Why eating too little calories is a bad idea.....

everher wrote: »

brianneangell08 wrote: »

sak20011 wrote: »

I am on my second start. my first, I lost no weight. Recalculated my TDEE to reflect the fact that yes, even though i work out a few times a week, I'm otherwise not that active--so its 1440 (I'm 5'1" and 125). . That puts me at 1200 to lose 1/2 lb a week. I'm going a bit under some days that I can have a nice meal out or two this week. My goal is to lose 5-8 pounds, but once I have a new 'set point' I'd really like build up enough muscle/get enough exercise that I can maintain on 1500. I know this seems low, but I am a 40 something short woman...

Yes! It's so frustrating for us shorties! My TDEE is only about 1510, so even 0.5 lb/week would mean a calorie intake of 1260 ... personally, I opt to eat at 1300 because any lower and I get cranky! The rate of loss is sooo frustratingly slow.

I think this is something that isn't acknowledged on MFP a lot.

Not everyone is tall (or even average height) and not everyone is able to or chooses to work out. For some, even a 0.5 lb a week deficit puts them at 1200-1300 calories a week. Not everyone eating at 1200-1300 calories is 'starving themselves' it's just what they have to eat in order to lose weight even at a very slow pace.

maggibailey wrote: »

To clairify, I have never seen you three marvelous "little old ladies" act in the manner I am speaking about. The general response to I'm eating 1200 calories and barely losing is something very similar to and without mercy or tact, " you are logging wrong if you were only eating 1200 calories the weight would be falling off of you. I eat x amount plus all my exercise calories and I still lose so obviously you are doing it wrong". I get tough love I have two teenagers and I'm aware that the brutal truth must be expressed... once the facts are known. My poor mother (only poor because I'm dragging her all over the internet without her consent) as an example again: eating at 10% below tdee to lose she would be losing less than a pound of actual weight a month. Even on a trending app this could and probably would look like no loss at all for more than a month at a time, with water weight and hormones. And that is with such meticulous logging that she couldn't be off at all because 10% for her wouldn't even be 150 calories! Is it still a loss? Absolutely! Would it probably cause someone to feel frustrated and mad and end up on the forums saying they are barely losing or not at all? Probably so. If they do say this and get a resounding, "impossible you aren't counting you plebeian! I lose all the weight on 2000 calories so you are doing it wrong!" I can't imagine the frustration Dissipates and they feel better. Of course they should start with their stats so that people can better understand what is happening but as a new poster they probably won't. I'm really not sure why I got myself into this talk by the way because those who do the "I'm not being rude I'm being honest you idiot" routine on here are not going to change their approach because an internet human said it wasn't a helpful approach, and those of you I'm engaging with here are not those people anyway . Also I can only hope to hit my 60s with the grace that the three of you have. I do enjoy reading your posts!

I think MFP at large has a habit of developing some blinkered views. Things get said enough times, taken out of context and abbreviated, and people parrot a single line without actually really understanding. 'If you were eating at a deficit you'd be losing weight' is a classic example. What it should be is 'if you are eating at a deficit (and you've verified logging etc is on point), you should be losing fat, however that fat loss may be masked by unholy amounts of water weight from jacked up cortisol, and if you've been at a deficit for any amount of time you'll have some adaptive thermogenesis going on that will also impact your rate of fat loss'.

This is the nuance of plateaus/stalls that gets missed: fat loss hasn't stopped, but it can sure as hell be masked by water weight for a long-*kitten* time. In one of Lyle's podcasts he did a calculation that a woman could easily not see a scale loss for 10 weeks between hormonal weight fluctuations and cortisol-induced retention. So, plateau as in scale weight staying the same for weeks on end is real, plateau as in no fat loss for weeks on end (assuming actually at a deficit), not so much.

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing...

tracymegan wrote: »

i had previously used MFP to determine caloric amounts to lose weight, and it also put me at 1200. this is a hard number to maintain, but recently joined a macronutrient program, and eat 1900 calories...losing 33 in 11 weeks, and the amount is attainable and manageable. I know they say less is more...but in my case, eating more made me less!!

