My extremish diet log

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Hey, you have the power of the internet at your fingertips, finding this stuff out is not that hard. I did a ton of research when I decided to change my life - it was a huge undertaking and I wanted to make informed decisions.

Here are some sites (I searched +diet +metabolism):

highlights -

“Low calorie dieting slows your metabolism, making it progressively more difficult to lose weight and keep it off”

“Dieting fails due to a combination of hormonal changes, muscle loss, and flat out frustration. When faced with a shortage of calories, your body’s natural response is to conserve fat”

“If a dieter persists long enough with the self-imposed famine, the body begins to break down muscle tissue for fuel”

Highlight:

"Why does a very low calorie intake slow down weight loss?
Quite simply, your body goes into ‘starvation mode’. This mechanism, which is thought to have evolved as a defence against starvation, means the body becomes super efficient at making the most of the calories it does get from food and drink. The main way it does this is to protect its fat stores and instead use lean tissue or muscle to provide it with some of the calories it needs to keep functioning. "

http://www.womenshealth.org/a/dieting_metabolism.htm

Highlight:

“When a person suddenly stops taking in the amount of calories to which they are accustomed their body responds by slowing their metabolism. The body will act as if it is starving, which sometimes it is. It is for this reason that rapid weight loss programs don’t work in the long run. The body responds to the plunge in calorie intake by slowing the metabolism so that it can continue to operate on fewer calories. Repeated attempts at rapid weight loss can permanently slow a person’s metabolism, making weight loss harder with each diet. Generally, diet plans that are well balanced and do not fall below 1200 calories a day are manageable.”

http://www.fatfairygodmother.com/stop.htm

Highlight:

"Your body is capable of lowering its metabolism to equal even the smallest caloric intake. This mechanism cannot be defeated. The more times you restrict your calories, the more efficient your body becomes at lowering its metabolism. With each diet, you are teaching your body how to deal with famine. "

http://www.imakenews.com/weightlosscontrol/e_article000016129.cfm

Highlight:

“Whenever you cut back your caloric intake, your overall metabolic rate is also reduced to compensate. Your body is conditioned to treat any reduction in food intake as a possible starvation alert and it prepares itself for the impending famine by reducing energy expenditure. The more drastic your calorie cutting, the more your metabolic rate drops. Complete fasting or short-term starvation (“crash”) diets are the most potent shock to your body’s metabolic machinery. If such diets are continued for any prolonged period of time, the body has to find more and more places in which to conserve energy-so vital processes such as tissue synthesis and injury repair begin to suffer.”

And on and on and on.

I wanted long term success, so I planned long term. I wanted to be at my goal weight, without losing any muscle, with a healthy, hot metabolism.

Everyone WANTS a quick fix - but quick weight loss is rarely successful and it just makes a bad situation even worse.

22

I’m planning for the long term. I can test the effects of this method of eating in a few weeks, and if it doesn’t provide the results I expect, I can modify my plan.

It’s sort of insulting to say that I’m looking for a quick fix, in the same way someone trying nonsense diet pills is. I’m working my ass off, as I did before. Just because I’m doing it more intensely than a long term plan requires doesn’t mean I’m not putting in legitimate effort.

23

FYI

http://www.imakenews.com/weightlosscontrol/e_article000016129.cfm (bottom of page)

"Why doesn’t the body just start burning fat tissue to supply the needs of all the tissues? Good question. Fat provides 9 calories per gram-an energy density more than twice that of carbohydrates or proteins, which both have 4 calories per gram. You would think that we’d want to burn fat first, but we can’t. Humans lack the enzymes necessary to convert fatty acids into carbohydrates but carbohydrates are the only fuel that the brain can use (at least for the first few days of a diet). As a compromise, the liver can convert fatty acids into chemicals called ketones that can be used by the brain for energy.

The problem for the dieter, however, is that it takes several days for the body to increase its production of ketones to the point where you stop consuming your protein stores in the muscle. The most practical approach to dieting is to follow a diet that slightly reduces total caloric intake. A balanced reduction in fat intake, while still providing a sufficient intake of carbohydrates and protein will not only promote mobilization of fat stores, but will also provide carbohydrates for brain function and amino acids for maintenance of muscle tissue. It is important to remember that total caloric intake should be somewhat less than daily caloric requirements (but not dramatically so) to result in a sustained loss of body fat. "

This is the plan I followed. I used a calculator to determine that a person of my height/weight/gender/age/activity level needed about 2200 calories a day to maintain. Lowering my caloric intake to 1800 allows me to lose weight without entering starvation mode. I am still taking in less than I need to maintain but my body knows there is plenty of food coming in and it doesn’t need to conserve fat stores - it can release it.

