2000 calories/day seems like a lot

[alsace]

First, a little background:

I'm a 6'0 male with an average build in my late 20s. Two years ago I started a diet and went from 290 pounds down to 180 in about 8 months. Having a science-oriented mind, the "burn more calories than you eat" mantra struck a chord, so I worked my way down to <1000 calories per day, plus 5+ days per week of vigorous cardio and 2 days per week lifting weights. I was eating healthy foods, not empty calories. Once every 2-3 weeks I'd go off the diet for a day (not sure how many calories, maybe 2500) to keep my metabolism from going into starvation mode and grinding to a halt.

In the 1.5 years since then, I've largely maintained my weight, as well as my healthy food and exercise habits. A combination of holidays and vacation did see me slip 15 pounds up the scale recently, but my old diet got me back down to 180 as I would expect. (The point here is that my diet still seems to work, it wasn't a one-time thing.)

And now my question:

Through experience I've found that if I eat more than 1500-1600 calories/day, I'll gain weight. This flies in the face of both the "2,000 calories/day" rule of thumb and my calculated needs (~2200 I think). It also does not align with the standard recommendation of consuming ~1800 calories a day to lose weight.

I know "everyone's body is different", but this is quite a disparity -- I feel that I must be missing something. I don't want to maintain a 1500 calorie diet only to find out later that I've caused long-term damage.

1. If I do switch to a 2000-2200 calorie diet (of healthy foods, with my exercise regimen intact, of course), will I gain weight for a short while, only to eventually plateau and find equilibrium? If so, how long will that take?

2. What are the bad effects of eating so few calories over a long period (years)?

 

[GuiltyGear44]

Have you been rigid in your calorie calculations? How much do you think you were eating on the holidays to gain the 15 pounds you mentioned?

You may just have to increase your calorie intake and see what happens. Try 1800 for awhile, see what happens. Then go up some more if you can.

I am 22, 6'1 1/2 and find my recomended intake to lose weight slowly and heathier of 2300 a bit too much. But I would like to get there, I have to cram some food in there before bed.

 

[alsace]

I was rigid during the dieting periods. Right after the diets, I was still rigid, but stopped after a couple weeks when I found that I was arriving at my daily goal automatically (i.e., I'd eat what felt right all day, then tally it up at night, and it would come out very close to, say, 1500, which I was shooting for).

I guess I will try and slowly increase, probably 1600/day for a week or so, then 1700/day, etc. Hope it works. I envy those of you who have to try hard just to get enough calories for the day

 

[KaraCooks]

"Seems like a lot" compared to what?

So let's see - you spent 8 months consuming a dangerously low level of calories PLUS working out - to the point that you've probably shocked your metabolism into a massive "starvation" adaptation.

Yeah, no wonder you put on weight at 1600 calories.

The negative effects of doing so for the long term is exactly what you're experiencing - an inability to lose weight and sometimes to maintain a healthy weight because you're screwing with your adaptation mechanism. When you drop your nutrient levels, you're not only losing fat, you're losing lean muscle mass. AS you lose lean muscle mass, your metabolism slows more. So you eat less so you lose more lean muscle. So your metabolism slows more. And on and on and on ... vicious cycle.

Eating 1 or two days at maintenance doesn't really help with the "grinding to a halt" thing - as you have found out - because over the long term, your average calories are so very low that the average is still too low for your metabolism to maintain a higher burn.

The only way to break the cycle is to start eating a reasonable amount of food and let your metabolism come back to normal. The "adaptation" process works forward as well as back - so yes, you may gain some weight back, but eventually your metabolism will adapt to the greater level of calories and you'll stabilize.

 

[alsace]

Thanks, Kara, that makes a lot of sense. I'll try and slowly increase my way back up to the recommended level.

 

[BigFatLoser]

You want to eat a pretty good load of carbs at least one day a week. Every 2 or 3 just isn't enough. I like Sundays, but any day works well. You can load up on simple sugars that day. It will do three things; keep your metabolic fires stoked, appease the junk food gods, and turn back a hormone called leptin that can wreak havoc with your metabolism and your appetite stimulation mechanism.

