I’m trying to lose weight and was told that hwo I eat about 800-1000 calories a day is too low and lowers my metobolism which will prevent weight loss. I’ve looked up some meal plans and can’t really afford stuff like chicken breast, steak, or salmon every week. So that is why I’m wondering how I can eat 1500 calories a day. Are there some alternatives that I can do?
Also I’d like to ask, say I exercise and burn say 500 calories would I have to eat those calories back or no? I ask cuz I’ve been told yes and told no.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17469900/ just read the abstract if nothing else.
Whelp that’s not helpful on its own though to be honest. “long term lifestyle change” is the key word I am aware which is… Well at least I didn’t manage it so far. “just do X” is like telling an alcoholic to “just stop drinking, oh but you need a sip every other hour”.
Did you not read the abstract?
Have you not read either the abstract (“calorie deficit not helping”) or my comment? (“input on the inefficiency of diets is useless to OP without any impulse on what to do instead”)?
I don’t understand of what you’re aiming for with your oneliners.
Your previous comment didn’t make sense in relation to the abstract (like nothing about long term change was in it). This one is more understandable. I don’t think replacement advice is needed. Don’t diet is pretty clear. If you couldn’t grasp that from the info, I don’t know what to tell you and you’re not really pleasant to engage with, so I’ll be blocking you.
See if you can track down Weight Watchers stuff. The plan itself is expensive, but the basic approach is to simplify doing exactly what you describe. They formalize food categories, portion size, and simplified tracking. Alternatively, they have recipes meeting specific calorie goal, while also having good nutrient value
I second this, and they have a digital only plan that is just $10/month. You can use their app, which is actually very good, to track your food. They use a point system to simplify the process.
This helped me: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/what-should-you-eat/
Nice resource. I get good exercise and eat a lot of raw or unprocessed foods, but my portions are whack and there’s not a lot of consistency day to day. I’ve been wanting to clean up my diet for a while and I’m gonna add this to my planning document.
My go-tos are legumes: cheap, easy to cook, go well with a lot of stuff, filling and full of fibre. If I feel snackish I go for a can of peas, f.i…
Pair them with rice, more veggies and lean meat, when you can score a good deal.
I’ve read through your comments, and highly suggest a good diary for at least a couple weeks ago you really understand the calories in things you are eating.
Yes, your body does modulate its resting metabolic rate over the long term based on things like average daily exertion, food, etc, but that is largely inconsequential to weight loss.
As a rough guideline, you want about 50% of your calories to be carbs, preferably the fiber or complex variety, 30-35% protein, and the rest fat. If you run a lot, then a few more carbs. If you lift weights a lot, then a little more protein.
Protein will help you feel fuller, longer, so I like to go my ratio of protein a bit.
Meals that I enjoy: steal cut oats and peanut butter, pan seared tofu with salad and a light dressing, bean chilli, tacos or tostados using those low carb tortillas, bowl of rice, refried beans, salsa, and guac, etc
But you really, really need to have a good understanding of portions and actual calories. Most people are way off.
For protein would protein powder be a good option? And I’ll try a diary too see if that helps
Also I usually try not to eat them all back I’ll sometimes eat like 100-150 back but trying to stop
Like the other person said, getting the ratio and amount is more important than the source. But you should ask yourself why you are taking the supplement? Are you sure you’re not getting enough from your food? Your body can really only prices 20-40 grams of protein at once, so if you are loading up more than that at a time, you are just piking on calories.
Personally, depending on your current weight, you might think about focusing more on weight loss than bulking muscle mass. Absolutely work out of it is helpful, but don’t worry about mass gains while trying to lose fat. You will develop muscles regardless of whether you micromanage your protein intake or not, and you can optimize better after losing some fat.
But again, you need to check, with, and measure the calories in every portion of food until you develop an accurate read on the calories in things. Like peanut butter having about 100 calories per tablespoon (half ounce).
I don’t care for protein powder, I’d rather eat actual protein but just curious if it could work lol but what you say about the protein makes sense.
