Eating 1500 to 1800 Calories

trixsterjl31 wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

Yeah, let your doctor guide you.

At 386 (or 348) you have a lot more room for faster weight loss.

Well done for taking back your One Precious Life.

I like to post in other peoples posts but I have to always note that my ability to be in deficit is a bit of a cheat because even thin i'm the guy that they 2000 calorie recommended diet is too low for, or maybe right on target for a 220 lb body. My goal is 240, last weight in the Navy and was withing regs at 21. I figure im gonna have to really ramp up the exercise to keep the scale dropping once i get below 270. Thanks for input.

I've noticed your posts on other threads: It's great to see that you're diving in with sensible advice and good support as a new participant. I wish more people would do that.

If you've lost around 19 pounds a month for 2 months and it had been entirely fat, your experience-estimated calorie deficit for that time period is very roughly 2200 calories per day. In other words, your estimated maintenance calories are around 2200 plus whatever calories you've eaten on average over those 2 months. If that's 1500-1800, maintenance calories would be 3700-4000 (including exercise activity). I'd also note that 1500 calories is the absolute minimum calorie intake that MFP will recommend for any male, not just large ones.

What does MFP or a so-called "calorie calculator" say would be your estimated maintenance calories, given realistic inputs?

Here's a reasonable calculator: https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

Those are sources for realistic starting estimates, but our actual experience (averaged over 4-6 weeks) is a more accurate way to estimate, once we have enough personal tracking history data.

I understand that you've lost a significant amount of weight from reduced edema, i.e., not fat loss to that extent. If you (maybe with your doctor's help) can estimate the lost edema weight, or your more recent 4 weeks' experience are with reduced edema, you can possibly make a more realistic experience-based estimate of your maintenance calories.

I feel like you're under-estimating the commonness of 2000 calorie baseline needs. Based on around 9 years of food logging and tracking, my base (non-exercise) maintenance calories are around 2000 . . . as a 5'5", 133 pound, 68 year old woman with a sedentary lifestyle. I admit I'm mysteriously a good li'l ol' calorie burner for my demographic, but I'm far from the only average-sized woman around here I've seen say something similar, let alone men. One person's needs don't predict another's, but I'm saying this to underscore that 2000 calories is not low just for unusually big people. (I routinely eat over 2000 because of moderate exercise.)

The "recommended 2000 calorie diet" is a sort of generic number for food-label purposes, a nice round number kind of vaguely near the average-ish ballpark for a lot people of all sexes/ages/sizes.

I'm not trying to be a know-it-all meanie when I say all this, but out of concern. It's a common rule of thumb here that for typical circumstances, 0.5-1% of current weight lost per month would be the recommended maximum loss rate, unless under close medical supervision for deficiencies or complications. (Given your edema, maybe you are under such supervision.)

But at 248, 0.5-1% would be around 1.75 to 3.5 pounds a week, and 19 pounds a month is more like 4.75 pounds per week. That can be OK with weight-related health complications (which your edema suggests you may have), but that's where medical supervision comes in. I agree with Riverside that at your current weight it can be OK to lose faster than would be sensible for most of us, but 4.75 pounds a week - if that's what's happening - would be pretty fast even for a large person.

You mention believing you'll need to exercise more once you get lighter. One thing about fast loss is that it can make our body down-regulate some bodily processes to try to survive what it can't tell from a famine. That down-regulation, called Adaptive Thermogenesis, can persist long term at goal weight. It can involve slower hair growth (or thinning), slightly reduced core body temperature, possibly down-regulated immune system - not good stuff. There's a good thread about it here: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1077746/starvation-mode-adaptive-thermogenesis-and-weight-loss/p1 . I'm not trying to talk you out of more exercise, but strongly feel that making our own path easier (rather than faster) is the route to long-term success.

Fast loss makes long-term adaptive thermogenesis more likely, and possibly more severe. Please be careful: It's a balancing act to pursue a healthy weight while managing the possible side effects and complications. It's also good IMO to start thinking early on about how to make the long term more sustainable. Weight loss isn't always easy, but statistics suggest that it's keeping the weight off long term that's the harder goal. That depends on figuring out eating and exercise habits we can sustain long term, ideally forever.

I'm cheering for you to succeed, because reaching a healthy weight and staying there has been such a huge quality of life improvement for me - I want everyone to have that. You're obviously committed, and you've been doing great. Turning that initial success into long-term thriving is the stretch goal: Wishing you success!

In some sense, it doesn't matter where the deficit comes from, increased exercise or reduced eating. Yes, increasing exercise (so calories can be higher) can possibly improve nutrition a bit, so there's that.

But a big deficit is a physical stress, from either source. We can only metabolize a certain amount of fat daily per pound of fat on our body. After that, it comes from lean tissue, and the adaptive thermogenesis is part of how our body adapts the best way it can.

Also, increasing exercise to the point of over-exercise (for one's current fitness level) is counterproductive for weight loss. If we over-exercise, fatigue happens, and that bleeds calorie burn out of daily life activity as we drag through the day. In a context where research has found fidgety people to burn up to low hundreds of calories more daily than otherwise similar non-fidgety ones, the calorie penalty from over-exercise can be subtle even if meaningful.

As a formerly obese person, I understand how tempting fast loss can be . . . but it can also increase health risks.