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

maggibailey wrote: »

To clairify, I have never seen you three marvelous "little old ladies" act in the manner I am speaking about. The general response to I'm eating 1200 calories and barely losing is something very similar to and without mercy or tact, " you are logging wrong if you were only eating 1200 calories the weight would be falling off of you. I eat x amount plus all my exercise calories and I still lose so obviously you are doing it wrong". I get tough love I have two teenagers and I'm aware that the brutal truth must be expressed... once the facts are known. My poor mother (only poor because I'm dragging her all over the internet without her consent) as an example again: eating at 10% below tdee to lose she would be losing less than a pound of actual weight a month. Even on a trending app this could and probably would look like no loss at all for more than a month at a time, with water weight and hormones. And that is with such meticulous logging that she couldn't be off at all because 10% for her wouldn't even be 150 calories! Is it still a loss? Absolutely! Would it probably cause someone to feel frustrated and mad and end up on the forums saying they are barely losing or not at all? Probably so. If they do say this and get a resounding, "impossible you aren't counting you plebeian! I lose all the weight on 2000 calories so you are doing it wrong!" I can't imagine the frustration Dissipates and they feel better. Of course they should start with their stats so that people can better understand what is happening but as a new poster they probably won't. I'm really not sure why I got myself into this talk by the way because those who do the "I'm not being rude I'm being honest you idiot" routine on here are not going to change their approach because an internet human said it wasn't a helpful approach, and those of you I'm engaging with here are not those people anyway . Also I can only hope to hit my 60s with the grace that the three of you have. I do enjoy reading your posts!

Unfortunately things have a way of getting repeated to the point of becoming dogma on internet forums such as this. Yes, sometimes it is a case of inaccurate logging, but not always. I posted this on another thread yesterday, and will copy/pasta to save typing it all out again:

I think MFP at large has a habit of developing some blinkered views. Things get said enough times, taken out of context and abbreviated, and people parrot a single line without actually really understanding. 'If you were eating at a deficit you'd be losing weight' is a classic example. What it should be is 'if you are eating at a deficit (and you've verified logging etc is on point), you should be losing fat, however that fat loss may be masked by unholy amounts of water weight from jacked up cortisol, and if you've been at a deficit for any amount of time you'll have some adaptive thermogenesis going on that will also impact your rate of fat loss'.

This is the nuance of plateaus/stalls that gets missed: fat loss hasn't stopped, but it can sure as hell be masked by water weight for a long-*kitten* time. In one of Lyle's podcasts he did a calculation that a woman could easily not see a scale loss for 10 weeks between hormonal weight fluctuations and cortisol-induced retention. So, plateau as in scale weight staying the same for weeks on end is real, plateau as in no fat loss for weeks on end (assuming actually at a deficit), not so much.

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing...

You (we) can't always jump to the conclusion that it's inaccurate logging, or that someone just really does need fewer calories, especially if that person had previously been losing just fine. I suspect a fair proportion of the MFP reader/postership never delve very far into the physiology of weight loss, beyond CICO and 3500 to lose a pound, and that's okay(ish), most people don't care how it works, so long as it does. But when it doesn't work, or appears to stop working, having a bit more of an understanding is infinitely helpful. It's also helpful to know what can (and often does) happen, even if it didn't happen to you, in order to help others. These following articles (short, easy to read and understand) are awesome, and there's a whole lot more where they came from for anyone who cares to read:

https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/why-big-caloric-deficits-and-lots-of-activity-can-hurt-fat-loss.html/

https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/too-much-cardio-followup.html/

https://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-full-diet-break.html/

(eta: site is currently down, but it'll be back)

Absolutely.

An, even beyond these solid truths you've posted, another thing I sometimes point out: Logic suggests that the people who fall on the "below average" side of the NEAT/TDEE curves are disproportionately likely to post here saying "help, I can't lose weight!". (They're not the only people who post that, of course.)

Way too many people think the calorie needs 'calculators' - like the one built into MFP - calculate, when what they actually do is estimate, using the assumption that you're average for your demographics. Most of us are close to average (this particular bell curve curve is tall & narrow - small standard deviation). But a very few people can be quite far from average, in either direction - say, 1 in 20 or so.

On that basis alone, it makes me very angry to see people immediately insisting that some random stranger is lying or delusional (not even just mistaken) when they say they're not losing weight on the "calculated" calorie goal.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

To be fair, there are normally "tells" in posts that make it apparent that someone is carefully tracking and is therefore likely to be an outlier.

I have been in threads and seen this happen and seen it acknowledged.

There are also tells that make it apparent thatj people are not fully aware of the process, the numbers, and are not taking everything properly into account, and it's pretty frustrating trying to deal with the constant refrain that those of us telling them that they are putting themselves through unnecessary misery are being mean to them. I doubt most of them are outliers.

I also doubt most of them are outliers. IMO, most of them (nearly all) are in some way misunderstanding, miscalculating, mismeasuring, or otherwise mistaken.

I'm talking mostly about the assumptions and tone of some counter-posters - often not themselves very insightful about the process - who sometimes appear in sufficient numbers that it feels like a flock of chickens all pecking at one with blood on its wing.

Disbelief does not require a posture that immediately fully reveals itself. Implicitly treating someone as a liar or delusional is rarely the most effective communication strategy. Compassion and empathy are almost always a good thing. One gives the delusional person a conceptual way out that lets them preserve face, dignity, ego. Tough love doesn't dispense with compassion; it requires it.

Just my opinions.