Dudes eating below 2000 calories
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Im currently 6'1 200lbs, just on the end of a bulking season. I am now on a very very fast cut only consuming 1250 calories or so a day because I have a climbing competition in around a month and a half and need to get down to 175-180 by then otherwise its bloody horrible trying to pull an extra unnecessary 20lbs.
I wouldn't recommend going as low as I have unless you have a real reason to drop weight fast like I do, and then not for very long. Once in back down to 180 or so ill probably be back upto 2000 or so calories a day.0 -
1) progress is a great motivator.
2) faster cuts = less time spent at low-ish intakes
3) I generally think they whole "don't lose weight too fast, you'll lose all your muscle" mantra is greatly overstated, especially when on a legit lifting program.
FWIW... I'm 5'8", 175ishlbs, 38yrs old... 1850cals is a great intake for me when cutting, at least based on all my estimates.
5'7, 160lbs, 24yo, female, backtracked on my lifting and energy when I was grossing 2000 cals. This is with me being a student and thus walking around maybe ~1.5hrs a day on average (also work retail o Saturday, bumping up my average), lifting 4x a week, and doing no more than 90 mins of cardio every week. If I grossed 1850 I'd be knocking shite over and having tantrums.0 -
I'm 5' 10", 55 years old, and started at 221 a year ago. I followed a slow carb diet and lost 20 without even thinking about how many calories I was eating. I plateaued at 200, so started the 4 Hour Body. At this point, I'm 180 and eating about 1700 cals a day with exercise (elliptical for 30 minutes a day in my target heart zone) plus the protocol in the book. I do have a cheat day. I'm losing about 2 lbs a week with this approach. In fact, MFP just recalculated my goal calories down after about 300/day after I lost 10 lbs.
My goal is 165-170 depending on my % body fat. The 4HB claims you don't have to count calories, but I found that after I got to about 185, I had to pay attention to get things moving again. I agree it's a lot of trial and error. Your numbers could be very different than someone else, so don't let the 2000 calorie number block you. Eat at the level you'll lose weight, but not so low that you feel totally deprived. The cheat day helps me incredibly for this. Some people don't have success with it, but it's worked for me.0 -
I'm 6'3" 205lbs, and on rest days I'm consuming 1825 calories and on workout days I'm consuming 2300 calories (i'm doing an IF diet as well). I found this using an online calculator to find my TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). Your TDEE should be your maintenance calories and from that you decide how much of a deficit you'd like to go into. My TDEE is 2500 calories. I'm on a -30%/-10% (workout/rest) deficit.
So tl;dr I calculated my TDEE and found my maintenance calories and used that as a starting point to find my caloric deficit.
Start here: http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/0 -
This would have the effect of me actually eating LESS than I state I eat and it's also something people commonly recommend because calories values aren't exact anyhow. Plus, this idea that a few grams is causing a screeching halt is silly. And I frankly don't know how I could be eating more than I realize if I'm sitting the food on the scale? It's on the scale. It's sitting there. The scale gives a number.especially if you are rounding your servings up
EDIT: And I just remember, you're the gal who said I should be weighing my Oreos. I'm going to weigh 10 Oreos tonight (not going to eat all of them BTW) and see what the variance is from the weigh/calories given on the package.
Which means you have no idea how much you are eating, so you cannot actually know what goal you should be setting.
Whether you are eating 1000 calories or 3000 calories, you need to log the actual amount of food you are eating. Stop logging extra servings you aren't eating, log your true intake for a month to your gross goals, and if you do not lose ANY weight then lower your goal by 100 calories and monitor again.
People do not recommend estimating servings up because it doesn't allow you to accurately track your believed intake, meaning you are basing your decisions off of inaccurate data. If you log 2000 calories and want to assume that, because you measure instead of weigh, that you are actually eating 2200, that's fine. But log to 2000 so that you can increase and decrease your goals based off of results relating to your true logged and assumed intake.
