Everyone seems to eat below daily calories??

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  • Emily3907
    Emily3907 Posts: 1,461 Member
    edited October 2015
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    I regularly under eat my calories during the week (4-5 days), but I promise you, I make up for it on the weekends. All while maintaining control of my overall deficit. It is possible to under eat the MFP recommended calories, be healthy and still lose weight without throwing your body into some harmful and damaging process. Everyone that under eats their MFP recommended calories is not necessarily being unhealthy or causing damage.

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,868 Member
    edited October 2015
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    "everyone"?

    not me...
  • LyiannaTameka
    LyiannaTameka Posts: 34 Member
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    As insightful as this post is, it fails to take individual differences into account. Everyone's metabolic rate varies, some can lounge around all day & still naturally have a high metabolic rate. Genetics do play a part & everyone is different. For example, I was on a low-calorie diet for a while. At a point, I was eating 500-600 calories a day for a few weeks. It wasn't permanent, it was more like an experience. I wanted to see what results I would yield. I lost quite abit of weight, then I ate recklessly for a straight week (I'm talking 2000+ calories), & I only put on half a pound. People always say you'll gain back the weight fast but it really depends on a plathora of things. You could really maintain weightloss without doing much. It depends.
  • starwhisperer6
    starwhisperer6 Posts: 402 Member
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    I don't weigh or measure my food, so I eat under to account for inconsistency and it must be working ok because I am losing right at the pound a week that I was aiming for. If that stops I will buy a scale... if I start losing too much I will eat some more. isn't the point that everyone of us find something that works for us and use it? I have tons of energy, my workouts have consistently gotten better, and I don't feel weak. Someone just told me this week that my arms look amazing so I must not be losing too much muscle mass.
  • SingRunTing
    SingRunTing Posts: 2,604 Member
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    I don't like being lumped into "everyone". I certainly eat enough everyday.
  • Soopatt
    Soopatt Posts: 563 Member
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    The OP should also bear in mind that some people log more accurately than others. Some people choose not to log vegetables or some beverages and some people eye-ball their portions. These people might appear to log in under 1200 quite regularly, but in actual fact are eating a lot more calories than that - some of these sort of people even post "help, I am not losing!" threads!

    Me? I was super anal about 1200 when I started, but I have eased up a lot lately. Depending on the day or week you decided to snoop my diary, you might find me under by a bit on one day and over by a lot the next. I log it all, but there are certainly high and low variances in my days because I care about my week and even more about my month.
  • ruthfmoy
    ruthfmoy Posts: 11 Member
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    Sorry to have put EVERYONE........ :'(
  • MarcyKirkton
    MarcyKirkton Posts: 507 Member
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    Much ado about 200 cals. GREAT replies to this nonsense.
  • bwogilvie
    bwogilvie Posts: 2,130 Member
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    ruthfmoy wrote: »
    When you don"t eat enough calories you become sluggish, develop nutritional deficiencies, and are often highly irritable. If you are lowering your caloric intake for weight reduction, you are actually setting yourself for high weight gain when you do being to eat properly again.

    Define "enough." In my first year of weight loss, I had an average calorie deficit of 450 per day. My activities that year included riding my bike nearly 4,000 miles, including a 111-mile ride through the Berkshire Hills, and in general, exercising almost every day. I did not develop any nutritional deficiencies, and I was no more irritable than usual.

    As for the final claim, what do you mean by "properly"? I gained weight slowly, over the course of a decade, because I was eating too darn much. My diet was reasonably healthy. I lost weight because I expended more energy than I ate. That's the only way to do it, short of surgery. Now I've been maintaining for 10 months, eating more or less the same diet on which I gained weight, just less of it. Of course, if I went back to eating as much as I used to, I would gain weight back: after all, I was eating enough to put on weight when I weighed over 200 lb., and now I'm at 148. But that's not a question of eating properly. It's a matter of eating the right amount.
  • concordancia
    concordancia Posts: 5,320 Member
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    I blame MFP itself. Why not change the green and red to "Concordancia ate within her calorie range today!"
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
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    ruthfmoy wrote: »
    . If you are lowering your caloric intake for weight reduction, you are actually setting yourself for high weight gain when you do being to eat properly again.

