Is it really true that if you don’t eat enough you won’t lose weight?

[RedCandyApple]

I just don’t buy this, surely if you have a calorie deficit you will lose weight? How can not eating enough stop you from losing weight? Isn’t it suppose to be the opposite? If you are burning more calories than you consume then you would lose weight? I am obese, don’t want to say how much I weigh as I’m so embarrassed but I am a dress size 20, I’ve started calorie controlled diet on 10th of jan, but I’ve barely lose anything, last week I lost nothing at all! Not even a lb, I have cut out all takeaway, fizzy drinks, sweets, chocolate yet the scales are barely moving. People always say when you are obese you lose weight at quicker rate and the weight just falls off so I have to admit I was expecting quite big losses each week but how can I barely be losing anything, when I’ve cut everything out and have drastically changed what I’m eating? I am absolutely not in denial about how much I am eating I count everything. I don’t use oil, butter, I don’t drink tea or coffee so no hidden milk or sugar I don’t drink alcohol. I am eating 1200/1300 cals a day, what is going on?

There are enough pictures of people who are starving.to death to prove that is simply not true.

Go without enough food for long enough and you will die a skeleton.

Low carb/high fat is the best option for me. Forces your body to use fat for energy instead of carbs.

That being said are you tracking absolutely everything? Its easy to track "physical food" ie if you ate a banana you can track the calories from that but are you also tracking your oils/butter/milk (if you're having a bowl of cereal for example) or in tea/sauces/gravy/ect? Its very easy to overeat if you're not counting everything..

but 1200 calories soon adds up when you add in all of the above items as well

Could you give us an idea of what your daily meal plan looks like, OP? The people who say you're not eating enough are talking bollocks. I hear this said quite often in real life and it always winds me up.

I know you said you're not exercising, but walking is exercising and if you've recently increased the amount you're exercising your body will be adapting to that - this will result in retention of water in your muscles, some of this will be due to inflammation as your muscles become stronger adapting to the exercise and some of it is due to your body storing extra glycogen in your muscles (which it stores with water) to fuel these new workouts. If you had just increased the amount of exercise you're doing without reducing your calorie intake you likely would have seen an increase in your weight. By reducing your calorie this increase in water weight has been offset by the fat you've lost and thus your overall weight has not changed, even though you've experienced healthy changes in your body composition (which you know has happened because your clothes are getting looser). Stick with it, soon your muscles will adapt and you'll both lose the extra water weight and the fat loss will start to show on the scales.

Whether or not you're getting enough of the right kinds of food to provide yourself with the nutrition you need and be healthy and sustain your weight loss in the long term, is a different question. But yes just having a calorie deficit will result in weight loss, managing your diet and exercising is by far the healthier way of doing it though it may mean the scales take slightly longer to change initially, so well done.

If you switch to salmon with broccoli, kale, tomatoes, carrots (all streamed) instead of cooking chicken you should see a difference.

Don't have any diet bars or drinks. Water to drink (not excessive amounts as your stomach needs to shrink), a satsuma every two hours and oat biscuits spaced out when you need to have some energy (before you get really hungry) - sparingly. Portion control rather than calories.

Steamed not streamed!!

And just wait for the weight loss. I found it could go 1 pound, nothing, four pounds, nothing, and yet still somehow be steady.

overestimating calories burned during exercise

Yes. I wouldn't see exercise as a reason to eat more other than perhaps an oatcake that I'd be eating anyway.

It's important to eat good foods not diet foods as hopefully this is your new lifestyle. No one wants to have muller lights forever.

Are you honestly hand on heart weighing, measuring and counting every single crumb that passes your lips?

I've been there OP. Kidding myself that I was sticking to various diets and I just couldn't lose weight. Did a VLCD and the weight came off just fine. It also opened my eyes to how much food I was eating that I thought I needed.

And weigh once every three weeks or month. It might take three of those intervals to see a difference.

Thanks all I will keep going! It’s just demotivating, definitely counting everything as I don’t cook from scratch so no need to weigh etc.

Yesterday as an example was

B: breakfast bar
L: soup
D: chicken with veg
S: fruit and packet of snack a jacks. I don’t cook from scratch (when on a diet) as I find it hard to keep track that way so everything I eat is prepared and I’m just cooking it or heating it. That’s a typical day but of course it varies day to day

Salmon is easy to cook from scratch (or weigh smoked) and there are vegetables (not root) that you can cook in large quantities with no cost. Anything you buy will have hidden sugars. Substitute oatcakes for snack a jacks as they have nutritional value.

Soup can have many hidden calories. You'd be better with a small amount of chicken breast (easily weighed) and a green salad.

@Goooglebox

If you switch to salmon with broccoli, kale, tomatoes, carrots (all streamed) instead of cooking chicken you should see a difference.

