800 calorie diet
 

To my frustration several authors now are pushing an 800 calorie diet under intermittent fasting. Dr. Michael Mosley is pushing a plan where you eat that for a while (8 weeks) and then go back to 5:2. Because he is a doctor apparently no one is seriously questioning it. He says it is the "sweet spot" for the best results. This reminds me that I have always found 800 calories for me to be sort of the key to weight loss. 1000 calories I lost weight - but it is difficult. 1200 per day I do not lose weight.


The interesting thing is that I lose the weight I should at 800 calories per day. So for instance if my TDEE is 1700 and I eat 800 calories per day I will lose about 2 lbs per week. But if I eat 1000 calories per day and my TDEE is 1700 I lose about 1 lb per week and typically I may have to eat 800 a few days during that week to see results. If I eat 1200 cals, I do not see results even though I "should".


Is it possible that some people have a body that has some sort of a prerequisite calorie amount that you must be at before it will let go?


For instance at one point I was on a VLCD and I probably at 800 calories per day. In that time I lost 2-3 calories per week. Every single day I would see some downward movement on the scale. It was like magic for the first 13 weeks. The problem was that I mistakenly never took a break and my metabolism ended up suppressing.


Has anyone else noticed this for themselves?

For years we were told never to go below 1200 calories per day or our bodies would go into starvation mode and our metabolism would slow. Now I am reading that a very low calorie diet is promoting longevity and preventing many age related illnesses. But it is being recommended with intermittent fasting where you eat the calories in 1-2 meals in a 6-8 hour eating window with a 16-18 hour overnight fast. Many are doing longer fasts. With calories that low you must be sure your diet is high in nutrition. I try to do 16/8 but struggle.

16/8 doesn't work for me unless I reduce calories to the 800 calorie threshold. So this intermittent fasting thing seems (for me) to be baloney. If you have to cut calories it is just a diet. I read someplace that nutrition isn't necessary either because the #1 thing you need nutrients for is digestion. If you are reducing that... you need less nutrients.

I am also stopping 800 calories after 2 weeks. The goal is both to keep my TDEE high and replenish any nutrition I haven't gotten. I still feel your body will go into starvation mode at 800 cals but I also feel like you can stop that by not straight dieting for weeks on end.

But again, I find it strange that it is like my body has a valve and at 800 calories per day the valve is wide open. But at 1000 calories a day the valve is kind of 1/2 way open and at 1200 cals per day it is closed tight.

I guess the point I was making is that it is very hard to get proper nutrition eating only 800 calories a day. This is why you have to be sure it's 800 nutritious calories. Vitamins, minerals, etc. Yes, you can lose weight on 800 calories of junk food, which I used to do by the way, but your body needs these nutrients. You might lose weight and not notice that your body is missing out, but over time, the proof will be there. A short term 800 calories of junk is probably not harmful and you will lose weight. But, when you do 16/8, using 800 calories during the 8, it is more beneficial than spreading the 800 out over the whole day. The 16 hours of fasting makes very beneficial changes to your body beyond weight loss.

So one week at 800 calories and I am down 2 lbs. I literally thought my scale was broken because it hasn't moved in months. Some of the loss is water but that means I burned off about 5300 cals this week... (assuming some loss is water) meaning that I probably burn about 700 cals off per day. Meaning my TDEE is about 1700 per day.

I will do one more full week of eating like this... and stop and eat about 1700 calories for a week and then get back on.

When I started eating MORE...(more calories and more nutrient dense foods like fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds) I started losing more weight and feeling better and better. I used to try to eat little and thought that would help but it did more damage than good.

i lost all my weight on around 800 calories per day - i started 2 years ago and it took about 6 months and i kept to it consistently throughout that time. I was pretty strict - heaps of different veggies/salad and as much protein as i could get for the calorie limit - hardly any carbs/sauces/sweet etc (apart from oats and fruit for brekkie), and i wasn't hungry, and i lost weight consistently. But i'm shortish, and i had a wonky knee so i didn't do any exercise. On the other hand i'm pretty sure my nutrition was better than the majority of people!
(it's easy to criticise someone who's eating 800 calories a day and then think someone else who's eating 1500 calories a day is doing it right - even though 700 of those calories are non-nutritious!)

After the 6 months i'd got to my target weight (beyond it actually) and my knee was better and i joined the gym and started going there every day and also eating quite a lot more, but i was still able to maintain the weight, so i don't think my metabolism slowed down at all throughout the whole thing.
I dare say that taller-more-active people wouldn't do as well on 800 though? Consistency is the key i think - no point restricting yourself to 800cal if you can't reach your targets that way - you might as well make life as easy and consistent as possible and go with something you can maintain.

I’m actually taller and very active, but am currently doing well on less than 800 cal/day. I do cardio/weights at the gym 5x/wk and am nursing a toddler. It took me a year to lose 12 lbs after giving birth, and now it’s taken me 12 days to lose the next 12 lbs. Granted, a portion of that is most definitely water weight, and my metabolic rate has been amped up for the past 3 days due to running a high fever (our whole family got the flu). I do not intend to maintain such a calorie deficit for long. I just needed something to get the weight loss going again (1000 cal/day did NOTHING for me), and this really seems to have helped.

I have been dieting almost constantly since I was 13 years old. I'm now 52. Ive been every size from size 4 to 14. (Size 4 was as a teenager, size 6-14 in adulthood.) I'm 5'4" tall. 1200 calories a day only maintains my weight. The only times in my whole adult life that I reached my goal weight (120 lbs, size 8), was when I ate about 800 calories a day. Once at age 21 (with no exercise other than normal daily life), and once at age 39 (with several hours of exercise each day). It took many months of eating 800 calories a day to lose about 20lbs at age 39. I gained weight at puberty, each pregnancy, and perimenopause, so always related to changing hormones. I don't know why I can't lose weight at higher calorie intakes, but I've always been this way.

It doesn't make sense... I'm sure there'll be a rebound effect if you go on that kind of diet