To think eating 1500 cals daily is unsustainable?

[savedbythewell]

And if you disagree, how do you do it?
How do you satisfy your appetite and what weight loss is reasonable monthly, if three stone overweight

I agree with @pattish

Tolose weight

1 Eat real food, mainly plants, and good quality protein. Cut out processed food, ready meals (especially low calories ones) and focus on natural, raw food, lightly cooked.

2 Stop the 'treats' - you don't need them. An apple or a few grapes, or something like nuts are far better than a packet of whatsits, or a 'diet' desert.

3 Cut out most refined carbs and swap for small portions of wholegrains- rice, bread, quinoa, oats, pasta.

I disagree. You should need no more than 1200 calories a day

I eat 1500 a day in the week and more at weekends. I do this short term for a few months every now and then.
I know it's the wrong thing to do but I don't eat breakfast as never want it, so I don't want to force food in I could have later. I have a small choc treat and small glass golf wine most days even within the 1500. I have to carefully count these in though. I drink more, eat loads of salad, meat and fruit
No carbs in day but a little potato/bread/rice with evening meal (measured though and small next to protein). Have constant squash and tea on the go all day and have these first when i feel peckish as sometimes a drink will do.
I have more like 2000 on weekend days and still loose 1 to 2 pounds a week. Once I've done a stone, I stop for a while. Honestly with healthier habits I don't think I need to go back to it, but it's tough not to slip back into sugar and carbs whenever and then I end up needing to do it again.
So in answer to your question I don't think it's doable long term, so it depends on how much you need to loose. For me it's only ever 7 to 14 pounds so it's doable.

@Hankunamatata

I'm on week 6 of 800cal a day and it is tough. Had the odd day of upping to 1200. Iv found easiest way is 2 meals a day. Late breakfast and an early dinner. Lots of water.

Can I ask how much weight you have lost in this time pls x

@PurpleDaisies

If you got a broad back or large thighs or stumpy legs it’s very hard to look like a tall skinny model regardless of how thin you get. And it’s pointless because that’s not who you are.

You can change your blood sugar or cholesterol with evidence based results within weeks. That’s actually the better version of you.

[quote lightisnotwhite]**@PurpleDaisies

If you got a broad back or large thighs or stumpy legs it’s very hard to look like a tall skinny model regardless of how thin you get. And it’s pointless because that’s not who you are.

You can change your blood sugar or cholesterol with evidence based results within weeks. That’s actually the better version of you.[/quote]
Most overweight people look better when the e lost weight. Who is talking about looking like a skinny model? I look better slimmer.

Obviously there are health benefits and it’s great to be motivated by those too. It’s not realistic to think that most people want to look better than they do when they’re fatter.

@Justcallmebebes

I disagree. You should need no more than 1200 calories a day

don't be so daft, most people will be in a large calorie deficit on this amount. if you're not actively wanting to lose weight you would not eat so few calories.

point is the amount of calories you're expending daily varies hugely from person to person. You can get a rough idea using a tdee calculator. If you wnt to gain weight, eat more than your tdee. if you want to lose weight, eat less.

I'm not a calorie counter but not a huge eater and exercise regularly and lose weight when stressed which I am a lot !
The idea of a carb free breakfast is so bleak to me. I've done many a diet in my younger years and any one where I had to reduce or cut out carbs made me really miserable and hungry and to knackered to exercise

Mumsnet needs an edit. My last sentence is a mess. What is meant to say was that it’s not realistic to deny that most people want to look better than they do when they’re fatter and that motivates them to lose weight.

Watching with interest, I think peoples bodiless work differently which makes comparisons tricky.

I shuffled off more than that over about 6 months last year eating what felt like a significantly greater number of calories.

I do exercise regularly, but what I think really helped was having to stop eating gluten for medical reasons.

Now, I can't grab any old thing off the shelf in the supermarket, I can't think fuck it and order pizza or any other takeaway, I can't have a meal deal, I can't have most crisps, I can't even have oven chips 90% of the time (just why do they put fucking wheat over everything?). And where there are GF subs, they're frequently hard to find, out of stock, taste like crap or cost an absolute fucking fortune - £3.50 for a loaf of bread, anybody? And who can really be arsed to make GF pizza dough or pay a fiver for something that's likely to already be mouldy inside the sealed plastic packet Be Free I'm looking at you here and tastes predominately of sugared cardboard anyhow?

