Quote:
Originally Posted by sacha
The point of starting at 2000, when you are more overweight, is so that you can drop your calories further as you progress and then plateau.
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The "starvation mode" theory (that your body will plateau more easily at a lower calorie level) is still somewhat controversial. Whether it happens, and who it happens to is subject to some debate.
I think a better reason for starting as high as you are able to - is that change is hard and extreme change is extremely hard. The lower your starting calorie level, the hungrier you will be. The hungrier you are, the more tempted you will be to go off the diet.
[QUOTE=sacha;3449956]It takes a lot more than 2000 to maintain a body that is 200+lbs, so you should be able to drop at that level. [/QUOTE
Maybe so, maybe not. There's more variability in metabolism than is assumed. On high-carb eating, my weight loss can stall for weeks at 1800 to 2200 calories - at my size this should be theoretically impossible. How is my body able to maintain 310 pounds on even 2200 calories?
My activity level is low, because of pain and mobility issues (I'm on disability). When I'm eating poorly (in any of several ways - too few calories, too many carbohydrates...), I have more symptom flares, and become even less active. That no doubt is part of it.
But even so, it doesn't make sense. There've been times in my life when I lost weight at a decent clip on 3000 calories, because I was burning that and more. Until my 40's, I ate a lot of food, and I knew it. I was active and burned alot, but there was no way I could burn as many as I was eating. 7,000 calorie days weren't unusual.
Currently, to maintain my weight, I'm eating a calorie level that in my 20's resulted in weekly weight loss of 5 lbs or more. I did and still occasionally have doctors and others tell me that I could lose quite a lot of weight on 2500 calories or more. When I was younger, this was true, but it's not any more.
There really is no reliable way to guess your current metabolism. You need to experiment to find your appropriate level. But you can't tell anything from one week or even three weeks. It drives me nuts to hear people talk about "plateau's" that are less than a week long. Or conclude they're in "starvation mode" after less than a month of dieting. Or concluding that because they increased their calories for the last three days to a week and they lost more weight than usual, this "proves" they were in starvation mode.
Weight loss just doesn't work like that. You can't draw any conclusions based on less than a month of consistent behavior. Women's monthly hormone cycles can affect weight loss and water retention. Exercise also affects weight loss and it can take more than a few days or even a few weeks for real patterns to emerge. The weight of the food itself and the pace at which it travels through your digestive tract can also play a role.
A person could conclude that eating a lot of vegetables made them gain weight (when the truth is they just haven't pooped them out yet - sorry to be so blunt).
Ideally, everyone would start knowing how many calories they usually eat - then it's just a matter of cutting that by 500 calories a day in order to lose 1 lb per week.
But most of us don't know how many calories we were eating - and then there are surprise effects when some of us discover that we can lose more weight on a higher calorie level (for a variety of reasons). This is sometimes labeled "starvation mode," when that's not exactly what may be going on. It may be as simple as eating more calories, gives you more calories to exercise.
I don't know why I can lose a lot more weight on 2000 calories of low-carb than I can on 2000 calories of high-carb. I do like eating, so I don't need to understand it to see that the low-carb eating has the clear advantage. That I am less hungry on 2000 calories of low-carb than I am on 3000 calories of high-carb, also points me in an obvious direction.
The only way to find out what your body does, is to test it. Use a food journal, and write everything down. What you eat, how much, and how you feel before and after you eat. Describe your hunger, describe your emotions, and your physical symptoms. Describe your activity for the day. Have a lot of energy? Write that down. Feel exhausted? Write that down too. Have a headache or muscle cramps? Write it.
You can learn a lot more from your own body than from someone else's. You may be able to lose on 2000 calories. You may not. Only one way to find out. Start with 2000 calories and keep that journal.
If you lose great, but you feel half-starved all of the time, consider changing your calorie level or changing the types of food you're eating.
All any of us has, when it comes right down to it, is experimentation, and we have to be both scientist and lab rat.
Anyone here on 2000 calories a day and lose weight?
