Is it a myth that you can eat too little?

[Hangoverstruggles]

I don't think I am eating too little.... but is there truth in the 'body goes into starvation mode' thing?

Im two weeks in of eating between 1000 - 1200 cals per day and lots 3.5lb first week but only 1pound this week. I'm a bit disappointed. Could I need to eat more? This doesn't makes sense to me but I have heard it said.

A typical day is banana at midday

Lunch is either Homemade veg soup and a couple of breadsticks, or salad with salmon or hard boiled eggs, or jacket potato & beans or sometimes just porridge (weighed out) aiming for around 300-400 cals

Dinner has been either salad, jacket potato or homemade veggie curry or chilli. I've been counting pretty accurately - measuring rice & pasta etc (usually around 400-500 cals)

Snacks of maybe an apple, handful of nuts if i can spare, satsumas or carrot sticks. Ive has a small amount of dark choc if I can spare in my calculations. I really do think I'm being accurate.

I eat between 12 - 8, going 16 hours with out food (but still have tea & coffee with semi skimmed in the mornings until midday)

I'm 5'8 and now 10st 11, hoping to get to 10st. I'm not into exercise but have been on a couple of runs and done some yoga and Joe wicks once!. Plus active with young children.

Am I just expecting too much?

Having been previously frustrated trying to lose weight I have to say My Fitness Pal & logging every calorie I consume has been life changing.

By 2 stone.

I will admit I’m a calorie bore BUT when I hear people relentlessly going on about how they can’t lose weight, whilst tucking in to a buffet without consideration to what calories they are eating, then telling me I’m ‘lucky’ i find it infuriating.

Work out your TDEE then reduce it by 20% in order to find how many calories you need to reduce to in order to lose weight. Logging everything in My Fitness Pal helps you keep track.
Tdee is the amount you burn by existing as you are, to reduce weight reduce your tdee calories by 20%

tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=imperial&g=male&age=35&lbs=140&in=68&act=1.2&f=

Banana 100-120 calories

200g jacket potato - is tiny But150 cals, a large jacket potato is easily 300-350 cals.
Half can baked beans 162 cals
312 cals for a tiny jacket potato with beans NO butter before you have a cup of tea. But 462 + if it’s bigger.

My low fat minced beef mix made with lentils, carrots & peppers added & before rice, for a small portion 288
Kidney beans 75 cals
50g rice 100 cals =463 with no extras

Small , as in can hold in a closed fist, Braeburn Apple 98 cals. If it’s bigger it will be more calories.

‘’Handful’ of nuts - the very small amount of nuts I weigh out are 75 calories, I could double or easily triple that amount if I were to have ‘a handful’ so without measuring a generous, because I’m hungry, handful could be 225 calories.

Are you logging the calories in your drinks with semi skimmed milk?
Log ever mouthful, that’s the only way to know.

I love Cartergood on instagram, he used to be a big guy, lost it will have pizza if he feels like it, explains well how consistency is key.

I can't remember what thread

oops sorry.
I can't remember what thread it was on, but someone recently explained that

argh phone madness.

sorry

explained that the plateauing when losing weight is because the body is storing water instead of fat in the fat storage cells on the assumption that food us just temporarily scarce and the cells will be needed again soon. stick to the healthy eating, don't change anything. eventually the body gives up on the idea that you will start eating more fat again, and will get rid of the unneeded fat cells and the stored water all at once and you get a sudden whoosh of further weight loss.

I don’t buy the starvation mode thing. Physics disagrees

I also use MFP - for example, your handful of nuts could easily be hundreds of calories unless you weigh them out. And for 100 calories, I’d rather have a two finger KitKat than some nuts. I’m getting plenty of nutrition from my main meals that snacks can be a bit more treaty.

No point measuring pasta if your child is actually hundreds of calories more.

You are doing really well with what you've already lost, keep going.

I've always heard the opposite, Yinu - the first week you loose a lot of water, the second week it's replaced as your body settles down. Fat is still lost in the second week but your overall weight might not change.

There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat so to lose 3.5lb of fat in a week you'd need a calorie deficit of 1750 per day - even on what you're eating that's a huge amount of exercise and not going to be physically possible. I'm

Sorry - random word at the end. Personally I'd weigh the nuts and stick with them, I can't stop at just one kit Kat.

This was the response every time someone gains weight at slimming world! Calories don't matter. If you gain weight it's because you're not eating enough. I stopped going. The leader was overweight, as was a lot of patrons after being there for years. Had no concept of exercise effecting calorie intake and promoted sugary carbs foods. I use my fitness pal and swear by it

As you drop your calories your body fights back and drops your metabolic rate. Think about how closely monitored systems in the body are things like blood pH, temperature, blood glucose, etc your body likes to keep things controlled through homeostasis. When you drop the energy coming in your body will compensate by dropping your metabolic rate. It's why weight loss is so difficult.

From a nutrients point of view definitely. Not so sure about metabolic rate etc.

There’s a minimum amount of protein you need to eat or you lose muscle mass ( which lowers the rate you burn calories).

You also need a certain amount of fat a day to get adequate amounts of fat soluble vitamins.

