PEOPLE WITH VERY LOW CAL INTAKE

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