I’m only eating about 1,200 calories a day. I’m not hungry. Is this bad?

MurphTurph5 · April 2020

So I’ve talked to my doctor about struggling with weight loss/appetite control. He prescribed something to help suppress cravings. It helped, greatly. I’m getting full faster and feeling satisfied longer. Lately I’ve been somewhat struggling to eat 1,200cals a day. Is this bad if I’m eating this low or less? 😬 I’m eating items rich in fiber and protein. I don’t find myself hungry until midday, 4pm or so. Advice would be great!

Unicorn_Bacon · April 2020

Yes because you are a man and the min is 1500 calories.
Eat more calorie dense foods

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10142490/a-list-of-calorie-dense-foods/p6

Unicorn_Bacon · April 2020

Also I just want to add that while you are on a medication that suppresses your appetite you are still responsible to eat even when you dont feel hungry.

On vyvanse I dont want to eat either but I need to be responsible enough to take care of myself and make sure I'm eating the right amount of calories

kshama2001 · April 2020

As a male, the lowest you should be eating is 1500 calories, and that's only if you are very very short AND sedentary. Read this and sub 1500 for 1200 and man for woman: https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/

I took phen/fen back when fenfluramine was still on the market and it worked marvelously for quick weight loss. However, I didn't learn healthy eating while taking an amphetamine-like drug and gained back almost all of the weight when I stopped taking it. And now I have heart palpitations, which could have been caused by these drugs.

Also, I'm anemic and noticed you are taking an iron supplement. Have you been diagnosed with an iron deficiency? If not, not a good idea. Too much iron causes problems.

Avidkeo · April 2020

Have another talk with your Dr. If your appetite is suppressed that much, you should have another look at the medication.

Make sure you talk to your Dr though.

In the meantime, you might want to consider some orange juice or something like that, often it's easier to drink calories than eat them. Definitely get up to 1500, or what ever MFP has set.

Good luck!

PAV8888 · April 2020

This is a complicated subject that you may want to research further on your own
(Even you Kris, though to a lesser extent, because your complete picture is much more complicated).

Why do people fail to maintain a weight loss?

A lot of weight regain is because people didn't change their lives and didn't change their way of eating or didn't stick to their new way of eating... a lot of it is because they changed to much too soon and in ways that were not sustainable for them.... a lot of it is because they went all out with exercise and then life intruded... a lot of it is because mental or physical issues interfered.... a lot of it is because they lost interest (really? just lost interest? wouldn't that loss of interest have been proceeded by perceived ineffectiveness together with other higher priorities? I don't buy this "lose interest" without a concomitant loss of focus due to perceived lack of success while feeling that the whole thing is too much effort given one's circumstances)... and a lot of it is back to mental or physical issues (IGAF, as someone recently mentioned)

So a lot of it is because of a lot of reasons and some of these reasons are also quite probably linked to changes to hormones and neurotransmitters as weight loss takes place either rapidly or over a long time period. So:

1. A lot of people try and fail to lose *any* weight.
I think that this failure is more often that not lack of ability to correctly evaluate results, lack of correct measurement, and, at the base of it, is because of trying to implement extremely bad weight loss plans.
People do NOT fail to lose ANY weight by trying to implement reasonable changes to achieve reasonable goals.

2. A lot of people succeed in losing (a lot of) weight, and then fail to maintain it for a year or even for six months!

3. A very few people succeed in losing weight and then maintain that loss for a reasonable period of time. Say two years, which would be good success! Or, even better, and my personal holy grail when I first started on MFP, FIVE years! The beautiful statistic, at 5 years, is that this is the fist point where the percentage chance of continuing to maintain exceeds the percentage chance of regaining! Yeah!

4. Even fewer extend that to forever (well past the five year mark)! <I think there's a few; but not many, in these forums where you hear about 10 and 15 years of maintenance!>

I doubt that there are many people on MFP who haven't hit both #1 and #2 above at various times. We likely don't find MFP before making an attempt or two at weight loss!

But very few of us get to #3. And even fewer to #4!

HOWEVER I doubt that anyone sitting at #1 or #2 today is any less determined than I was to hit #3 when I first started out!

Heck, on January 1, 2014 (I signed up for MFP in November 2014), I wasn't even ready to hit #1... all I was trying to achieve was to move at least 5,000 steps a day, every day, for a month!

OK. So how does one get, Mr. OP, from pre #1 to #3? That's basically what you're trying to achieve. Go from "struggling with weight loss" to "successfully maintaining my weight loss".

You asked your doctor!

And they, trained to treat symptoms in order of importance as they come up, and with side-effects as they occur, responded with a pharmacological solution.

I can see an appetite suppressant helping achieve #1 and helping put someone well on their way along #2. BUT, I do not see how it can help with #3. Because you can't remain on the appetite suppressant forever due to side effects.

Now is someone who works on weight loss without a suppressant that much better off than you?

Probably not if they are using their own version of a suppressant with side effects that they cannot tolerate long term! Insert cue for unsustainable eating methods, unsustainable activity and exercise, unsustainable life changes that we may not be willing to make long term, etc, etc, etc

So, yes, I do think that we can enhance our maintenance chances by developing tools, behaviours, self knowledge and understanding, food choices, rituals even that help control any tendencies to backslide, and all that can only be done by spending the time to think and figure out all that... usually while losing the weight and receiving negative feedback whenever we make choices that are ultimately NOT suitable and not sustainable FOR US.

One really big part of this feedback is how far one can push a deficit before it turns on them and turns into an overeating episode.