Don't have any diet bars or drinks. Water to drink (not excessive amounts as your stomach needs to shrink), a satsuma every two hours and oat biscuits spaced out when you need to have some energy (before you get really hungry) - sparingly. Portion control rather than calories.

Chicken is hardly the enemy, here.

@Goooglebox

Salmon is easy to cook from scratch (or weigh smoked) and there are vegetables (not root) that you can cook in large quantities with no cost. Anything you buy will have hidden sugars. Substitute oatcakes for snack a jacks as they have nutritional value.

Soup can have many hidden calories. You'd be better with a small amount of chicken breast (easily weighed) and a green salad.

Nonsense again with the soup. I presume that op read the packet, if it's not home made.

And a minute ago, chicken was fattening.

You need to cook or at least make food from scratch. This is a change you NEED to make. Breakfast bar and soup and rice cakes will be unfulfilling and processed.

Ideally we should all avoid anything that comes in a packet with a brand name on it. Easier said than done of course.

B: boiled eggs, or pure Greek yogurt with berries (takes one minute or you can batch boil eggs for the week).

L: anything you make yourself. A salad with a tin of tuna? Or batch cook your own soup

D: chicken and veg sounds good.

If you're eating fulfilling meals you won't need snacks.

Nothing wrong with chicken or salmon but if you can afford free range and organic chicken get that and wild salmon. Farmed fish is fed stuff that we ultimately digest that isn't great for us.

Comes down to money really and I do eat cheaper fish often as better stuff not available and it's convenient ( tuna etc)

But you need to cook/make stuff!

I do cook just not when I’m on a diet as I can’t easily weigh everything and don’t usually have time to cook in the mornings, I eat something I can grab and eat on the way out. I don’t have time to cook anything in the morning. Soup wasn’t cooked by me it was from Tesco’s and calories are on the pack.

2PickAChew

I should have been more clear. Not that I used the word fattening at all. Roasting chicken is unlikely to be as effective as salmon as an evening meal. For lunch, she needs energy and staying away from processed foods is important. So a small amount of chicken there will be helpful, unprocessed and easy to weigh. It will keep her going (with oats for a later snack) better than processed, bought soup and snack a jacks. Nothing the packet says will change that. She will have a far more nutritionally rich diet which will help her feel well.

I'm very, very good at this but but have made all the mistakes in the past. Roast chicken is certainly not the enemy but there are better "friends" if weight loss is the goal. I am simply sharing what has helped me go from ten to eight stone with relative ease and a net gain in nutrition.

Just to add it surely doesn’t matter what I’m eating whether it’s cooked from scratch or not as long as it’s within the limit? I’m not eating McDonald’s or chocolate etc

I'm sorry OP, preparing nutritious food is an essential part of healthy weight loss. Anything worth doing takes a time investment. You can batch cook at the weekends. Oats are really good for you and offer slow release energy as well as helping you feel satisfied. Just don't buy some sweetener/sugar filled pot !

It does matter. Apart from anything you're retraining your palette and what you're buying will contain artificially added ingredients to keep you coming back. It will not have the same amount of nutritional foods as if you'd prepared it yourself. This is a industry.

You must be miscounting calories. Two weeks on 1200 calories a day and you would lose weight when you have a few stones to lose

How much water are you drinking? With ready meals and supermarket soups your sodium levels will be really high meaning your body will hold on to water weight. Get drinking minimum 2lt a day. Watch the lbs fall off after drinking 2lt of water for 3 days, you'll be amazed.

Also try team RH on Facebook. For your weight you should not be on 1200 calories a day. It really isn't sustainable. Have a look at the videos on weight loss and calorie deficit.

Nothing worked for me when I hit a certain age, until I tried fasting twice a week. I've lost a lot of weight. It's 500 calories twice a week. Normal calories according to my fitness pal app,on the other days. It's great.

Out of interest next time OP, as well as counting calories on those packs, have another count running for sugar...

Breakfast bar: 9g
Tin of tomato soup: 19g
Snack a jacks: ?? Depends if they're flavoured
Fruit (apple): 10g

Without any for the snack a jacks that's nearly 40g of sugar which is 10 teaspoons of sugar.

And, based on your empirical evidence (ie what is actually happening to you right now) I'd say it's a clear example that it's NOT as simple as calories in vs calories out hence your post - so yes the type of calories does matter.

I'd also recommend reading Why We Eat Too Much.

Losing a stone in 2 weeks is what happens before your body changes it's hormone levels in response to threatened starvation.

Concentration camp / famine victims is what happens after months or years of sustained deprivation when the body can't compensate any more.

The plateau of very low calorie diets is what happens in the middle and is what's happening to you now.