Low calorie requirement

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

tinkerbellang83 wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

Minkymoo2019 wrote: »

I used to be able to loose weight quite easily. Since I have had my children this has changed. I've tried slimming world and other diets with no success unless I cut out a lot extra, which I didn't find sustsinable. I've put this down to me not following the diet properly. The last 3 months I have started good old fashioned calorie counting, weighing, measuring & logging. It's clear I don't start to loose weight unless I stick to 1000 calories or below! This is discouraging! At 1500 or even 1200 I just stay the same. I am 5ft 3in and 98kgs so have lots to loose. I have a seated job but walk a few miles daily.
Anyone else in this situation?

I’m really hesitant to reply to you because I’ve posted in a very similar way before and, like you, have been shot down as an idiot and/or a liar. I am neither.

I’m shorter than you, at just on 5ft and lighter too, but still need to lose 2 stone to be where I would prefer to be. I’m 58 now but like you say, I used to be able to lose weight easier than I do these days. Back when I was 30 something and with 4 small children it was easy. I basically just stopped eating and the weight came off!

Even since my 20s I’ve been aware that unless I drop to sub 1000cals I do not lose weight. Closer to 800 if I’m perfectly honest. I’ve been weighing and logging (pen and paper before the internet and Apps like MFP were even thought of), so no, I’m not stupid - I know how to use a scale, I know the rough calorie counts of things from years and years of looking them up pre internet so I can sanity check the dodgy database. Anything new I log I check as many ways as I possibly can that the data is accurate yet still the stock answer here is ‘logging errors’.

There are definitely some shorter women out there who do not fit the safe 1200 cookie cutter mindset. I doubt we’ll change things so I choose to know my body better than they do (why wouldn’t I?) and not rock the boat with my apparently disturbing reality!

I wish you the very best on your journey. If you can figure out what works for you, then go with that. If that’s less than 1000 cals then don’t worry. If you think about it in terms of fuel and liken it to petrol (gas) consumption, bigger engines use more fuel than smaller ones so why is it surprising that smaller bodies require less fuel (food) than larger ones? I’ve been eating at sub 1000 cals most of my teen and adult life and I’m still alive and perfectly healthy. Ok, so I’m overweight right now, so not perfectly healthy, but that’s down to a recent hysterectomy and the enforced slow down, but I’ll get that back down soon enough, because I know how my body works and it works on less than some others say it ought to! Which changes nothing, it’s still how it works!

If you are perfectly healthy how do you explain having the calorie requirement of someone who weighs 80-85 pounds? If you are correct and you actually do maintain your weight at around 1000 calories you have damaged your metabolism with your 40ish years of under eating. I am not sure everyone knows exactly to what degree adaptive thermogenesis can slow a metabolism but you might make for an interesting case study.

OR

You never leave the bed and your activity and BMR are almost identical.

OR

Logging errors. It is nothing to be ashamed of really. It is VERY hard to capture every single calorie that passes our lips accurately. There are plenty of things I don't even bother to log right now like gum, mustard, vinegar, vitamins, herbs, spices, and tea. I do log my black coffee but I always just log the same amount even if I drink more of it. I am sure there is a day coming when I will have to be super diligent but it is not today. I don't look forward to it because it does seem pretty tedious to weigh and record everything... including that bite I of food I steal off my wife's plate occasionally. I have a large deficit so it is not required of me quite yet.

I would never argue that I may have damaged my metabolism over the years but, if so, that damage is done and still leaves me where I am - having to restrict still more to shift the pounds. Interestingly, when questions exposing the worry about damaging the metabolism come up on these forums (usually in the form of ‘starvation mode’) it is almost always dismissed as ‘a myth’ so it’s refreshing to see someone actually acknowledge the fact that the issue can be a little more complex than the calories in vs calories out mantra.

I can assure you I’m not bedbound! Whilst I’m not out running marathons or pumping iron, I’m a lot more active than many women my age. I walk well over the recommended 10k steps a day, cycle 15-20 miles on average 2-3 days a week (depends on the weather). I do a lot of housework, heavy gardening and all the diy and decorating. I also dabble with yoga in the confines of my bedroom! I live rurally so the availability of classes is very limited and I’m not much of a class joiner anyway!