Careful here: I am not talking about binge eating disorder which has a psychological component: I am talking about a much more physiologically simple restict-binge sequence--one that can be fully triggered in the physiological realm.

So here you are, pushing deficits, with your appetite in check pharmacologically.

Any hormonal/neurotramitter push to regain is accumulating in the background. How much? Exactly which hormones? I don't know. You would have to check with an endocrinologist, or weight loss researcher.

All I know is that hormonal/neurotransmitter changes due to deficits are a likely mechanism lurking in the background ready to promote weight regain. And because of your circumstances you are not benefiting from the education aspect of managing your weight loss on the way down and of developing tools and defences that might help you manage the first two years of maintenance where there exists the highest chance of backsliding.

So my answer to your question of whether you should eat 1500, or less, is that you should be discussing your weight loss with a specialist doctor (or registered dietitian), not a gp unless they have a weight loss competence, and follow their advice about reducing your appetite suppressant dosage such that you are as minimally dependent on it as possible... in which case it would be unlikely that you would find yourself THAT comfortable and willing to press lower than 1500.

Unicorn_Bacon · April 2020

@PAV8888

I don't know which drug he is on, so I can only comment on the vyvanse.

My thought is, based on the conversations with my eating disorder psychiatrist, is that the vyvanse is technically supposed to be used in conjunction with a therapy I havent received yet.

I dont know much about this therapy but from what he described, this therapy is supposed to promote eating habits that remove ones self from creating a deficit (which is simply a restriction) so that the act of restricting, does not perpetuate the brains desire to loop into a binge.

So the vyvanse, the first time, to be honest, I dont know what SHOULD of happened there because I was back sliding with bulimia and I think I was too far gone mentally for my psychiatrist to perhaps offer those skills to me like he is offering to me now

He threatened to take me off the vyvanse back then if I didnt start eating and put on some weight and i got really mad at him because my brain was just so far gone into chaos, i wasnt seeing or thinking clearly. I stopped talking to him for a while from anger.

My guess is that he was probably going to stop it and I just happened to coincidentally "break" mentally after blaming the pills for not doing their job to stop me from binge eating, and since I was also mad at the pills saying they didnt work.. I stopped taking the pills and as a result from the restrictions and no skills, I regained alot of my weight back over 2 years.

So.. march 27th this year was when I asked to restart them, him and I had many conversations via the web and he acknowledged that there is a huge difference in where I am mentally now... compared to where I was mentally then. I was more clear minded and less anxious and scared and not spinning out of control. Which is true, binge eating is a mental stressor to me also but it's definitely not the same chaos as bulimia was.

So back to the therapy..

As I said he didnt really give too much info on it but it's supposed to teach you how to eat in a non restrictive way... since eating normally has never actually been a thing ever in my life, I've always either binged or restricted, I honestly have no idea what that means, but the goal of it is to gradually learn to do this and create these new habits with practice so that i can bring my weight down without the need of myfitnesspal creating a deficit for me.

He said that in the beginning of this, this Is what the vyvanse would be for, giving you that time to learn whatever this therapy is supposed to teach me, I wish I had a better detailed explanation lol so I'm sorry but it's a mystery to me too..

And the goal is to come off the vyvanse, not stay on it for the whole weight loss because as you said, it does interfere with the responses you learn during the weight loss process, and I think the first time I was on the vyvanse, he probably would of wanted to teach me this, but how can you teach something to someone who is in total chaos and thinks gaining a pound is the end of the world.

For now.. where I do have a lot of weight to lose, I dont mind being on it because of my diabetes, it is better I'm not binge eating from a diabetic stand point, but yes, I do intend to take the therapy long before hitting goal weight so that I do not get to the end of the race again and step off that curb, only to be met with a black hole and no solid ground to stand on to maintain.

PAV8888 · April 2020

Hey, I truly meant it when I said it: your case is pretty complicated Kris, right?

It is really good to hear that you're on board with using it as an adjunct; and not as your primary vehicle!

Unicorn_Bacon · April 2020

It does make sense even from his stand point, even tho I have no idea what he is taking, how can you learn if the medication is essentially doing all the work.

I think this guy may be going through what I went through the first time, like... when I started vyvanse the first time, the suppressant effects were alot stronger that time then this time

The first time I was so amazed and excited because for the first time, there would be a meal sitting in front of me and I was forgetting it was there. The other thing I loved was how many hours would pass where I wasnt thinking about or endlessly making food and eating.

When this is new to you, it can be really hard to pull yourself back in and realize that the meds are making you feel not hungry but that doesnt mean you are actually not hungry.

Which is why I kind of went on that in my second comment to him was because the first time, I had to be responsible and set timers and remind myself to eat normally and the right calories. I couldnt just ignore that because it's a false sensation created by medication. You cant just eat breakfast and then wait alllll day until late and have another small meal and barely make your calorie goal.

This time, while my appetite is suppressed it's a little different this time because I make food and have no problems remembering it's there and eating it, and I dont wait the longest amount of time ever before trying to eat again, i wake up at 11am, I eat at lunch and I eat at supper and have my night snack and toddle off to bed. I think this time it's just suppressing enough to help keep my mind more focused and off the fridge.

I dont think people are prepared for the experience of appetite suppression... it's kind of like being 18 and winning 40 million dollars... it's crazy exciting, but it can really screw you up if you dont be responsible with it

I’m only eating about 1,200 calories a day. I’m not hungry. Is this bad?

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