to think 1,200cals per day should only maintain your weight if you've buggered up your metabolism?

[DottyboutDots]

My friend and I are both trying to lose weight. She does around 800cals a day on the elliptical, while I swim and play squash.

She claimed that a woman approaching 40 can only eat 1200 cal a day and stay slim. I countered with, well I ate 1500 (adjusted with eating my excercise cals) a day on and off for a year and lost 3 stone.

Her examples are a) her mother who has eaten the same exact two meals a day for 20 years with a third option that she changes and is slim and b) our two friends who have openly admitted having food issues and don't eat very much.

She then mentioned that our overweight gynae (we met having our 3rd babies) had agreed with her. I said look to the messanger on that one.

Surely, there are healthy, slim women who eat more than 1,200 a day and stay slim. Please say there are, I need hope that the rest of my life is going to be a gastronomical desert.

how do you know that your metabolism works at a different level? Have you had blood tests summer?

One other point... My father, me and dd are all naturally cold people. My hands are alway ice. Our bodies don't seem to expend as much energy on maintaining temperature as other people.

Dp for example eats loads more than me, similar activity levels and similar height and build. But his skin is always warm to the touch, whereas mine is always cool to the touch.

Eating more doesn't make me warmer... I spent almost 8 years pregnant and/or breastfeeding during which my appetite was doubled but I still seemed to be cold to the touch all the time, apart bizarrely from dds pregnancy where I felt like I was being boiled alive and spent all winter in t-shirts and opening every window. Hers was the pregnancy I ate the least as she was pushing on my stomach and I couldn't eat very much in one sitting, even by my standards!

I think it's the 2000 a day which is misleading. I believe summer, I think the clue is where she says she is lazy. "Normal" activity levels vary massively. I think I am fairly active. But my BMR is 1300, my TDEE is 3,500 ! That is because my sitting time is "only" 6 hours. I don't think that is strange. I am standing or walking for my job, I bike to work, stand to cook. I spend 1.5-2 hrs doing housework. Activity levels make a massive difference.

The only way to know for sure what your BMR or your TDEE is to strap a heart rate monitor to yourself and start it as you get out of bed and turn it off as you get back into bed - doing one day nothing and the next day a full active day.

That way you will have a complete calorie count for the entire day and will therefore know exactly what each count is without wide estimates done by a calculator on a pc

Maybe I'm missing a trick. How do you all survive on 1200 calories a day? I have started tracking myself on myfitnesspal and I eat over 1600 a day! And I'm already cutting down on the snacks. I would also think 1200 is starving too.

FYI, I'm trying to lose the weight I gained from my week 12 miscarriage. I piled on 4kg during that 3 months . Otherwise I've never tried to lose weight before. I am 38 and still have a BMI of 20.9 at my current fat state. (But I'm small boned and have a BMI of 19.5 before the pregnancy).

So yes, it's entirely possible to eat way more than 1200 calories and still be slim.

Very true. I study, so spend huge amounts of time just sitting reading. My top relaxation activities are reading and tv.

I clean only as much as needed, I hate it so certainly don't spend much time doing it.

I hate walking so apart fron a half mile a day to collect ds2 don't do it.

I garden but enlist dp to do stuff like mowing the grass or digging beds so I can't imagine I get much exercise from weeding and pruning

I have decent enough energy levels when needed (did a 5k walk last year and ran most of it trying to keep in from of the kids at the front) but I don't have that urge to be active many people do.

I eat 2000-2500 a day and have a BMI of 18.5. I would LOVE to gain some weight, but it just doesn't go on. i blame my genes.

I don't get hungry on 1,300 cals a day. I rarely feel hunger, except after a good workout.

I miss being able to eat more as I love my food but I am not starving and certainly healthy enough.

Even when my thyroid levels have been good I still can't eat much. It can be a pain as I could happily eat 1,300 cals in chocolate every day but I am not starving or malnourished.

My mum is the same way, if you are short, slim, small built and not overly active you simply need less calories than the average woman.

I do not over-estimate or under-estimate my exercise or my calorie intake as much as some would like to think I do. I just need to less cals than most, if that is because I lost five stone pretty quickly and that messed with me somehow I do not know.

You're friends wrong. 1200 calories a day is minimum any woman should eat really.

You have to fuel your body for your lifestyle anyway.