Something else that has been scientifically proven to help stimulate your metabolic rate is lifting more weights vs. cardio. Cut back on your cardio to 3 days a week and add a day of lifting. Do sets of 6 - 8 reps with heavy weight. Make sure you warm up with lighter weight first to avoid injury. I can dig up the exact study, but one study demonstrated that sets of 6 - 8 reps with heavy weight elevated metabolic rates the highest, and as an added bonus, it kept the elevated for almost a day post exercise. That's why resistance training is so powerful for fat loss.

 

[alsace]

You want to eat a pretty good load of carbs at least one day a week. Every 2 or 3 just isn't enough. I like Sundays, but any day works well. You can load up on simple sugars that day. It will do three things; keep your metabolic fires stoked, appease the junk food gods, and turn back a hormone called leptin that can wreak havoc with your metabolism and your appetite stimulation mechanism.

I've read that, too, but I found that once per week was too much when trying to lose weight, i.e. I'd gain back the weight that I had lost that week, so overall I would not be losing weight. I'll give it another shot now that I'm trying to maintain while eating more calories.

Cut back on your cardio to 3 days a week and add a day of lifting.

I've upped my weight training to every other day, but I might as well keep doing cardio at the same rate as long as I have the energy, right?

 

[KaraCooks]

You want to eat a pretty good load of carbs at least one day a week. Every 2 or 3 just isn't enough. I like Sundays, but any day works well. You can load up on simple sugars that day. It will do three things; keep your metabolic fires stoked, appease the junk food gods, and turn back a hormone called leptin that can wreak havoc with your metabolism and your appetite stimulation mechanism.

I disagree with this advice. There is no need to carb load or binge on junk and simple sugar if you otherwise eat a balanced diet the rest of the the time. Your metabolism doesn't need to be "stoked" with junk food.

Something else that has been scientifically proven to help stimulate your metabolic rate is lifting more weights vs. cardio. Cut back on your cardio to 3 days a week and add a day of lifting. Do sets of 6 - 8 reps with heavy weight. Make sure you warm up with lighter weight first to avoid injury.

This I do agree with - not only because of the immediate metabolic effects, but because muscle is metabolically active. So building muscle means you're building a better calorie burning factory - so to speak.

 

[Jynus]

if you're not being active, then yes, that just might be a lot.

If you're lifting. and I mean _really_ lifting and not just doing bi curls and using weight machines and that BS, but doing real lifting where you're doing for example 5x5 freeweight squats with the weight higher than your body weight, then I can _assure_ you that your metabolism will shoot through the freaking roof.

Mine went from slightly gaining weight @ 2000 calories a day, to losing weight at 3000 calories a day when I started heavy lifting again earlier this year. I cannot stress just how much stress heavy lifting places on your body, stresses that require a huge caloric intake to rebuild and maintain.

In a nutshell, doing exercises that stresses your atp-cp and lactic acid systems require a HUGE caloric intake to maintain. (heavy weights, extrememly fast sprints, etc) The key however is that the extreme majority of people, even the extreme majority of people who lift weights, do NOT do exercises that tax these bodies energy systems. For example, using a weight machine, firing off 20 reps without pausing, is NOT taxing these energy systems. doing body weight squats, unless you're reallllly fat, is NOT taxing these energy systems. you get the drill. If you're planning on using resistance training to really up your calories burned, you NEED to do it at the intensity where you're literally completely physically unable to do a single more rep after at most 1min. preferably less than 30seconds. And I mean really physically unable to. Not just where it starts to burn. feeling the "burn" and your body completely physically giving out are 2 different things. So start light, but work your way up in a workout to your 5-8 rep absolute max on squats for example, toss that weight on your shoulders barbell style, go down ass to the ground, push yourself back up, till your a big exhausted, sweaty unable to stand afterwords mess. voila, you just discovered your target intensity. Then do it again the next day on another movement.

Now, as you can imagine, this is something that takes work. work that the vast majority of the population is unable or unwilling to do. If you're able to truely push yourself, congrats, you've just found the true secret to easy, fast and long lasting weight loss and body composition.