I do log everything, even my black coffee, cup by cup, all the spices I use, if I use oil to cook then I log that too, although I tend to avoid cooking methods that require frying in oil, preferring to get my healthy fats in other ways. Logging errors are absolutely not accounting for the 500 calories (give or take) that would make the day by day difference between maintaining and losing!

The reason there is so much push back on "Starvation Mode" on the forums is that what you're describing i.e. metabolic adaptation from years of yo-yo dieting is not the same as "I ate 1200 calories for 6 weeks and now I can't lose weight because I am in starvation mode". Metabolic adaptation doesn't stop weight loss altogether, it slows it down. It is still a case of Energy In/Energy Out, just that your Energy Out would be lower than other people of your height and weight.

Ok, thank you, that makes sense when in the context you’ve stated here. I’d completely agree with you, because the CICO equation will always hold true, it’s just the expected numbers that change. It’s still good to see the acknowledgement on this forum that those numbers are not always as expected.

yirara wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

Minkymoo2019 wrote: »

I used to be able to loose weight quite easily. Since I have had my children this has changed. I've tried slimming world and other diets with no success unless I cut out a lot extra, which I didn't find sustsinable. I've put this down to me not following the diet properly. The last 3 months I have started good old fashioned calorie counting, weighing, measuring & logging. It's clear I don't start to loose weight unless I stick to 1000 calories or below! This is discouraging! At 1500 or even 1200 I just stay the same. I am 5ft 3in and 98kgs so have lots to loose. I have a seated job but walk a few miles daily.
Anyone else in this situation?

I’m really hesitant to reply to you because I’ve posted in a very similar way before and, like you, have been shot down as an idiot and/or a liar. I am neither.

I’m shorter than you, at just on 5ft and lighter too, but still need to lose 2 stone to be where I would prefer to be. I’m 58 now but like you say, I used to be able to lose weight easier than I do these days. Back when I was 30 something and with 4 small children it was easy. I basically just stopped eating and the weight came off!

Even since my 20s I’ve been aware that unless I drop to sub 1000cals I do not lose weight. Closer to 800 if I’m perfectly honest. I’ve been weighing and logging (pen and paper before the internet and Apps like MFP were even thought of), so no, I’m not stupid - I know how to use a scale, I know the rough calorie counts of things from years and years of looking them up pre internet so I can sanity check the dodgy database. Anything new I log I check as many ways as I possibly can that the data is accurate yet still the stock answer here is ‘logging errors’.

There are definitely some shorter women out there who do not fit the safe 1200 cookie cutter mindset. I doubt we’ll change things so I choose to know my body better than they do (why wouldn’t I?) and not rock the boat with my apparently disturbing reality!

I wish you the very best on your journey. If you can figure out what works for you, then go with that. If that’s less than 1000 cals then don’t worry. If you think about it in terms of fuel and liken it to petrol (gas) consumption, bigger engines use more fuel than smaller ones so why is it surprising that smaller bodies require less fuel (food) than larger ones? I’ve been eating at sub 1000 cals most of my teen and adult life and I’m still alive and perfectly healthy. Ok, so I’m overweight right now, so not perfectly healthy, but that’s down to a recent hysterectomy and the enforced slow down, but I’ll get that back down soon enough, because I know how my body works and it works on less than some others say it ought to! Which changes nothing, it’s still how it works!

If you are perfectly healthy how do you explain having the calorie requirement of someone who weighs 80-85 pounds? If you are correct and you actually do maintain your weight at around 1000 calories you have damaged your metabolism with your 40ish years of under eating. I am not sure everyone knows exactly to what degree adaptive thermogenesis can slow a metabolism but you might make for an interesting case study.

OR

You never leave the bed and your activity and BMR are almost identical.

OR

Logging errors. It is nothing to be ashamed of really. It is VERY hard to capture every single calorie that passes our lips accurately. There are plenty of things I don't even bother to log right now like gum, mustard, vinegar, vitamins, herbs, spices, and tea. I do log my black coffee but I always just log the same amount even if I drink more of it. I am sure there is a day coming when I will have to be super diligent but it is not today. I don't look forward to it because it does seem pretty tedious to weigh and record everything... including that bite I of food I steal off my wife's plate occasionally. I have a large deficit so it is not required of me quite yet.