*your

To the poster asking the definition of slim. I'd think at a BMI of 20, I'm on the slim side of normal. I think you are defined as underweight if you are under 18.5.

my DH is a "naturally" slim person he must eat and drink close to 4, 000 calories a day.But he is never still from when he gets out of bed at 7am until 730pm when he sits down for dinner. TBH I am the same many days. I can easily consume 3, 000 calories. I am now doing 5:2 previously had a BMI of 22-23 now 21. I can guarentee I eat at least 3, 000 when not fasting (in all reality probably closer to 4, 000)

I'm 43, BMI currently high end of "healthy" at 24.5, walk 3 miles a day and lose weight on about 1800 calories a day.

But when our activities levels fall it takes very little time to get very fat.

Ivykaty... I do have a lower than average heartbeat, very low blood pressure and a reasonably low active heartrate. So if that's what bmr is calculated on I would come up low I imagine.

The human body is incredibly complex though, I honestly don't think high/low metabolism is linked to just one or two factors, I imagine it's far more complicated than that.

I've been wondering about this too. I' don't habitually count calories but used mfp during the third trimester of my pregnancy just out of interest really. I was eating a healthy diet but for daily cake or biscuits and averaged 2300 ish a day. I gained 2 st during pregnancy and looked almost like my old self immediately after giving birth except for a bit of muffin top which is still there 5 months on!

I reckon I'm eating the same or more now, breastfeeding and perpetually starving. But I'm maintaining weight. Am I greedy or do I need these calories? I honestly can't understand how anyone could function on half what I eat which is what the OP is talking about, let alone 800 cals! I'm 5' 8 ish and ore preg was 9 st 4.

i agree travelincolour

I eat 2000+ cals a day easily and healthily. I'm 5'8 and about 10.5 stone. I'm a normal build rather than slim and fairly active but not excessively so. When I want to lose weight I drop to about 1500 cals a day and up my exercise but eat those calores back.

I have maintained my weight at a max of 1200 calories a day (NET) for more than 6 years.

But I think the difference is that it is an unnaturally low weight for me (6st at 5'1"). If I was at a more normal weight for me (no idea what as I've never allowed myself to have a normal adult weight but looking at my sister I guess around 8.5st) then I imagine I would lose on 1200.

It isn't difficult to get a full day's food at 1200, not be overestimating and feel satisfied and well nourished.
Today for example, I haven't exercised. My food diary will look like this by bedtime:
Breakfast:
100g blueberries (57)
100g 0% greek yogurt (57)

Snack:
Dried apricots, 35g (70)

Lunch:
Weightwatchers wrap (106)
Chicken mini breast fillets, 200g (208)
Mixed Salad Leaves, 50g (11)
Strawberries, 150g (48)

Snack:
Vanillamoo Frozen Yogurt, 100ml (76)

Dinner:
Salmon fillet, 110g (190)
Noodles, 150g (210)
Mangetout, 40g (14)
Babycorn, 65g (16)
Carrot, 180g (74)

Snack:
Options white hot chocolate, 11g (45)

That comes to a (real, not imagined) total of 1178 calories and is obviously a nutritious, decent amount of food that no small female adult is going to get hungry on.

Most days I exercise and I would eat similar to that plus enough protein shake, nuts or other similar snacks to bring it up to 1000-1200 net.

1200 calories is a weight-loss diet, 800 calories is a very low calorie weight loss diet. Weight-neutral diet obviously depends on height, frame and activity levels. Clearly we are not all the same but most of us will fall within a reasonable range. Then there will be some interesting outliers like Summer...

I do like messing up the statistics

Calories are NOT all equal. Cut out grains and sugar and then you eat more calories and stay slim. I lose on 1200 a day - even without exercise - but I don't eat much grains.

The human body is incredibly complex though, I honestly don't think high/low metabolism is linked to just one or two factors, I imagine it's far more complicated than that.

Your metabolism can be tested with a blood test - have you had a blood test to check your metabolism as you stated I have a genetically low metabolism and I asked had you had a blood test and what are the results?

I do have a lower than average heartbeat, very low blood pressure and a reasonably low active heartrate. So if that's what bmr is calculated on I would come up low I imagine.

The only way you will find out is to wear a heart rate monitor for a day and see how many calories you have burnt by the end of the day - this will show you what is happening all day - apart from in the shower as they don't work in water.

Do you know your waking heart rate?

Haven't taken my heart rate in ages but it used to be 50-55.

Active heart rate 90-110 usually.

At least that's what I say... I'm probably lying though. Really I'm an obese comfort eater with delusional behaviours which cause me to seek validation by making the internet think I'm thin and have a low appetite as my self worth is reliant on the opinions of people who don't know me and I'll never meet