Interesting reason to be dropped as a MFP friend

I don't always eat 1,200 cals, but it's because 100% of the time, I'm not hungry enough to eat any more. And right now I'm watching my sodium intake. I hadn't realized that my sodium intake was way above my goal, and from what I heard eating a lot of it will stall your weight loss.

Excessive sodium can cause water retention, but will not prevent you from losing fat or pounds.

IDK about you but it's working for me. I've lost 3 lbs since last week so far just by reducing my sodium.

I feel a bit worried about posting this because I know what way the boards can go sometimes, but as this is something that recently happened to me - albeit on the other side of the coin (not quite the same as I do agree with what you did) but thought it might offer a perspective....

I recently dropped a friend for this reason....not that they were a bad person or I didn't like their way of doing things but I've been here for well over six months and have been in maintenance for about 5+ weeks. My lifestyle doesn't fit having one calorie allowance for every day of the week and I tend to zig-zag eating lower midweek and then eating back collectively (and some) calories at the weekends.

I keep my friend list at around 50 and I have some wonderful people that I love chatting with every day and they know my story, know what I'm doing and know that days I net below 1200 (though definitely eating up to 1600) will be followed by days I net over 2000! It works for me and it fits in with my life and social life. The new friend informed me quite publicly that I was doing terrible things to my body and I was very wrong...so yeah, I defriended her. Sometimes the "you will die if you don't net 1200 in a day" can sometimes go a bit OTT when juxtaposed with eating way above my cals on other days and I felt that I was going to constantly be told off!

I completely agree that using MFP to lose weight unhealthily and with huge calorie deficits is very wrong and people should certainly offer advice like you did to her. I just thought it might be interesting to add an angle from someone that might not net 1200 every day because some of us aren't starving ourselves. xx

Excessive sodium can cause water retention, but will not prevent you from losing fat or pounds.

IDK about you but it's working for me. I've lost 3 lbs since last week so far just by reducing my sodium.

Sodium has no calories. It causes WATER RETENTION.

You may have lost water weight from reducing sodium, but you did not lose fat.

It does NOT matter to me. I lost some type of weight and that's all that I care about.

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I understand. And there's nothing wrong with lower sodium. What I'm saying is that you will not continue to see drops in your weight simply from cutting back on sodium. Once that excess water weight goes, your losses will level off. You have to continue the right calorie deficit to continue seeing losses.

If you continue eating excess sodium, you will still see losses because while you retain water, you'll lose fat. So in that sense, sodium does not affect weight loss. Obviously, if you eat high sodium the day before a weigh-in, you'll see a higher number on the scale, but once you shed the water weight again, you'll go back to normal.

Sorry but adding people does not give them the automatic 'ticket' to criticize anyone's diary.

If you cant stop and ask them if they are the type of person who minds their food logs being reviewed, then you are considered intruding and butting your nose in where it definitely doesnt belong. They dont have to keep it private to theirself if they dont want it reviewed.

Too many people are so damn quick to make assumptions that you are purposely starving yourself and NEVER EVER ask that person whether or not they were sick (Im battling a bad flu and vertigo right now), whether or not they work a job that was so busy they couldnt get a meal break in (I work as a Chef for a living - happens alot), perhaps the internet was down due to the weather conditions (lost power for a couple of days so couldnt track anything)...

I dumped a person REAL fast when they noticed I didnt post anything for a dinner or water. It was during our nor-easter on Halloween and we had no electricity.... when it came back on the next day, I was able to go back and enter it and close it out. The 'friend' came back and said "ohhh you finally decided to eat something huh?" I chewed her *kitten* out.... and told her off. She is now blocked and I dont have to deal with her anymore.

I make it VERY clear on my profile about the type of person I am, what I am here for and the things about people I refuse to put up with here - and people on my friend's list know that under no circumstance do they have the right to cast judgement on anything they see in my food logs NOR post anything telling me what to do about my intake. All friend-requests that come in, I tell them to kindly read my profile and determine whether or not they can respect the things that matter most to me here on MFP.

I wont answer to anyone here about why I only ate 1000 calories - its none of their damn business. That business is between my PCP, my Endocrinologist and myself and so far, they have no problems with everything because they know the whole truth and the whole picture.

This morning she had removed me from her friends list. No big deal, but if you don't want honesty, please don't friend request me.

I don't think you were rude; but I do think maybe you didn't have the whole picture of why she eats that way. For me, I don't add certain people because I know they wont like my matrix counts. It is not because I am starving myself, but because I cannot physically eat the norm (1200 cal).

I think if you add someone that is willing to provide feedback, you should let them know your situation. Sounds like maybe she didn't want to reveal why her counts were so low (maybe WLS?). Just a thought.

I'm generally not a believer in critiquing diaries. I think usually it seems to be more of a know-it-all thing than a helping thing. I mean, most people KNOW that they should eat an apple instead of French fries, they don't need you to educate them, they just choose the fries anyway. BUT, I think you did the right thing, OP, when someone is in danger, someone should try to help. And then that person is within their rights to not want to be friends with you any longer, I suppose, but you can look yourself in the mirror knowing that you tried to help.

But, I think it's just part of MFP. People aren't going to see this thread, take a note not to friend you unless XYZ, and get you the result you want. There are millions of threads here, a few of us will read this.

It is what it is, if that person just didn't want any questions about what they were eating/amounts they were eating/etc and took you off the friends list then so be it. It's hard to tell online who a person really is and what type of support they need if they don't explain it in their profile. It's neither one of your faults, that person just decided to drop you off the friend list because it was easier then explaining how they felt and you felt as though you were helping them by commenting on their diary. It just wasn't meant to be. Don't take it personally, move on and become friends with people who are like you.

She chose to unfriend me which is not a big deal. I hope she succeeds in her journey. I wish someone had been able to get through to me when I was younger and that I didn't wait until I was 43 years old to finally figure out how to change my lifestyle and get healthy.

I think some people need the extra push and I definetly like some honest criticism because I'm not perfect & I'd like to learn from others criticism. I'm almost 20 and my goal is reach my ideal weight by this time next year. Feel free to add me! I'm open to as much criticism and motivation as I can get!