The 1200 calorie imperative.

So long as we're being condescending as well as patronizing let me make it even simpler for you. We eat out every day. We eat inside the restaurant. I am not going to take my scale to the restaurant with me, I am going to take the restaurant at their word so far as the calories in their food as listed on MFP. At home, I either weigh or measure depending on the food and how much difference it's likely to make. I have done that all along and it has worked for me for ten months. I know that taking my scale with me, taking my whopper apart and weighing the slice of tomato would be more accurate, but I am not willing to go that far. If I had to obsess about calories to the extent some of you seem to do I would quit dieting altogether because life is short and their really are other things.

You seem to think that my opening post asked why I stopped losing and that you have the answer with your theory that I'm somehow eating more calories now than I did ten months ago. I know myself better than that and if anything I'm eating less -- no longer finishing every bite, for example.

You do realize, don't you, that thousands of people manage to lose weight while not counting calories at all? They give up sugar, or they increase fat and limit carbs, or they start walking every day -- and they lose. Now you may say that it's because by giving up the sugar or whatever they have unconsciously lowered their total calories, but think how inaccurate that form of calorie counting would be by your 'weigh every morsel,' rule.

It may be considered blasphemy here but it really doesn't make that much difference over the long haul whether my apple is a small or medium. Aren't we usually trying for a 500 calorie per day deficit to lose at a safe rate? Doesn't it stand to reason that if we make mistakes and only average a 300 calorie deficit we will still lose weight, just a little slower? Doesn't it also stand to reason that if we are more casual with our statistics, we will under measure as often as we over measure? Perhaps listing a medium apple when we actually only ate a small?

You can even weigh every grain of salt and still not be able to predict whether you will lose or not because activity is very hard to measure accurately -- so hard that I don't even try.

If you spend your day either sitting at a desk or riding a stationary bike you may be able to come up with some fairly exact figures about calories burned, but most of us are far more variable than that. I have no MCL on my left knee so I must walk with a cane and can't do any sort of steady aerobic activity, even chair aerobics raises my blood pressure too much, but I do get activity every day. Yesterday, for example, I did a deep cleaning on my house, everything from pole dusting the lights, washing all the windows, polishing all sides of the furniture, cleaning the leather and microfiber, down to polishing the floors and cleaning the carpets. It was six hours of steady physical activity but I have no idea how many calories I burned and would not try to figure it out. Considering that, why do you think it really matters how many grams are in my apple when my "calories out" can vary by hundreds from one day to the next?

You see calorie counting is not as simple as plugging in a computer, your analogy really doesn't work.

However, that's not what I was asking with my opening post. My question was what people thought about eating below 1200 calories if one's age and/or activity level seemed to call for it. Only one or two posts have addressed that.

I think it's very interesting that one woman's doctor recommended 1000 calories for her. He knows her, her size, her needs, her medical history, her blood pressure, her thyroid numbers and her current risks from being over weight. That didn't keep some people from declaring him wrong even though they themselves have none of that information -- that's how they "diagnose a problem," but I think that doctor may know something we don't know.

The elephant in the room here is the blind obedience to the site's formulas used to set up calorie goals and the fanatic religious faith that the numbers will always hold true, for everyone, indefinitely. Those formulas and the information in the tutorials are good places to start, but they may not be effective forever for everyone. Some bodies do adjust to lower calories by slowing the metabolism. Some people who have dieted over long periods of time require very few calories to maintain weight and would gain weight if they ate according to those formulas.

It's interesting how everyone assumes that mistakes in calorie addition always result in people eating more calories than they record, why wouldn't it sometimes result in eating less calories than recorded? Some people are even assuming that a woman's doctor believes that, without knowing the woman or the doctor. Why so eager to think other people are cheating? Projection?

I learned very early that all women are different. Back in the 1960's my mother joined weight watchers. That was way before the point system and she was told to eat 1000 calories a day. She gained weight. She did not cheat. I ate every meal with her. She did not make mistakes, she was a book keeper. What she was, was a tiny 4'11" small boned woman who had dieted in one form or another most of her life and simply didn't need many calories to sustain her 120 lb, trying for 110 lb, body.

NovusDies wrote: »

@Slowfaster

You should stop worrying about your apple. If you eat out regularly that is your problem. Eat 2/3rds of what you have been eating when you go out and you might be fine. You might think it is 1000 calories but odds are it will be more but it still might get you back to a deficit.

I eat out regularly because my husband and I are retired and he really looks forward to getting out for lunch every day. I sometimes put other people ahead of myself. The fact that something like that didn't occur to you says more about you than me.

I have not asked you or anyone else what is wrong with my calculations so quit getting so huffy and pedantic about what I eat or how accurate my figures are. I already know why I'm not losing and it's the same reason I always, through many, many diets in the past, quit losing at around 1600 calories. It's because 1200 calories is no longer low enough to make me lose. If it was due to the fact that I eat out every day, or didn't weigh enough items, I wouldn't have lost 45 pounds in the past ten months.

My actual question was what people thought about the safety of going below 1200 calories. I think I'll just go with my instincts and try 1100 calories, making sure I reach my goals for protein and fat, and take a daily vitamin.