And I’m currently 240 lbs I’m lifting weights because I want to get muscle, help improve my health, and from waht I know muscle can help you lose fat (unless I’m misunderstanding).
Whole food is generally preferable, but protein powder is absolutely fine if that’s the best you can do. Just take the route that’s easiest to adhere to. You’ll get much bigger benefits from simply hitting your macros than optimising their source and micronutrients and all that other jazz.
Look up the YouTube series on that very topic from Renaissance Periodization. It helped me loss 30 pounds and keep them off for more than 6 months now.
Extreme low calorie diet are not sustainable for long, especially if you are starting out.
First thing first, count your calories for a week or two to get the baseline calorie consumption for your current weight. Try to not change your normal food consumption while taking your first baseline calories because it will make the first weight loss cycle more difficult than it needs to be.
Then, start by removing 250 calories from your diet and burn 250 calories every day for 6 to 9 weeks.
Then, go into maintenance where you slowly add a bit more food and stabilize your weight. If you see that you are gaining weight during the maintenance, just cut back a little bit and keep that calorie intake as your maintenance intake. That will become your calorie baseline for the next cycle.
Repeat until your goals are met. Don’t hesitate to take a longer maintenance break if you feel like it.
That will give you a sustainable way to lose weight and you will also learn to count calories without weighing everything you eat.
If you can easily cut 250 calories without any problem, try to cut more calories the next cycle, and see how it goes. If it’s too hard, then go back to 250/250 calories cut.
As for the food, I don’t know where you live, but nutritional yeast is a cheap way to add protein to any meals and add a cheesy flavor to the meal.
As for fat, cheap nuts or neutral oil can help meet your needs.
And for carbs, seasonal fruits and vegetables are usually cheaper, so go with that.
The only thing you should take from this post is that slow and steady is the name of the game. You are fighting millions of years of evolution, so it won’t be easy.
TLDR: slow and steady. Cut 250 cal from your diet and burn 250 calories from activity for 6-9 weeks. Maintain for the same amount of time. Repeat.
Is this a European joke I’m too Free to understand?
800-1000 calories a day is not “slowing your metabolism”
I’m confused too. OP is trying to lose weight by eating more calories? I feel like I’m missing something.
There is a ton of bullshit out there from the HAAS groups, that say “your body will go into survival mode if you eat a calorie deficit and will make you gain weight”. It’s just bullshit pettled by people who don’t want to get healthy.
OPs relationship with food is clearly problematic and they’re not actually cognizant of the food and calories going into their body.
I bet soda is a culprit here
The talk around weight loss is kinda crazy and a lot of it is dominated by pseudoscience.
However, we are pretty much positive that eating at a calorie deficit will result in weight loss in 99.9% of cases and you aren’t going to be the 0.1%. There’s a lot of anecdotal data about how eating too little will make you stop losing weight or even gain more weight because of your ‘metabolism’, but no controlled studies that show that to be a significant contributor without other causes. It’s not some magical metabolism trick, you’re just cheating on your metrics and doing less because you’re tired and cranky and have no energy because you aren’t eating right.
Saying that, eating at a massive deficit can definitely make you feel like shit and will make it hard to exercise, do not recommend. You will also likely have a part of your brain dedicated to fantasizing about food 24/7 and your libido will likely be in the trash if that matters to you. This will be very hard to maintain, and you have to remember that there’s never going to be a day where you can go back to eating like ‘normal’. Your current normal is why you need to lose weight and your goal is to eventually establish a new baseline.
Lastly, highly recommend against adding calories back due to exercise. We don’t have a lot of good data about these being reliable indicators of actual calories burned and you’ll find a tremendous amount of super variable answers when you find instances where people tried to actually test these estimates. The time you put into exercise isn’t about weight loss, it will help, but it’s a bonus just for you because you deserve to have the body that you want.
There’s no way you need to somehow eat more to lose weight. Are you sure you’re counting your calories correctly? Using an app? Tracking everything, especially drinks like sodas and alcohol?
