercise calories you eat them back or else your net calories will be too low. Creating a large deficit on a low calorie diet will have negative effects, starvation mode effects.

starvation mode is a myth. do the research. i have.

you dont have to eat back those calories you burned..otherwise why bother even working out? really. you work out to burn calories to lose weight.

...you know that MFP builds in a calorie deficit for you, right? Depending on how much you said you wanted to lose?

and you notice, no matter what you do, it wont' go below 1200, and there's a reason for that.

I have lost every week eating back my exercise calories and being aprox 50 / 100 cals under.

The one week I was eating 300 cals under I lost nothing at all...

175 pounds lost......now.....do those numbers lie? I DO NOT STARVE MYSELF. My plate is ALWAYS full of food. Its just food that it low calorie. I have been on this journey for a little over a year and have continued to lose this weight. My husband has lost over 100! I too have done research and I just go with what works!! NOT what everyone else is saying. If you have lots of weight to lose then your body will use that excess fat for its energy. If you have little fat to burn then YES you will go into starvation mode where your body will "eat" its own muscle to exist! I still have about 40 more I would like to lose. So I dont believe I will go into starvation mode any time soon! When I reach my goal weight...THEN I will eat my exercise calories in order to maintain the weight I have lost!

Those last 20 are brutally difficult to lose and finding the correct deficit is extremely hard. You may have to start eating those cals then.

My goal is 1250 as my BMR is 1248. Once I add my exercise that number goes up to anywhere from 1880-over 2000. Once I eat everything for the day, my NET is back around 1250. When I first started this about 12 days ago I weighed in at 120-121, at the beginning of this week I weighed in at 117.8.