Are people really eating this little?

[ABugWife]

Thread after thread after thread I see on here of people posting tiny amounts of food that they eat, or fasting most of the day. 1200 calories, 800 calories, bananas are bad for you, don't eat any carbs, no sugar ever, it goes on and on.

I am short 5'2 and fairly light at the top end of 8 stone so by these threads I should be eating barley anything but I eat every two hours pretty much, I snack all the time, I eat cheese and crisps and sweeties and cakes, sometimes I gain weight, sometimes I lose weight but it's quite steady between 8st 10 and 8st 13

I really find it hard to believe that people are eating such tiny amounts of food and not losing weight.

Does everyone here have a massive drink problem they don't include in their calories or are people lying perfectly still in bed all day long.

Where are the people that eat a normal, mostly healthy but sometimes shit diet.

Blimey, my 1 year old eats 40 grams of oats every morning.

That is type of logic is why people get fat.

A home made cake is balanced in terms of carbs, proteins and fats and you can make them even better for you by using cream cheese frosting, replacing some of the sweetness with whole / fibrous fruits (like chopped dates / raisins) and adding nuts or getting rid of it altogether.

To maintain my weight I need 2352 kcals a day according to that TDEE calculator. My BMI is 47 and my lifestyle is sedentary.

Eh?

The logic that you should eat healthy food across all food groups but avoid eating lots of food high in sugar and fat is why people get fat ?

Have you gone nuts?

Or did you just misread?

And really trying to make cake healthier by adding dried fruit and cream cheese smacks of unhealthy obsession

Add the cheese and fruit if you like it but because it's healthier to your mind

Eat what you like
Eat everything in moderation

@Wenfy exactly. It’s a comparison between filtered and unfiltered cigarettes.

Home made cake is only slightly less unhealthy than store bought because there are no seed oils, preservatives and high fructose syrup.

The trick is to bulk oats out with other ingredients. DC get 40g of ‘carrot halwa’ oats which I cooked on the hob - sauteed the grated carrots (2-3 large carrots), grated courguette (2 large, skins on) in a knob of butter, added raisins and chopped walnuts / cashews, added oats, then made it up with milk. This turned a single portion of oats into a family meal and also kept them fuller for longer

Do you think that your experience shows that faddy diets don't work? As soon as a person stops doing them, the weight goes back on.

Yes, true. What makes home made cake healthy is when healthy weight people make and eat them - as they usually reduce the amount of sugar, or use traditional recipies that were passed down back when less sugar was used, or make it with all the trimmings have a slice with coffee and then don’t eat it again for a week or two.

You know that the AfN Standards of Ethics, Conduct and Performance state that you must only provide a service if it is grounded in robust science, within your scope of practice and it is appropriate to do so?

They also advise that evidence based advice will not recommend eliminating foods or entire food groups from the diet.

Oh, and that people should

• Eat higher fibre carbohydrates – such as bread, rice, pasta and potatoes with their skin on

In moderation, yes. Which means smaller slices of cake, not eating cake regularly but as an occasional treat (most people don’t exercise enough to justify weekly cake stops), getting exercise daily, making sure you eat healthy balanced meals everyday. Being a normal weight isn’t rocket science. It’s about understanding what works for you. The bitter truth is overweight people who say they eat <1k calories per day gross aren’t measuring them properly. It is impossible to be fat and eat so little.

I know as I used to make these justifications for me being 2 stones over. Then peri hit, I had a baby at the same time, my weight ballooned despite breastfeeding and I started getting the basics right. When I weighed and measured my food properly I realised I was eating 3 thousand calories per day.

I cut to 2k per day and walked 10k steps in one go everyday and even with Hashimotos and PCOS I lost 2 stones over 2-3 months. And have maintained this weight ever since and without weighing / measuring - I just figured out portion sizes, cut out processed simple carbs and sugars, and ate for my gut.

4 hours? Please god tell me that's a typo. Unless you are a pro athlete that is!

There was research done on the hunter gatherers of northern Tanzania that showed that excess exercise is countered by your body. Your body benefits from the exercise by reducing stress, hormones, etc, but your body adjusts the burn rate to ensure you don't lose too much weight. Makes perfect sense in evolutionary terms. The times you need to work harder and seek out food, your body conserves the energy as it think you may be about to starve. The results were so surprising that they were vigorously checked and rechecked. Move more and eat less is a bit of a conspiracy theory that seems to have taken firm hold. Suits big food companies too.

The fact you are struggling to lose weight would seem to back this up.

You’re struggling to lose weight because you are not eating enough to fuel 4 hours of cardio and that is far too much cardio. Your poor body.

You’d get get better results ditching a lot of the cardio and lifting heavy weights. And eating more.

Sorry I'm missing something here. You said that type of logic is why people get fat, then go on to agree that a homemade cake is balanced.

To all those who asked - I cycle. It's easy to do 4-6 hours in a day with no coasting. It's good fun. And I lift weights - these need to get heavier.
I've lost over half my body weight before and I know what works for me. I did get too thin and had to put on weight but I didn't stop in time. My bmi is 25. But my body loves to hang onto fat.
All I have done is cut out sugar and bread/pasta/rice/potatoes - exactly what I did before and I'm not hungry on 1200 calories a day.