    If you are overweight, you weren't eating properly in the first place, so you shouldn't be going "back to" anything. Also, reducing calories (and perhaps adding exercise to assist) is the only way to lose weight.

    But since you're an expert, you already knew all that.
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
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    LyiannaTameka wrote: »
    As insightful as this post is, it fails to take individual differences into account. Everyone's metabolic rate varies, some can lounge around all day & still naturally have a high metabolic rate. Genetics do play a part & everyone is different. For example, I was on a low-calorie diet for a while. At a point, I was eating 500-600 calories a day for a few weeks. It wasn't permanent, it was more like an experience. I wanted to see what results I would yield. I lost quite abit of weight, then I ate recklessly for a straight week (I'm talking 2000+ calories), & I only put on half a pound. People always say you'll gain back the weight fast but it really depends on a plathora of things. You could really maintain weightloss without doing much. It depends.

    Ops post is not insiteful, it is dead wrong
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
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    It's polite to include a link to the source when you rip someone off. In this case, the original seems to be here: https://www.healthstatus.com/health_blog/body-fat-calculator-2/caloric-intake-affects-health-2/
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
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    Don't ever look at my diary! I ... don't use the system in a way that would seem meaningful to an outside observer unless you knew my Fitbit TDEE. My calorie underages are sometimes calories I bank for less active days, and I look like I have really low net calories because of how I have things set up. It's simply a function of how MFP and Fitbit work together.

    I'm not worried about it.

    In general, yes, you're right, people should not be eating well below 1200 calories, but you can't make generalizations. When I was eating 1200 calories, I often left a buffer of 100-150 calories to account for logging errors and possible over reporting/calculation of exercise calories. That worked out well too.
  • queenliz99
    queenliz99 Posts: 15,317 Member
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    diannethegeek wrote: »
    It's polite to include a link to the source when you rip someone off. In this case, the original seems to be here: https://www.healthstatus.com/health_blog/body-fat-calculator-2/caloric-intake-affects-health-2/

    Wow @diannethegeek nice catch. Linking source is important :s
  • _Terrapin_
    _Terrapin_ Posts: 4,301 Member
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    diannethegeek wrote: »
    It's polite to include a link to the source when you rip someone off. In this case, the original seems to be here: https://www.healthstatus.com/health_blog/body-fat-calculator-2/caloric-intake-affects-health-2/

    Yikes! Muscle loss in 3 days in a deficit?!? High calorie diets lead to disaster!?!? Holy Bad Blog Batman! I would recommend the OP link the blog since I do not see the word 'being' used in most sentences like the one in the blog. Source link would've have been beneficial.
  • kuroshii
    kuroshii Posts: 168 Member
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    My daily goal per MFP is generally around 1500, not 1200, and yet even when I clock in at 1490 it still says I was "under my calorie goal" on my feed. I've stopped paying attention to it.
  • alizesmom
    alizesmom Posts: 219 Member
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    Generalizations are a problem. My calorie goal is set at 1260 and I'm often under BUT I am also 5 ft 1/2 inch and 62 years old. I've been doing this since Christmas of last year and feel great. There are days that I also eat goal or go over. I am not hungry or sluggish. In fact I have more energy than I've had in years. Am I harming myself? I don't think so but I am also aware that when I reach goal weight I will still be short and in my 60s which means maintenance calories for me will be less than what some people can eat and lose.
  • sarahlifts
    sarahlifts Posts: 610 Member
    edited October 2015
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    I eat under maintenance and have eaten under maintenance for some time now 3 years of 9 months below maintenance 3 months at maintenance. Presently my MFP cals are set higher than my cut though I'm still in a cut. I can cut on 1800 cals I'm set to 1665 and my intake is around 1500...plus you don't see the chit I don't track....There is always that... lololol

    Checks for muscles...yep still there.

    I'm not even gonna bother to explain how to retain muscle mass in a cut....SEARCH THE BOARDS GOOGLE IT YES I'M YElling

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