Not being able to think 'oh, fuck it' means that my carbs are around 70% rice, 20% potatoes and 10% of GF subs. I'm not limiting those, not counting the calories in meat or fish or seafood or pulses, not worrying about fat - but I have still lost weight easily, at a slower pace so that it is sustainable, sometimes faster, sometimes nothing changes for 3 weeks. And DP feels a bit 'poor Mooncup, she can't have what I'm having, so I'll put another two types of vegetable on her plate to make it look like more'.

I am not suggesting that you cut wheat out at all. But I am suggesting that possibly not having any 'fuck it, I'm tired' or 'ooh, that sounds nice' pastry, pasta, breaded, processed or takeaway meals and sauces/packets whatsoever can mean that you see weight loss without feeling bad. Because whilst you might think you don't have many, there's a very good chance that you have far more than you realise over the course of a week.

Eat a strict vegan diet, but don't use meat or cheese substitutes or ready meals. Cook from scratch only.
Eat only wholegrain carbs. Nothing white.
Don't eat crisps or other processed savoury snacks.
Never drink calories, other than alcohol on rare nights out.
Have no more than one (vegan) sweet treat food per day.

You'll be hard pushed to exceed 1500 if you follow the above.

@Hi246 it's not wrong to skip breakfast. Have a look at "Breakfast is a dangerous meal" by Terence Kealy. He looks at blood sugar spikes with a focus on type 2 diabetes and argues that breakfast causes over eating later in the day

[quote northernruth]@Hi246 it's not wrong to skip breakfast. Have a look at "Breakfast is a dangerous meal" by Terence Kealy. He looks at blood sugar spikes with a focus on type 2 diabetes and argues that breakfast causes over eating later in the day[/quote]
Only if you're eating food that promote sugar spikes - which lots of breakfast foods do, but not all!

I have no idea of the calorific value of my food, how do you work it out if you're cooking from scratch and making different dishes frequently? Do people really faff about looking up every ingredient, estimating quantities and so on?

@Bloodybridget

I have no idea of the calorific value of my food, how do you work it out if you're cooking from scratch and making different dishes frequently? Do people really faff about looking up every ingredient, estimating quantities and so on?

There are many recipes that detail the calories per portion. I use pinch of nom when I'm trying to keep an eye on it, and after a while you get an idea. BBC good food generally has calorie counts

My MFP is set to 1500. I find it works best if I 16:8 and eat mainly vegetables and protein. I eat a lot of coleslaw (heavy on the cabbage, easy on the carrot, and adding stuff like celery, cauliflower and onion) with nuts or seeds, or coleslaw with boiled eggs or cheese or coleslaw with sundry proteins. Cabbage is great for making one feel full.

Some things I wish I'd known a while ago - now I've finally had some success with long term weight loss...

1. How can you tell how many calories are breakeven for you?

Trying to go by standard basal metabolic rates for your height/size is inaccurate. Trying to assess how many calories you take in is inaccurate. Subtracting one from the other is often very inaccurate. But you can figure out what you need to change from your current lifestyle easily enough.

To do this, weigh yourself when you get out of bed in the morning every day for a month. Eat/exercise as normal when you are doing this. Use a website like www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/online/hdo.html to plot a moving average. You will then know how quickly you are gaining/losing weight on your current lifestyle.

To translate that into action, each pound/month equates to about 110 calories/day. So if you are gaining a pound a month, you need to cut out 110 calories/day from your current lifestyle to reach breakeven, and then whatever extra you need to attain your desired weight loss rate.

2. How much of a calorie deficit should you aim for?

A general rule of thumb is that you shouldn't push weight loss rate above 2 pounds a week: doing so risks doing strange things to your body's balance, and can even result in the body burning muscle rather than fat to meet energy needs (bad news, particularly as the heart is a muscle).

Sustainable weight loss rates over long term dieting are often in the 1-to-2 pound a week range. This equates to a calorie deficit of 500 to 1,000 per day. I've been losing weight at a rate of 1.5 pounds a week (750 a day) without feeling hungry.

3. What are good ways to cut out calories?

This will really depend on your current lifestyle and your target. Some no-brainers are reducing processed and high-glycemic-index foods, also cut out booze as far as you possibly can. All of these are killers to a diet as your body hoovers up lots of calories very quickly from all of them and then starts begging for more.

If you are constantly feeling hungry, something is wrong. Try spacing out meals more. And make sure you're not eating or drinking stuff that will get hoovered up super-quick by your body and give you a sugar crash.