And yes, I do recommend people weigh their packaged food, because in most cases the weight is not that of the packaging. In a few cases I've found the weight to be mostly spot on -- canned tuna, jello, Breton GF crackers, rice cakes, some types of bacon -- but pretty much everything else hasn't been. My muffins that are supposed to be 85g? usually 81g for the blueberry flavour and up to 95g for the chocolate flavour. My glazed donuts that should be 53g? If I've consumed 10 boxes of those over the last 7 months then probably only 4 of those 60 donuts were actually 53g (some go up to 69g). My bread slices can be a few g more or 10g more. Chocolates are also usually a few g more, which definitely matters for calorie dense items. Etc etc. If you are the only person eating those oreos and the total content weight (minus packaging of course) matches that of the box weight, then go ahead and just eat them as the default. If others will eat them and they do not match, then weigh each one. If I make 4-serving baked proatmeal, I don't weight it because only I eat it (but I log all ingredients in my recipe builder). I just made brownies and I did weigh the entire batch so as to create a serving size based on the weight (622g I believe) because I have no idea if my parents will grab some, but I also wound up cutting them in not at all even pieces.
If you fail in your weight loss, one can only assume that it is either due to eating more than one believes due to poor logging practices, or eating above one's needs. Either way it relates to cals in being more than they should be compared to your cals out.0 -
1) progress is a great motivator.
2) faster cuts = less time spent at low-ish intakes
3) I generally think they whole "don't lose weight too fast, you'll lose all your muscle" mantra is greatly overstated, especially when on a legit lifting program.
FWIW... I'm 5'8", 175ishlbs, 38yrs old... 1850cals is a great intake for me when cutting, at least based on all my estimates.
I've seen this repeatedly. Lots of people (especially men it seems) cut fast and hard. Not that I would recommend the program per se, but the intro to the ultimate diet that Lyle McDonald wrote explains the logic behind it and how it doesn't lead to muscle loss. The key being that it is short term. (His diet is very extreme and is often used by competitors to hit competing weight.)
How short is "short term?" I could probably do 1500 for a few weeks but I'm not sure I could maintain that as a lifestyle.
The UD is run for 6-8 weeks at a time with diet breaks between cycles. This is not a recommendation for you to follow that diet, but there are a lot of chapters about dieting, fat loss, muscle gain, how leptin affects everything, and overall, it's a great read:
http://www.ironmagazine.com/ebooks/The_Ultimate_Diet.pdf0 -
That's your net goal based off the activity level you used -I'm guessing you used sedentary? Most people are not sedentary outside of wheelchair- and bed-ridden individuals (although wheelchair users, if not using motored, could easily be at least lightly to moderately active). So if you truly are sedentary or lightly active in your day to day activity, then that's how much you'd eat to lose ~1lb. If you exercise then log it and eat back at least half the calories. At 5'7 I'd guess you aren't ridiculously heavy or anything, so a net maintenance of 2230 calories doesn't seem that illogical to me. That's probably what I could net and still easily maintain my weight on at the same height. But you must take proper activity level into consideration for your intake goals.steelerfan1967 wrote: »MFP put me at 1730 cals.. I entered that I wanted to lose about 11 pounds and a pound a week im 5 ft 7. I thought it was normal but idk now.0 -
I eat 1800 and im 6'0. I have a small apetite nowadays, but its impossible to eat until ur full with 1800, u just gotta eat until ur not hungry, which doesn't take much.0
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5'11" 201lbs and eating at 1850ish. I exercise 4-5 times a week (3 of those are C25k 30min runs and 2 days of 45min strength training). Some days I am still a little hungry by bed time but I try to curb those cravings as much as I can. Feel free to take a look at my diary if you would like.0
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1) progress is a great motivator.
2) faster cuts = less time spent at low-ish intakes
3) I generally think they whole "don't lose weight too fast, you'll lose all your muscle" mantra is greatly overstated, especially when on a legit lifting program.
FWIW... I'm 5'8", 175ishlbs, 38yrs old... 1850cals is a great intake for me when cutting, at least based on all my estimates.
I've seen this repeatedly. Lots of people (especially men it seems) cut fast and hard. Not that I would recommend the program per se, but the intro to the ultimate diet that Lyle McDonald wrote explains the logic behind it and how it doesn't lead to muscle loss. The key being that it is short term. (His diet is very extreme and is often used by competitors to hit competing weight.)
How short is "short term?" I could probably do 1500 for a few weeks but I'm not sure I could maintain that as a lifestyle.
