should I eat more, and why

mishkins3 wrote: »

won't I lose muscle mass no matter how small the deficit, isn't the loss of muscle linear with the weight loss

Maybe I should be lighting weights then... I tried treadmill and wieghts for a week but my weight keept going up (water retention I think). I know it won't make a difference on weight loss over time once it levels out but it was discouraging anyways.

If you did weights then maybe you could maintain muscle if you lost slower than I am.

Not one supporter, maybe I will increase another 200-300 calories, and do some weight lifting. I know about the muscle loss but I figured since I don't have much compared to fat I won't lose very much and can regain it later.

What about supplements? can I get maco nutrients that ways Is there a specific kind that has all of them?

Not even sure what maco and micro nutrients are... are we talking vitamins and minerals?

I don't want to take like 3 years to lose the weight i want to lose, if it took that long I would never do it. that has been a reason I havn't dieted seriously before.

Do you like your hair, teeth and nails, and want to keep them?
How about your organs? Do you want to live a long and happy life?
Do you like clear healthy looking skin?
How about sagging skin? Skin will become very saggy with a fast weight loss.
Then eat at LEAST 1200 a day (1200 NET if exercising).

Oh, you should probably eat more if you want to have a healthy heart, too. What you're doing is VERY dangerous. I'm sorry, but I'd rather NOT die of a heart failure if it means a slower weight loss. Fast weight loss is never the key to a happy life. The weight will come back on...fast.

Do not, and I repeat DO NOT start lifting if you're not going to eat adequately. Eat appropriately for health.

No matter how much you lift, if you eat so little, you'll lose muscle mass, and a lot of it. Oh, you're heart is a muscle, did I mention that? Supplements will do diddly squat if you're not going to feed your body properly. How is your body going to process the fat soluble vitamins if you're eating so little?

Macro nutrients: Carbs, protein, fats. Should be balanced. You can't get these in pill form. Micro nutrients: vitamins and minerals.

I did what you are doing. Guess what? I ended up in hospital. Years later, I am still recovering, and certain things will never recover.

You're not a special snowflake. Lose weight the safe and proper way so he weight will stay off. Gah.

If you're really determined to stay on a very low calorie diet, speak with your doctor. There may be more information in the medical world on how to stay safe on something like that, because as other posters have mentioned it can be very dangerous for your health. What about trying increasing to 1200 calories, if 1500 feels like too much for you? What about a maintenance break, to challenge yourself to keep the weight off while eating normally, so as not to "yo-yo diet"? if you've already lost over 50lbs it might be a really good time for a rest period.

Do you know what is made up of muscle? Your heart. Seriously. You can do permanent damage with long-term undereating.

why do you need such a big deficit? take time to lose the weight,the slower the better.

I'm a 5'4 female with a normal BMI and *I* lose weight steadily at 1450 net, and many days are higher than that. As a male, 1500 net should be your bare, bare minimum and if you're tall and obese or overweight, it should be much higher.

You say you're convinced but you don't seem to understand what everyone is telling you, which is that there is an upper physiologic limit on how much fat your body can oxidize for energy in one day (the general consensus is "a maximum of around 1 gram/minute, and that only with intense exercise- so for most of the day, much less). Above this limit, any energy that your body requires that can't be obtained from food must necessarily come from your lean tissue- muscle, organs, bones. Likewise micronutrients- if not eaten, they must be either taken from your tissues or you will suffer from deficiencies with all their attendant symptoms.

So no, LBM loss is not necessarily linear with fat loss. Depending on the size of your deficit, it can greatly exceed the rate of fat loss, and the higher your deficit goes, the greater this disparity.

To achieve those massive drops on the scale that make you feel good about your progress, you aren't actually achieving twice the healthy rate of *fat* loss, you're losing a bit of fat with a lot of lean tissue, more than you would at a lower rate of loss. That lean tissue loss, while it's lowering your scale number quickly, is not improving your health or appearance, and it can have serious short and long term consequences. Losing muscle lowers your basal metabolism, weakens your ability to do the kind of activities that are needed for living and also for creating additional calorie burn, and makes you look and feel soft and flabby. Losing organ muscle, like your heart, can permanently damage your health. Losing bone density (if you're not eating enough calcium, where do you think your body is getting it from?) can permanently increase your risk of fractures and degenerative bone problems like arthritis. You'll also see problems like skin and hair damage- rashes, hair loss, weak nails, trouble healing small cuts and bruises. You can wind up with anemia and other blood problems.

Those big drops on the scale, way over the recommended amount, are not representative of some kind of shortcut you've discovered to fat loss. They're exactly what people are warning you about- evidence that you're cannibalizing your healthy tissues to create the illusion of losing fat.

You say you would "never do this" if it took years to get down to a healthy weight, but sit with that claim for a second. You would "never try" to lose weight if it took three years? You'd rather still be fat in three years, and just as fat for the next three years, than be gradually less fat for three years and then not fat at all three years from now?

What kind of sense does that make?

Everyone is spot-on about this needing to be a gradual transition that you can live with forever. The view you're taking- "I'm going to do this as brutally and as quickly as possible, because I can't live like this forever, and I need to get back to living 'normally' as soon as possible once I'm thin" tells you right away that you won't succeed this way. Because even if you do somehow manage to live on starvation rations for the next four months, and you lose all the weight you want to, when you stop, it will all come back- and more, because you'll have lost muscle mass, so eating the same amount you did before you started will lead to faster weight gain with your new, permanently lower BMR.

You need to find a gradual reduction in intake and increase in movement that you can live with as long as it takes, and that you'll be able to transition to a maintenance plan with just a small increase in calories, that you can also live with forever. If you're viewing this as a diet that you're going to go all-out on for a few months and then quit cold turkey, you're honestly better off not doing it at all. At least you'll preserve your LBM and heart, and the end result will be the same.