My interestingly named Journal

LOL sorry I didn't see your posts! I had the thread in my favourites folder and had been coming directly to it and just seeing the first page and feeling a bit hurt cos I thought noone was replying :).


What do you think would be a good calorie range for me to be on?
 
Hiya, I'm new too, so wanted to read some diaries to help me kick start my own.
Sounds like you're doing really well! I'm sorry to hear about your break up, but it sounds like he'll be eating his heart out if he sees you again when you've lost your excess weight! xxx
 
Hey moose, just popping by to say hi :). Great job that you're losing weight in your first week, but just to Steve's point, the calories sound way too low to sustain your losses more than a little while. I had the flu last year and lost about 5 pounds after vomiting and not eating for about 3 days. But I put on every single last pound the following week, as soon as I started eating normally again (and I started back slow). It seems like the body does not like to be starved and often halts the weight loss. I sort of always wonder why the starting point for a diet often seems to be starvation or extreme calorie cutting, as opposed to simply cutting back from your former eating patterns. People dont always keep up big huge unsustainable changes and then they get discouraged and go right back to their former habits.
 
I would say my average right now is about 11 or 1200 .. is that really too low? I always thought that anything over 1000 was okay, but under that was too low as you'd go into starvation mode. Would I keep losing if I went up to 1400 or so? :)


Thanks everyone for replying btw! Glad I finally found the second page *grins*
 
IloveMoose said:
I would say my average right now is about 11 or 1200 .. is that really too low?
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A 'low' intake for someone with your stats would be something like 1500 calories.

You have two choices.

1. keep doing what you are doing and realize that such *steep* deficit dietingn will bring about a metabolic slowdown much sooner than need be (plateau).

2. Start eating a more *sane* intake and prolong the progress. This also has less risk of muscle loss.

It's up to you.

I always thought that anything over 1000 was okay, but under that was too low as you'd go into starvation mode.
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It doesn't work like that.

1. Calorie requirements are based on individuals stats.

2. The starvation mode is not an instant/event. Rather it's a process that starts at the onset of any diet.
Would I keep losing if I went up to 1400 or so? :)
 
IloveMoose said:
Hmm interesting I didn't know that - thanks. Maybe I should add some to my daily intake *smiles*.
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I would in your shoes.

I look at it like this. The idea is to eat as much food as you possibly can while still losing an appreciable amount of weight. This tends to lead to the most consistent and long-lasting results.
 
That sounds good .. I really hadn't realised that it was possible to lose weight on much more than 1200 but then .. I've never dieted at this size before (in secondary school when I wasn't, looking back, overweight anyway I used to occasionally go on 1000 calorie a day diets but at 9 and a half stone that was a whole different ball game).
 
Weightloss generally works like this: create an energy deficit either through diet or exercise, and your body will go to the fat to get its energy, hence you lose weight. Once you have a calorie deficit which totals about 3500 calories, you should expect to lose approximately one pound of fat. We require a certain number of calories just to survive, and also for our lifestyle, and also for our exercise. That number for me is 2000 (without exercise, keeping in mind that this number is higher the higher your weight). So if I eat 2000 calories everyday and dont exercise, I will stay at this weight and not gain or lose. If I cut my calories to say 1500 calories per day, then in one week theoretically I should have lost a pound. This actually worked like a charm during the initial phase of my weight loss, but now my body is sort of in plateau mode and doesn't really shed weight like that anymore. You are starting out so you can work this method. Aren't you more likely to stick to a healthy way of eating that allows you to eat and not be starving rather than starving for a few weeks and then giving up totally, because, after all, who can or wants to keep up starving forever.
 
I should add that I went to see my GP before I started this and asked for a referral to a dietician. It's not come through yet but she said it wouldn't take long.
 
Blancita - to be honest I don't feel like I am starving on what I am eating now tho. I am eating loads of salad, fruit, cottage cheese and quite a bit of stuff like chicken and oily fish. I genuinely don't feel tempted to 'binge' .. though of course I might in a week or two down the line. This is such a total departure from my normal way of eating tho .. I used to live on red meat, fatty carbohydrates and dairy and crappy processed dinners.
 
IloveMoose said:
Blancita - to be honest I don't feel like I am starving on what I am eating now tho. I am eating loads of salad, fruit, cottage cheese and quite a bit of stuff like chicken and oily fish. I genuinely don't feel tempted to 'binge' .. though of course I might in a week or two down the line. This is such a total departure from my normal way of eating tho .. I used to live on red meat, fatty carbohydrates and dairy and crappy processed dinners.
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1. To Blancita and anyone else, I'm not really a fan of saying, "there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat so let's cut calories by X amount in order to lose Y pounds per week." Reason being: Our metabolisms are so dynamic that what equates to a 3500 calorie deficit at the moment most certainly won't be down the road. I find that this mentality sets people up for disappointments when they realize that the 'math' didn't play out how they had hoped.

2. What are 'fatty' carbohydrates?

3. There are different associations to the word starving. We don't mean starving in the sense that you are on the verge of death. We mean starving in the sense that your body is going to make a lot of 'defensive' shifts, metabolically speaking. Dieting is a stress. Our bodies adapt to stress. There is an optimal amount of stress to place on the body to give you optimal results. You can go beyond this though, and cause more harm* than good.

*harm = nothing permanent, but things such as loss of muscle, metabolic slowdowns, fat regain, etc.
 
Sorry .. by fatty carbs I meant carbs cooked or prepared with lots of fat - chips or crisps or pies or pasta with lashings of cheese and creamy dressings. I know that carbs themselves do not contain fat but the way that I ate 'em .. they really did.

ANyway I'd rather do this slowly but efficiently than too quickly and put it all back on again, obviously. This has to be a permanent change or there's no point in doing it.
 
Steve said:
1. To Blancita and anyone else, I'm not really a fan of saying, "there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat so let's cut calories by X amount in order to lose Y pounds per week." Reason being: Our metabolisms are so dynamic that what equates to a 3500 calorie deficit at the moment most certainly won't be down the road. I find that this mentality sets people up for disappointments when they realize that the 'math' didn't play out how they had hoped.
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I tried to be clear that this tends to work very well at first. For months I literally lost the exact weight that I was supposed to according to my running calorie deficit. However, once the body catches on to things, or for whatever other unknown reason, it stops working after a while. And it stops even if you do things slowly. It took me a whole year just to lose 30 lbs, and I ate a lot and worked out (all the things that are supposed to counteract things). The extremely odd thing is that my metabolism is still higher than normal (by 12%) according to an RMR test I took (where you breathe into a machine for 10 mins), so at some point the body really truly develops a mind of its own.
 
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