Is it ok to eat less than 1000 cals per day?

If you are consuming less than 1100-1200 calories a day for an extended period of time your body will start to think you’re starving and hold onto everything you consume. You have to eat, to lose weight! It’s all in what Nutrition you put in your body and keeping your metabolism fueled!

Agreed with estherdragonbat.

However, @CoachKat1, what you posted is a good description of what it can look like on the scales when you crash diet. The body holds onto water more, thus concealing the true scale of your loss (whether it be fat or muscle) when you weigh yourself. If you increase your calorie intake, it will suddenly expel the water, and you will find out how much you've lost in fat/muscle tissue then. It now looks like you lost more weight at the higher intake than the lower one. Actually, it's the weight you lost earlier being revealed.

Regardless, eating too little=bad, bad idea. Not because your body will think you're starving yourself, but because you actually will be. Starvation comes with significant physical risks to your health.

Kitsgirl2 wrote: »

At some point rather than cutting calories, you have to start moving more whether its more exercise or just walking and taking stairs more often. If you don't have lots to loose, cutting calories is not the answer for the reasons most have said here. Try taking up a sport or activity you like to do if the gym isn't your thing. And moving more is just good for you overall as a sedentary lifestyle is not good in the long term. I know because that's how I've been living and it's been work just to retrain myself to move more and take up biking. Once I'm out there and after I like it. It's just getting the motivation to do it in the first place.

Regardless of whether you have 10 or 100 pounds to lose, the only way to do that is a calorie deficit. Yes, you can obtain that deficit through exercise, or you can simply eat less. No matter what you do the result is the same. There are several people on these forums that lose all of their weight through calorie counting alone and dont exercise for various reasons. Its possible and it can be healthy. People just need to realize that the less they have to lose the smaller their deficit needs to be.