Its a myth. Energy cannot come from nowhere. Basic physics. A car doesn't start to use less petrol when it is running out.

Although people who produce a lot of methane in their intestines do extract a higher number of calories from food than people who don’t.

www.cedars-sinai.org/research/departments-institutes/diabetes-obesity/areas/methane-producing-obesity.html

This means that people who produce methane can plateau or even gain weight on an amount of calories that would cause weight loss in a non-methane producing person of similar height/composition/activity levels.

The amount of people who produce methane is estimated to be 30-50% of the population- levels vary with ethnicity as some groups are more likely to be methane producers than others.

The methane slows gut transit time. Level of methane production in an individual with that capacity is also dependent on other environmental factors- from previous incidences of food poisoning to type of foods in diet (high carb and high fat both bad, as is very high fibre).

So, yes, some people will plateau or gain weight at a calorie intake that would normally be expected to cause weight loss.

I have no helpful advice but I have to say I am gobsmacked at the poster who says a 200g jacket potato is "tiny". I usually use potatoes around 180g for our jacket meals (and yes, we have one each). None of us is on a reducing diet.

If you gain weight it's because you're not eating enough. I stopped going.

I don’t blame you. It amazes me how people can actually believe that - I suppose people who live in countries where there’s famine should simply eat less too to so they don’t starve it makes no sense at all. Let’s face it, its just a self deluded cop out excuse to give up the diet - ‘I better eat more otherwise I’ll never lose the weight’. Yeah right.

OP I know it sounds a bit silly but - I seem to have put on nearly a kilogram in the last three days. I’m also quite constipated I don’t think there’s a huge difference between losing 3 lbs or 1. Water retention and still having food digesting in your body can make a difference, and if you don’t have a regular exercise regime then that can make quite a difference too - did you run last week, but not this week? Also, the more weight you lose the less you will lose, if that makes sense - because the bigger you are the more calories you need.

I would do a ‘weigh in’ once a week, but weigh yourself just out of interest every day - you’ll be surprised at how much you can fluctuate even just from morning to evening.

@Stevienickssleeves do you think your body is comparable to a car? Everything in our bodies is regulated including metabolism. We know that can go up or down because there are plenty of metabolic disorders that demonstrate it can.

Thelisteners..do you think it's not? What is metabolism? How does it create energy from nowhere like magic?

If you can it too little and it prevents you from losing weight, why do people starve ?

*eat

Thanks for all the responses! I've gone on the TDEE calculator and worked out my maintenance calories are 1900 and I'm aiming to eat between 1000 - 1200 per day to lose the last 7lbs.

Really interesting about the counting, I've been under counting bananas and apples! But nuts I did weigh.

I've spent the evening adding some recipes to MFP and determined to track properly. I've eaten 1100 today including a cupcake 🙈 which took 350 of my allowance. Definitely worth it!

10 days until my birthday takeaway and determined to be saintly until then!

Thank you

Op, yes it’s a myth you can google the studies that were done.

Firstly they were done on people who were actually being starved, as in no food at all. After a number of days, the metabolisim did drop, however what did not change was the rate of weight loss, they kept loosing as expected.

So it is in no way comparable to someone who actually has food, and secondly it didn’t impact weight loss in any way.

@Stevienickssleeves your car has a fuel gauge you know exactly how much to put in. Bodies don't have anything like that. Cars have one source of fuel and the car responds to this fuel in exactly the same way. Our bodies are fed a combination of protein, fats and carbohydrates and the pathways through which these are processed by the body are different. Even in the same food group the pathway or rate of absorption is different depending on the food. Hence the glycemic index for carbohydrates. So you can't compare fuel in a car to food consumed by our bodies. Do you really think that a 1000 calorie day diet of KitKats would produce the same weight loss as 1000 calories of fresh fruit and vegetables?

Do you really think that a 1000 calorie day diet of KitKats would produce the same weight loss as 1000 calories of fresh fruit and vegetables?

@TheListeners Possibly? I would say most likely not - but I know for certain you wouldn’t gain weight. Also I think you’re taking Stevei’s car analogy a bit too literally. Obviously a body is more complex than a car, but it’s still a fair comparison - your car can’t run on nothing and your body can’t gain weight from nothing. Different foods may change the rate at which you lose weight - and you can buy more pricey fuel that your car supposedly can burn more efficiently... But if you like, a more accurate analogy would be you can’t manufacture a car with no materials - your body can’t manufacture extra fat reserves without eating an excess of calories ... doing either of those would be magic.

your car has a fuel gauge you know exactly how much to put in. Bodies don't have anything like that

To be fair, it does. It is called hunger and fullness. It tells you when you need to fill up and when to stop filling up.

Hi OP.
I think you should try leaving the milk out of your coffee. You seem to be doing 16:8 but without a true fast as the milk in your coffee will cause some insulin release meaning your body will switch off 'fat burning' as it is accessing energy from food.
If you could reduce your eating window it might also help.
I find it hard to get my head around the slowing metabolism thing. I recently read a book called Delay don't Deny. It mentions contestants on the biggest loser in the USA and how studies of them have shown that they have a hugely reduced calorific need compared to people who have lost weight slowly- so there is probably something in it.