Another calorie intake question.

Exercise calories are optional.

I haven't eaten exercise calories since starting MFP... and for 3 months straight, I've lost weight at a steady 2 pounds per week approx. Excercise calories set you back IMO. Why eat the calories you just burned and put that junk back in your body?

i really try to not eat after 7pm

contrary to the previous post, so-called "starvation mode" aka "depressed metabolism" IS real, and will slow your progress if you eat too little.

That's not what clinical data shows. It shows that, even when on a starvation diet, people continue to lose weight. Yes, their metabolism slows down. In the famous Minnesota study on starvation done in the 40s, by the time the guys were on their starvation diet for months and had 5% body fat, their metabolism had slowed down 40%!

BUT they were still losing weight. If you maintain a calorie deficit, you will lose weight because you are expending more energy than you are taking in. There is a point of diminishing returns and there are other risks to starving yourself, but not losing weight is not one of them.

Btw, a starvation diet is defined as eating 50% of your energy expenditure or less. It's not defined as not eating your exercise calories.

You're confusing a starvation diet with starvation mode or the technical term of "famine response" they are two different things.

You are correct in your statement of a starvation diet being defined as 50% of your maintenance calories, But the famine response can start at far higher then that. When the body perceives there to be few calories coming in then it needs to sustain healthy metabolic activity, the body starts the systemic slow down of enzyme production, hormone release (except for a couple of fat storage hormones like cortisol), and organ function. This lowers the amount of fuel we need, and it also increases the storage of fat. The body will normally start seeing this type of deficiency at around 75% of maintenance calories (which, ironically, is around where your BMR is).

You are also correct in the statement that there's no point where the body will STOP losing weight when we are at caloric deficit, even in famine mode. The problem is, when we are in a high deficit mode, our body looks for ways to trim off excess calorie burn, the first thing to go in this situation is muscle and lean tissue, as they are both active calorie users (as opposed to fat, which really doesn't burn any calories, like 1 per day per lb). Losing weight by extreme malnutrition just makes us lose muscle, which gives us a higher body fat %, which makes it harder to lose weight, which lowers our metabolic rate, which adds more fat...etc. vicious cycle.

Side note (added after), you MUST realize that this is true for people who ARE NOT in the obese and morbidly obese category, its a whole different set of calorie rules for them. People who have lots and lots of fat stores, don't have the same body responses to extreme calorie deficits as others. Which is why someone who has a BMI of say ...35 can eat 1100 calories a day NET (after exercise) and still lose 2 to 4 lbs a week without significant muscle loss. But eventually, once they drop enough fat, these rules WILL start to apply for them. You need to be concious of this, and know that as you approach the "overweight" range, you need to decrease your deficit and start adding in muscle building activity to your cardio workouts (best to have them in there from the start as it will make the transition less dramatic for the body).

I just find it interesting that you are giving advice on how to lose weight through diet and exercise, when you chose a drastic, invasive surgery to accomplish your losses.

I didn't attack you,

Your advice