So basically from what I was told, since I’m 240 lbs and 6 foot I should be eating 2000-2500 calories but if I put myself on a calorie deficit 1500 would be where to go
Yeah that sounds about right.
You’ll get a lot of contradictory answers with this question because of two major issues.
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There is more than one way to make your scale number go down.
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Your scale number going down can be for multiple reasons.
For example, dropping a bunch of body fat is a way of posing weight, but it does not look any different on the scale than losing muscle mass or losing a leg. You can have more healthy recomposition where you drop a bunch of fat slowly over time and gain some muscle but overall lose absolutely no weight on the scale, and you can also gain weight without changing fat but be in a better position.
So what would you aim for? It depends on your goals. Do you want to be jacked? Maybe you have early signs of type 2 diabetes and want to stop it there. Or maybe you just really want to get rid of your skin issues like acne and dermititis.
Nobody benefits from being insulin resistant. That is the state that pushes you towards weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, and many other issues including dementia. Fixing that is a central goal for a lot of people and it actually helps with most other health related goals. If I were starting somewhere that is where I would probably try to start.
That said, if you have very little muscle that may be better to work on.
Can you give more detail about your goals?
Basically I have a gut which I want to get rid of (Ik you can’t spot reduce sadly). I don’t want to get super jacked I just want to lose this guy and get muscle. And avoid diabetes since it runs in my family.
I’ve currently been working on muscle more since my job thankfully has a gym I do strength there two days a week and walk/run 3
OK, so good, a clear starting point.
First, adding muscle is a fantastic way to go. Muscle burns energy and new muscle is not insulin resistant, so it lowers your overall insulin resistance. This is key to liberating fat and burning it for energy.
The other big key is diet. Your current diet is overwhelming your body’s ability to burn without storing as fat. This means you are gaining body fat and this will get worse over time. Gaining muscle can help a fair bit but your existing muscle tissue along with other things like fat cells and other organs are all at the point of damage from high sugar levels in your diet. The fact that you can make yourself go to the gym is great, it means you have caught this before it has gotten too bad.
So to make progress on your diet you probably need to do a couple of things. First is check for other symptoms like swelling around the jawline, fat build up over the spine between your shoulders, rash and skin discolouration, pale gums and lips, and any sort of weakness in nails and hair. These are all potential indicators of an acute deficiency and may need medical support. That said, all of these are generally helped by dietary work, so if nothing massive is presenting like a goiter or anaemic gums you should probably just move forward with diet and reevaluate later.
So what to eat. The biggest problem seems to be sugar, followed by the sugar/fat/salt hyper palatable mix, then hyper processed, and lastly problematic plants. If you eat meat, which I would strongly recommend, then paring everything down to very simple meals is the best option. A kilogram of meat per day is a reasonable base for basically everyone. If you start there and can make it a week without anything else you will have a good starting point for completing an exclusion diet. If you can’t jump directly to that then dropping out the worst items is a good step.
Dropping the worst means getting rid of the most packaged and insane foods, like cakes that last 6 months on the shelf or items with ingredients lists longer than The Art of War. If you keep eating sugars but they are in simple forms, for example honey or while fruit, you will avoid most of the worst stuff. It would also be good to learn more about cooking meat properly, so learn how to fry steak, cook chicken wings, and maybe roast a leg of pork. Learn to make basic stuff that tastes good and you will find reducing other crap easier.
Ultimately trying to hit numbers of grams of fat, protein, and carbs is a losing game. You don’t know all the internal systems you have and how they allocate energy, but you do have a handy system they operate with, hunger. We should fix your hunger to make it work properly and that is what the above is for. You have simple foods, your body learns what they provide, your hunger becomes more accurate for what you need.
Once your hunger works properly you will do something like work out and you will feel more hungry in the day or two following it. Then chasing numbers won’t be needed at all and you can relax.
