A Personal View on Exercise Cals and Underfeeding

Thank you....I read this and thought "This is me" Exactly what happened to me! Never ate a lot, but am still fat, somehow, after the 3rd child. I really am getting it! I need to eat more in order to lose weight!

Bump. Thanks for taking the time to write this very informative and heart-felt post. I'm very grateful!

just read this and thought it deserved another BUMP :flowerforyou:

very interesting and informative as i am "worried" about eating all my exercise calories!

Bumping to read later...

i know this is an old thread, but it's good to read that others have faced similar issues as i have. it's nice to know i'm not alone.

it's taken me awhile to get to the point where i AM eating the calories i'm supposed to. eating back exercise calories doesn't happen. and FINALLY, after 6 whole YEARS! i actually get hungry. i haven't felt hungry in 6 years :-( but just this past week it's started.

i still mentally fight my brain, pretty much every day, that eating food will not making me more fat. i didn't gain weight not eating, but i never lost any. i would go up and down about 5 lbs, but that's about it. i've been the same size since 2006....... and since 2006 i have been consuming about 800-900 calories a day, with some days probably way less than that! in 2010, i pretty much stopped eating anything but a handful of peanut butter M and Ms ( 2010 was a horrid year in my life). i worked out all that time too!!! several nights a week from 2006 on i would be in the gym, on the treadmill, elliptical machine, lifting weights....... none of it matter.

last week, was the second week my goal was to hit 1200 cal in a day and i actually managed to do that several times. and yesterday i took my weekly measurements and i had lost 8.5 inches with 3 of those from my waist. i haven't lost weight in 6 YEARS!

as i sit here and type this, my tummy is growling. that hasn't happened, in longer than i can remember. i hope that i can beat my brain on this. i hope that i can overcome the " eating will make you more fat" thinking permanently. some days, it's a CONSTANT reminder! and i KNOW that i need to be over 1200 cal for the day, because i am an active person, who still works out nights and burns easily 500+ calories in exercise alone............ BUT, i'm taking the right steps and i am headed in the right direction.

thank you for letting me know i'm not alone in this :-) it's so hard to read over and over, "calories in vs. calories out." or " eat less, move more." cuz all those do to my head is tell me that i'm gonna get MORE fat! even if my body shows me i'm not :-(

Thanks so much for posting your views and experience. It sounds a lot like mine, except I've eating the wrong way for a bit longer, and I don't drink soda. Nevertheless, I've had to consciously make myself eat breakfast, and being accountable for what I take eat and how I exercise through using MFP has really been helpful. Now I can see what I am doing that does or does not work, and I can make changes accordingly. Any ideas how to boost the sluggish metabolism I've created over the years through negligent eating?

bump

Such a sensible, heartfelt post. I've been under eating for nearly four years using another weightloss website and didn't fully understand the damage I was doing to myself until I realised that I was becoming "skinny fat".

Since moving over to MFP in January, I can now see my Net figure and no matter how much exercise I do, I always aim to get back to a Net figure of 1200-1400.

I think it's beginning to work after just 70 days. But it's a slow process as my metabolism has slowed down so much.

Your post clearly shows that this "starvation mode" isn't a quick and clearly visible state. It's definitely a silent, stealth killer - may not kill you, but it definitely won't help you in your desire for a fit looking body.

This just confirms my thoughts with what my body is going through, so I am glad I found this. I seem to naturally stay a high weight despite eating better than many people I know who eat a lot, drink a lot plus don't exercise. The times I have lost a lot of weight was actually when I was eating macdonalds up to twice a day plus cakes every day.

I started dieting when I was 7, I have done every strange diet possible.

I started this a few weeks ago. I spent the first week just noting what I was eating but this was with a vow to eat more veg and fruit, drink more water and I noticed me thinking more about moving more and what I ate just by using this site. I've now taken it to the next level where I am making a point of exercising more plus trying to keep within my calories. Now I've got rid of my cravings and weird binging habits, I can start eating to turn around a bad diet.

This is brilliant, and definitely does help ease a lot of the fears about eating back the calories.
I don't - mostly because I'm following (ish) the Jillian Michaels food plan... but at the same time I'm noticing that the weight loss is slowing down a lot faster than I expected it to.
I do think that a trial of a month of just eating 1200 cals, followed by a month of getting the NET cals to 1200, will allow me to see just what works for my body.

Thanks