I don't think there's a hard and fast rule for what's "too short"... too many variables. If you're running a 2000 calorie deficit, "too short" is going to be dramatically different than if you're running a 500 calorie deficit. In most cases, I wouldn't recommend an uncomfortable deficit (assuming the dieter can be honest with themselves about what that really means) for more than a couple of months.0 -
Just for some comparison
I'm a 5'2 35yr old woman who loses on 1600 cals a day as long as I get 10,000 steps in. I get to eat more when I lift or run.
Should you guys who are 6ft really be eating the same as me or less.0 -
BFDeal how old are you, and how long have you been dieting? Your metabolism starts to drop like a rock when you get over 30. If you have been dieting consistently for a long time, your metabolism will also drop due to adaptation. I agree with ana, if you have plateaued for a long time, you have found your new maintenance level. The guys you see dieting at 2500-3000 cal/day are usually in their 20's and have a lot of lean body mass.0
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Either way it relates to cals in being more than they should be compared to your cals out.
Yeah I get the science explanation for it but I just don't understand why my calorie figure to do this is seemingly so much lower than even a tiny female. And why would 2300 work for, what, 20 weeks in a row, then stop on a dime the next week. Why wouldn't it gradually slow down? It was pretty much right under 1lb all those weeks then it stopped. That doesn't make sense.
Could be a few things at play here...- Your 2300 cals may be very different than someone else's 2300 cals based on how accurately you/they log. This is a HUUUGE variable. Also, net vs gross cals, which people don't always distinguish.
- as your weight changes, the calorie intake at which you maintain also changes. It's probably not significant when talking about a 10lb weight loss, but 50lbs could very well be significant. I haven't run the numbers in a long time, so I'm talking purely theoretical here.
- Many people get lazy as they get closer to goal weight (or get less unhappy with their current weight/fitness). Workout intensity isn't what it should be, they don't log as completely/accurately, or both.
- Lastly, and I hesitate to even mention this... but do some reading on the set point theory regarding body weight. I'm not sure where I fall on this, but if nothing else, it's worth a couple of quick google searches.
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1800 should be minimum for most men, 1500 I guess if you are on the somewhat shorter side or older.
Is there a way for you to increase your daily burn by 250 kcals and decrease calories by 250?0 -
Either way it relates to cals in being more than they should be compared to your cals out.
Yeah I get the science explanation for it but I just don't understand why my calorie figure to do this is seemingly so much lower than even a tiny female. And why would 2300 work for, what, 20 weeks in a row, then stop on a dime the next week. Why wouldn't it gradually slow down? It was pretty much right under 1lb all those weeks then it stopped. That doesn't make sense.
If you start with a large daily calorie deficit, and you eat and exercise exactly the same every day, your weight loss will be fairly linear at first. As you lose weight and approach your new maintenance level, your weight loss will taper towards a logarithmic curve. You probably just didn't notice the logarithmic part at the end due to precision of your scale and daily water fluctuations. I have been known to fluctuate 12 lbs a day, so the only way I can measure my weight loss is by taking a rolling average over 2 weeks.
I am 38 and I have about 170 lbs of lean body mass, and I have to cut at 1900 or 2000 net calories a day, so your results are not that unusual. Have you tried HIIT or other metabolic boosting methods?0 -
Either way it relates to cals in being more than they should be compared to your cals out.
Yeah I get the science explanation for it but I just don't understand why my calorie figure to do this is seemingly so much lower than even a tiny female. And why would 2300 work for, what, 20 weeks in a row, then stop on a dime the next week. Why wouldn't it gradually slow down? It was pretty much right under 1lb all those weeks then it stopped. That doesn't make sense.
Have you tried HIIT or other metabolic boosting methods?
No. I pretty much just lift. I figured that was enough because that's pretty much what everyone says they do and that you don't need cardio. I guess maybe I need to look in to it.
I think it's really difficult to factor lifting into your TDEE because there are so many variables that go into determining the intensity that often aren't factored into the equation. I personally lose much better while doing cardio purely because I can have more calories, and I can stick to my goal. I'd look into adding cardio (and find whatever works whether it's HIIT, steady state, whatever).0 -
For me it's all about what's sustainable. I have hunger issues, which vary a lot from person to person due to a number of factors. I have a lot of trouble sustaining a deficit if I eat below 2200(ish) calories. I can do it, but it ends up being quite stressful for me.
Instead, I'm eating 2400 calories and trying to keep my activity up. It's a lower deficit, but it works better than feeling hungry all the time.0
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