Suggesting to eat a kilogram of meat every day when they say they can’t afford chicken breast is probably the worst advice you can give.
Eating plant based would help much more since it’s much cheaper.
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It’s hard for most people to eat and drink under 1500 calories a day. Are you saying you’re having issues getting up to 1500 calories a day?
Eggs are the cheapest and most perfect protein you can get. Just eat loads of those (around 80 calories an egg) and do some spinach or kale and bell peppers as well. That will cover your veggies and your protein. Then you can fill the rest out with a bit of rice or oatmeal. All of that listed is pretty super cheap.
To your other quaestion- no, you do not need to eat an extra 500 calories if you burn an extra 500 if weight loss is your goal. Eating too little calories (like less than 1200, depending on sex and height) makes your body try to keep your fat and will start removing your muscle in order to make your body have less upkeep. That’s really bad. However, if your body knows it’s getting more calories than that, and that your having to use a lot of your muscles (burning 500 extra calories per day) it will burn off the fat reserves and try to maintain the muscle you keep using.
Yep. Because it doesn’t seem plausible for me to get to that which is why I eat under.
That’s a good point for the eggs which I’ll eat more of.
Hey my guy, if you just need to increase your calorie count just add healthy fats to your diet. Fat is incredibly calorie dense so a little goes a long way.
Nuts are a good way to add calories to your day.
Can i ask you to describe a couple of typical meals you would make for yourself?
Ill tell you how i would modify it with what i have in my cupboards
Are you overweight? Really, it’s very easy to get to 1500 calories in a day if you throw in some carbs and some calorie dense foods. Heck, right now mcdonalds is selling a $5 meal deal that’s 1200 calories. Eat that and 4 eggs for breakfast and you’re already at your calories for the day. A few slices of pizza can be 1000 calories. Just one small breakfast sausage patty is 150 calories. A big bowl of cereal with milk can be 500 calories.
None of that is really a healthy way to go, but all I’m saying that is people who need to lose weight usually have issues getting down to 1500 calories. Someone overweight but having a hard time getting up to 1500 in a day is pretty strange.
Regardless, if you just aren’t that hungry and need some healthy foods with a lot of calories, pecans and macadamia nuts are 200 calories an ounce. Full fat Greek yogurt is really calorie dense. So are things like peanut butter. Trail mix is also a great and really high calorie snack. Also, avocado. Really, there’s a lot of foods that are super calorie dense if you look for them. These are just some of the high calorie healthier ones.
Beans are another good, cheap food.
Careful with the spinach though. Regular lettuce is safer.
Regular lettuce doesnt belong in eggs.
I loose weight by eating 2 big meals a day. My go too seems to be frozen pizza (1000 cal each) and and curries (500-600 for curry, another 200 for my naan in butter). I eat 1600-1800 calories a day and feel like a glutton while my scale keeps going in the right direction. 50lbs down so far.
Don’t lose weight to get healthy. Get healthy to lose weight.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto
The calorie model of eating isn’t super helpful.
The hormonal model is more effective. Keep your hormones balanced (no sugar, no carbs, no alcohol), let your body do its own self regulation of intake and hunger, and see the direct benefits.
When you eat sugar your blood sugar increases, which your body immediately tries to regulate by producing insulin, insulin is a super hormone that impacts many systems in the body, not just blood sugar. If you keep your insulin levels low the body will function more normally, including much better control of hunger.
There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread, one thing to note is that too much change too fast is a recipe for failure. Whatever you do, make sure it’s manageable. For each change, ask yourself whether it can become a permanent habit for you. This is the only way to sustain it enough to achieve your goals. It could help to write down good ideas, and try them one week or month at a time.
What do you mean by that?
Rapid habit/ lifestyle changes aren’t sustainable. You don’t have the discipline to maintain them. (That’s not a dig at you, it’s just literally counter to human nature.) Better to gradually build habits that you can actually keep
Ok so I like analogies which make me understand lol so is this like having to teach yourself to wake up early to go to work, or to train for a sport?