You should absolutely be able to maintain at least a 500 calorie-a-day deficit (losing 1 pound of fat a week, nearly 4 stone in a year) without constantly suffering from gnawing hunger pangs. And hopefully somewhat more than that. I find 750 a day or so perfectly OK but people do vary.

4. Don't get discouraged by "water weight"

Your body stores energy 2 ways: fat and glycogen. Glycogen is quick-release energy, and bonds lots of water. If you diet for a while, your body will be low on glycogen storage. If you then go on holiday and eat lots of chips or whatever, your weight might go up by several pounds in a week as your body snarfs this up and sticks it into your glycogen storage: people can easily hold 6 pounds or more of glycogen+water in their bodies ("water weight"). This is not fat and will go away as quickly as it came once you are back on a diet. This wrong-foots a lot of people ("all that effort, but as soon as I look at a decent meal, it all comes back on").

Anyway, good luck - I guess the main thing to bear in mind is that it is possible to lose weight without suffering - but there are traps like the kind of thing I've outlined above.

Yes @northernruth but I use recipes from all sorts of places - online, various books, cut out of newspapers and magazines going back decades, and usually adapt them to some extent depending on what I have or need to use up. And of course often cook without a recipe. But thanks for your response, I have noticed that BBC recipes include calories per serving.

Oh, one other thing that may prove helpful - there are studies indicating that bodies can release up to 30 calories per day per pound of fat. That's a maximum rather than a guideline, but in practice it means that if (like I was) you are packing plenty of extra weight, your body really should be able to meet a reasonable diet deficit by burning fat without getting anywhere near this limit. Psychologically this can be helpful to know.

The problem with fat burning is it's not very rapid-response (hence the glycogen storage system bodies also have). So one way of looking at it is that a big challenge of dieting is to try and ensure the food you're eating / booze you're drinking / meal patterns you follow don't give lots of extreme blood sugar swings - meaning that the fat burning can then carry you through without your suffering hunger pangs.

@Bloodybridget

I have no idea of the calorific value of my food, how do you work it out if you're cooking from scratch and making different dishes frequently? Do people really faff about looking up every ingredient, estimating quantities and so on?

Meat - ballpark figure per portion. Oils/fats - ballpark figure per portion. Rice - ballpark figure per portion based on measuring cup supplied. Potatoes - ballpark figure per portion. Eggs - ballpark figure per egg. Pulses - says it on the tin/packet. Veg - fuck all per portion. Fruit - chill, it's hardly a packet of double chocolate chip cookies we're talking about.

I log food on Fitbit and guess at calories in and out that way. They have a huge food database with all the nutritional values saved in.

Once you've got all your regular foods logged, they're in your favourites or recent foods - you can also add custom foods, or whole meals with multiple ingredients on the website (not the app for some unknown reason) - so logging every day is super-quick and easy. I'd really recommend it as a lifestyle changer tool.

It's all a broad estimate of course but it tallies with my scales every time. More importantly for me, it also makes me track my health like heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep, which helps me know if I'm overdoing it exercise-wise.

Meat - ballpark figure per portion.
Oils/fats - ballpark figure per portion.
Rice - ballpark figure per portion based on measuring cup supplied.
Potatoes - ballpark figure per portion.
Eggs - ballpark figure per egg.
Pulses - says it on the tin/packet.
Veg - fuck all per portion.
Fruit - chill, it's hardly a packet of double chocolate chip cookies we're talking about

People massively underestimate when they guess. Like a tablespoon of rapeseed is over 100 calories and so is a medium banana.

MFP has a barcode scanner to get a more accurate daily account and a big database of foods. Not all of them are right, look for the green tick against some of them

@NeverDropYourMooncup ok, so it's not an exact science! I think I've done it in the past, when I was much younger. I was overweight most of my life since adolescence, varying from a bit to quite a lot, and I did the yoyo dieting for years: lose 20-odd pounds, regain them. But funnily enough when I stopped being vegetarian, after nearly 40 years, I was able to keep to a healthy BMI, and then lost a lot on the cancer diet three years ago, so I'm quite slim now (always a silver lining, ha ha).
But I had decades of feeling shame and unease in my body, and that I couldn't control my eating despite being so happy at the times I was thinner; I'll never forget that and of course I really get how hard it is to maintain weight loss. Personally, a lot of the diets I read about on MN do seem odd and pretty obsessive to me, but it's not my business . .

It depends how much that person is burning. I burn about 2400 a day on average so my weight loss calories is 1900.