I would never argue that I may have damaged my metabolism over the years but, if so, that damage is done and still leaves me where I am - having to restrict still more to shift the pounds. Interestingly, when questions exposing the worry about damaging the metabolism come up on these forums (usually in the form of ‘starvation mode’) it is almost always dismissed as ‘a myth’ so it’s refreshing to see someone actually acknowledge the fact that the issue can be a little more complex than the calories in vs calories out mantra.

I can assure you I’m not bedbound! Whilst I’m not out running marathons or pumping iron, I’m a lot more active than many women my age. I walk well over the recommended 10k steps a day, cycle 15-20 miles on average 2-3 days a week (depends on the weather). I do a lot of housework, heavy gardening and all the diy and decorating. I also dabble with yoga in the confines of my bedroom! I live rurally so the availability of classes is very limited and I’m not much of a class joiner anyway!

I do log everything, even my black coffee, cup by cup, all the spices I use, if I use oil to cook then I log that too, although I tend to avoid cooking methods that require frying in oil, preferring to get my healthy fats in other ways. Logging errors are absolutely not accounting for the 500 calories (give or take) that would make the day by day difference between maintaining and losing!

Did you ever have a metabolic testing done? That would tell you really where you area (provided you didn't starve yourself beforehand as that falsifies the results). Would be interesting to see what your resting metabolic rate really looks like

No, I’ve not had that done, and whilst I’m sure I could get it done in some fancy private clinic in London it’s not something I could access through the NHS and I’m not going to pay at private rates for something like that when I know with careful planning and good discipline I can still lose (albeit more slowly than I’d like) and having a test result won’t make a jot of difference to how that happens!

Having said that, if someone knocked on my door offering a free metabolic rate test I’d jump at it! I’m curious too 😊

kimny72 wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

@BarbaraHelen2013

I mentioned AT but I was really suggesting you were logging incorrectly. It is SO very easy to have blind spots and I think because you have made this part of your identity now you make your logs come out in a way that are lower probably without even intending to do it.

It could be a mixture of AT and logging I suppose but I am surprised that you jumped on a damaged metabolism so readily after insisting that what you have done is perfectly healthy. It really does make me think you being a 1k person is more important to you than just being wrong.

I hope I am right because I would hate to think your metabolism is damaged to that degree and what that might mean to your longevity. I don't know the science well enough to know if it is even possible to lower your metabolism that much and still be upright and mobile.

Your "800 calorie days" if accurate would be the same number of calories I feed my 30 pound dog.

I think this is the crux of it. There is nothing OK with a grown woman, even one that is on the short, sedentary, and older side, to be eating 800 calories per day. If you are overweight and need to eat that little to lose weight, you are not healthy and need to press your doctors to figure out what is wrong. A damaged metabolism can be repaired. An endocrine problem can be treated. The answer is not to continue to under-feed and exacerbate the problem.

No one is calling anyone an idiot or a liar. I personally insisted I was logging accurately and after listening to advice here found I was under logging by 300-400 calories. I've conversed here with dozens of women who stated multiple times on this forum that they were using a food scale and using good entries, but it turned out they weren't doing either as consistently as they honestly believed they were. They were intelligent women who believed they were doing everything right.

Some of us would like to try to encourage people to challenge their assumptions about their history with weight loss (which most of us had to do ourselves), start from scratch with a digital food scale, an accurate and consistent daily food log, and a blank slate, and find a way to eat as much food as possible while getting to a healthy weight. Accepting that you are forced to eat a VLCD for the rest of your life should be a last resort decision, made with the help and oversight of a medical team, not something small women should just accept as they get older.

kimny72 wrote: »

Some of us would like to try to encourage people to challenge their assumptions about their history with weight loss (which most of us had to do ourselves), start from scratch with a digital food scale, an accurate and consistent daily food log, and a blank slate, and find a way to eat as much food as possible while getting to a healthy weight. Accepting that you are forced to eat a VLCD for the rest of your life should be a last resort decision, made with the help and oversight of a medical team, not something small women should just accept as they get older.