PEOPLE WITH VERY LOW CAL INTAKE

I eat around 1100 per day, exercise 5 days a week and I eat very well, take mulit vitamins. I feel the best I have ever felt! and I am steadily losing weight and bodyfat! I rarely get hungry after my 1100 calories, so I go with how my body feels!
I m sure you will get a few haters on this post, but just do what your body is comfortable with! Everyone is different!

Haters? Hmmm...don't really consider it "hate" when we want to help people be healthy.

1100 calories is one thing. Less than 800 is completely different...

I agree with the helping statement. Why would that be considered "hate" when people are looking for advice? Hmmmm..

1200 minimum unless under Doctors orders.

Sure you may feel fine and no it doesn't matter is if you alot to lose. Your body will store everything trying to hold on because you are starving it.

When it does burn it burns muscle not fat.......this does not help you in any way.

The occassional dip is fine but it is not a healthy lifestyle.

Additonally, the 1200 means net not eat 1200 and burn 1000 calories a day, you will end up in the same position down the road.

Eat lots of lean protein, fiber and drink a min of 64oz of water per day. Limit your fat, simple carbs and sodium and exercise often. With this you will feel better and look better too and in the process you will be building lean muscle and burning fat. Which leads to a much healthier lifestyle.

Lots of threads on this if you want to review but best is call your doctor or see a nutritionist!

Best of Luck!

You only have 9 more pounds to lose, I noticed. When you get that close to a target weight, starving yourself is going to absolutely slow your progress. In fact you'll probably find as I do, that if you indulge here and there responsibly, it can help your metabolism.

Anyone else notice from this thread that everyone vouching to eat more as lost significantly more weight than those who say "listen to your body?"

When I started though MFP told me my cals per day should be 1200. So if I never go lower like some users have suggested then how am I going to keep losing weight. I have lost 21 so far and I plan to go down to 1100 when I get to 25lbs lost. Then I plan to finish at 1000 at another 20lbs and remain at that calorie intake indefinitely. Now I am hearing maybe that's not safe.

MFP already has a built in deficit of calories. Your goal represents what you should eat to maintain the level of deficit that MFP set up for you. For instance...if you have it set to lose 1lb/week and your intake goal is 1200 cals/day, that means as long as you are under 1700 calories per day, you are still going to lose weight! The reasoning behind this is, 3500 calories = 1lb, MFP builds in a daily deficit of 500 per day to get to the 3500 a week, which is 1 pound. With all of that said, if you go over your 'goal' by less than what the built in deficit is, you will still lose weight, just not as fast if it's over the goal. Hope that makes sense :bigsmile:

Anyone else notice from this thread that everyone vouching to eat more as lost significantly more weight than those who say "listen to your body?"

I dont think that is even a fair statement! ...I may have only lost 19lbs on MFP, but I didnt have alot to lose! I eat very healthy and my body is in the best shape it has ever been! I eat 1100 calories because I am happy with that! I feel good and dont feel I need to eat more. I have done p90x, insanity and I Run. I lift weights and I am not losing muscle mass. I dont have alot of FLAB on my body....I am not 100% where I want to be but I am very close to being there!

When I was larger and had more to lose.....I ate 1500-1600 calories a day to lose weight. BUT I dont weight that anymore so I have to adjust my calories to my weight. I do what makes my body feel healthy, and what is making the body fat and inches get smaller!

Anyone else notice from this thread that everyone vouching to eat more as lost significantly more weight than those who say "listen to your body?"

I dont think that is even a fair statement! ...I may have only lost 19lbs on MFP, but I didnt have alot to lose! I eat very healthy and my body is in the best shape it has ever been! I eat 1100 calories because I am happy with that! I feel good and dont feel I need to eat more. I have done p90x, insanity and I Run. I lift weights and I am not losing muscle mass. I dont have alot of FLAB on my body....I am not 100% where I want to be but I am very close to being there!

When I was larger and had more to lose.....I ate 1500-1600 calories a day to lose weight. BUT I dont weight that anymore so I have to adjust my calories to my weight. I do what makes my body feel healthy, and what is making the body fat and inches get smaller!

Sorry you're offended, but honestly - you're only 100 calories from the recommended minimum. It's not like you're doing 800 calories trying to lose over 30 pounds like someone in this thread is doing. That will put someone on the way to a serious eating disorder. Just hoping everyone loses weight safely and healthily, which looks like you are.

This might make it easier to clear up some things,
the reason MFP won't go below 1200 calories for anyone is because that is deemed unsafe by MFP. If you hit below 1200 (I admit- I have done this some days in the beginning) there is a paragraph under your projected weight in 5 weeks that warns you this is unsafe and starvation mode.
MFP is programed to 1. calculate the number of calories your body would need to sustain a constant weight. 2. Then subtract calories to lose weight. I was taught a good guide to lose weight is take your BMR and subtract 10%.
For someone my size and age it was 1470 - 100= 1370 calories.
Originally i had my settings on MFP to lose 2 Ibs. a week (though 1 Ib. was recommended.) It had me at 1200 calories.
After awhile of this I felt I wasn't getting a sufficient number of calories a day and began to worry. I have long days and often times I would be very tired or just mentally not at 100% focus in school.
I changed my settings to the recommended -1Ib./week and MFP put me at 1340 calories, which is extremely close to what I had calculated myself, so I felt it was more accurate.

Keep in mind that a pound if 3500 calories. If you hit your minimum number of calories, but exercise or burn enough calories through daily routine that in a week the deficits equal 3500, it should equal to about a pound not counting other variables (bloating, time of day you weigh, time of month you weigh for females also, etc.)

You can pretty much create a range for your own caloric intake, which MFP does for you daily. You start with the minimum recommended and after exercise it shows you the maximum. So you can then keep in mind that range while you eat throughout the day of minimum starting to post-workout maximum and still lose weight.

The best resource I can offer- which helped me tremendously- is a blog on tumblr that is now an official website, I think. http://www.thespartanwarrior.com. He's not an expert, but he has a sidebar that links to articles by experts and research that explains how calories and nutrients work. The guy who runs it is extremely helpful, can answer a lot of questions, and if he can't answer them then he will research and look for a trusted source that can.

I went into my weight loss goals not knowing anything about nutrition and getting a lot of bad advice from loved ones about fad diets, avoiding cards, skipping meals, etc. Once I took the time to read about the biological processes (though science is NOT my best subject!) it actually makes a lot of sense in the end. And I can honestly say the information he presents, I have taken time to look for other sources to verify it. I still trust the information he posted, it aligns with textbooks, professional articles, etc. So maybe that will help some people.

They've actually proven you can do a low cal diet (800 cals) and not lose muscle mass if you're still strength training. If you're eating high quality calories that is. Not sure of the long term effects, but it's crap that you will lose your lean muscle mass if you're still lifting.

http://www.jacn.org/content/18/2/115.abstract