If you cut back on food intake and you are active then you are making matters worse. Your body goes in to conservation and survival mode. The name for this is low energy availability or LEA. It happens when your energy expenditure routinely exceeds your energy intake, so your body does not have enough energy available to support all the physiological functions you need to maintain optimal health.

You can’t maintain healthy hormone function. Your thyroid and bone formation start to be disrupted after quite a short time in LEA. Stay in that state too long and you can end up with extreme fatigue and thyroid distinction that is hard to turn around.

One of the first things that happens when the body isn’t getting enough energy it needs is that is starts increasing body fat. Without enough energy to perform basic functions (let alone hours of exercise) your endocrine system signals your body to start breaking down muscle (which demands lots of energy just to maintain itself) and store more fat, so you have a reserve of energy.

If you’re not eating enough while you’re working hard your body assumes you’re in a situation where there’s not enough food - so stores all the energy it can to survive.

The next thing that happens is that your power declines. You’ve lost some muscle. You’ve stored some fat. And now your body is further conserving energy by lowering your metabolic output. Most women interpret this as a sign they aren’t training hard enough or they’re eating too much. So they try to train harder and eat less, making matters worse…

As we can see on this thread…

It loves to hang on to fat because you are not fuelling your 4 hour bike rides.

So if you lost half your body weight before, that suggests you put it all back on too? This is very common, but surely tells you something wasn't correct for you in the adjusted eating pattern.

I had a look and the last time I did an hour and a half bike ride (a lot less than 4 hours) and I burnt 500 calories. Now everyone is different but it won’t be much less than that. Therefore a 3 hour bike ride will be around 1,000 calories and. 4 hour one more than that. Then there’s day to to day living. Eating a mere 1,200 - 1,400 calories a day on that level of exercise is putting you at risk of serious health problems.

You think a homemade cake is akin to having a fag. OK Gillian

I meant if it was badly written and hard to understand. Eat slice of cake alongside healthy diet of normal unprocessed foods.

Fucking around with Mary Berry's very nice recipe is really not needed. It's not 'healthy' as such, but it sure much more healthy than some of the suggestions on here and ALONGSIDE A NORMAL BALANCED DIET isn't going to make you fat.

I find this whole thread very concerning.

I understand the rationale. I might ditch a couple of hours cycling and lift even more. I don't have much of an appetite and I don't like most foods (other than sugar which has skewed my metabolism massively in the past.)
I've also cut down cycling - I used to do 18 hours cardio a week - I was unfit and wanted to get fit. I'm currently above the minimum 9 prescribed by hospital and I've dropped the intensity. My power is increasing. Compared most cyclists I know, my regime is pretty tame.
I've seen a nutritionist (2 actually) and I can't do their diets at all. I can't eat that much in one go and I can't eat before I do cardio as it's often super early in the morning so I'll have protein (chicken) as I go along. But both broadly said despite training 1200 calories is enough for a sedentary day and 1500 for a cardio day. One was women's menopause specialist - highly recommended and used by genuine athletes.

My understanding is it's calories in vs expended. This is why many "fad" diets like slimming world (A mashed banana does not have more calories than a whole one), atkins etc work. You drop food groups, you drop calories.

For different reasons I have had a lot of tests done recently - I have normal hormones, thyroid, bone density, bone marrow etc. I have good blood pressure and a good heart rate (not super low).

I do too. It’s so obvious why homemade cake is better than shop bought. Have a look at the ingredients on the shop bought one!

I’m only on Day 12 😂

The weight loss is what’s fuelling my willpower 😂

I put half back on. I went from a bmi of 30 to 15. I needed to put a minimum of 1/4 back on and preferably 1/3 but I put on a bit more - hence the bmi of 25.
I was eating very little before at my lowest weight - it took 5 years to lose the weight and 4 to put half back on.

@Delatron I use a power meter for the ride and have software which tells me how much I burn on each ride. Garmin, strava etc all do this for you. So I know the figures are about right.

I genuinely don't like a lot of foods unless they are awful for you - like ice cream or scones and clotted cream and jam! I shovel in what I can and am avoiding sugar at the moment as it's addictive and inflammatory.

I could go and see another nutritionist but the last 2 weren't very good. It's expensive and they all claim they know what's best but how do I as a lay person know who to trust?

What do you mean the figures are right? You are eating 1400 calories a day (less often). Sedentary women will need more than that just existing. Yet you are doing a 4 hour bike ride. How many calories do you think you burn on the bike ride?

An average woman needs 1,800 per day (some more) active women need more.

So you need that before you’ve even factored in the bike ride. Yet you are starting from a position of 1,200-1,400 max. You are massively under-fuelling your body

Simple carbs (as opposed to complex) and sugar are definitely the enemy if you put weight on easily. I used to have a job where I’d clock up 25k of steps a day and burn over 600 calories but couldn’t lose weight. The culprits were the things I was eating too much of - bread, sausage rolls, pork pies, crisps, chocolate. I ate them because all that physical activity made me crave stodgy carbs and sugar. Didn’t shift an ounce. FF to now, I work from home, my only exercise is a walk to my local shop but I’ve lost 10kg since May. The reason has to be because I cut out simple carbs and sugar.