24

So what exactly were the issues that led to you regaining all the weight?

My bf went through this exact same thing. Was really active and fit during highschool. Broke his foot and got really big. Got sick of being big, and put himself on a strict diet: 1 cup white rice and a can of tuna twice a day combined with heavy exercise and weight lifting. In about 6 months, got himself to 200 pounds and built 19 inch biceps and a 50 inch chest on his 6 foot frame. Met me. Stopped feeling so depressed about himself. Started having a reason to go out to eat or to the movies on a regular basis. Gained it back.

The system he had rested on his depression. As soon as he didn’t feel like an unlovable lump, he started letting himself enjoy life. It wasn’t a matter of willpower exactly. He had the willpower to do it in the first place. He had the wrong motivation for his willpower.

I think you are in the same position. You say that you want to do this just to prove that you can work towards a hard goal. What are you going to do once you get there? You need to build habits that are maintainable, that you can keep doing for reasons other than difficulty. Your goal needs to be longer term.

The bf and I are on a better diet plan now. Less eating out, more exercise together, smaller portion sizes, more veggies when possible. He’s lost 20 pounds and I’ve lost 10. Is it frustrating to have such slow progress? Sure. I’d love to be a size 9 tomorrow. But yo-yo dieting is more depressing than slow weight loss. And the changes we have made are maintainable in the long term.

25

Also, the reason I asked for links was that I thought there might be a medical term for “starvation hormones” that I could do more accurate searching with.

26

Most sites recommend 1-2 lbs a week for safe, maintainable weight loss. That’s about 8 lbs a month. You want to lose 40+ lbs in a month - yes, I think you are looking for a quick fix.

Not eating for a pre-determined length of time is not that hard. One summer in college, I went 6 weeks eating nothing but a bowl of rice crispies in the morning and an orange in the afternoon. It wasn’t hard at all and I lost a TON of weight - which I gained back immediately the second I stopped “dieting.”

I have tried both options and I know which method was much harder for me.

I just feel bad for you, because this most likely is not going to work in the long term and there is a risk you may end up worse than you are now. Will you lose a lot of weight - sure. But what next - have you taught yourself how to shop for healthy foods, cook healthy foods, make healthy choices when you go to restaurants? Can you handle when your work has 3 birthdays in one week with 3 cakes? What happens when you travel?

What is your plan to maintain? Once you wreck your metabolism at 900 calories a day, how will you increase calories while your body is so desperate it will hold onto the calories in a baby carrot for months? This is scary, serious stuff and should probably be done under a doctor’s supervision or with the help of a nutritionist.

27

Cortisol is one. Just don’t believe those stupid weight loss pills of the similar name. If I am remembering my nutrition class correctly, your body secrets cortisol when food supplies are low, slowing down non-critical systems like your digestive tract. Since you aren’t using it anyway. That’s why someone who is actually starving can’t go out and have steak and potatoes. They haven’t got the plumbing to digest it. Have to start out with mild, easy to digest stuff and work their way up.

There’s a lot of literature on this. You’re fastest source for info will probably be a nutritionalist. Just make sure you find one who isn’t completely crazy. And get second opinions if you can.

28

Are you going to take precautions for gallstones? Extreme weight loss can cause gallbladder problems. And as Alice says it can cause other problems.

Overall I tend to agree with Ultrafilter that you should have trouble building muscle on 900 calories a day. However you said you did it before when you were 17, so maybe it works for you.

I don’t know endless amounts about human physiology, but I do know that in a famine the body naturally tries to eliminate tissue that uses up alot of calories (ie lean tissue) as well as using fat stores for energy. Concentration camp victims lost the vast majority of their muscle and lean tissue and most weighed 60-80 lbs, that is how they managed to survive on 1200 calories a day, because they got rid of their calorie expensive lean tissue. But as I said, if it worked for you before it may work again. Not that i’d recommend it, but you are going to follow your own path at the end of the day.

After you lose the weight i’d recommend eating a good deal of fiber, around 30-50 g a day, especially a high fiber breakfast every morning. i’d also recommend getting 8 hours of sleep a night since sleep deprivation screws up your hunger hormones ghrelin and leptin, and (maybe, I don’t know if its actually true) getting in 1300mg a day of calcium from dairy sources a day. All those things should make it easier for you to maintain your lower weight.

29

No. What precautious does one take against gullstones?

No, when I was 17 I lost a bunch of weight, but with a lot more calories than this.

30

This isn’t true - humans can create glucose from fat.

I question the validity of this article, but if this is true, it’s saying that after a few days, after I’m in full lipolysis/ketosis, my body will stop consuming protein stores in my muscles. That’s in support of what I’m doing now, rather than what you’re recommending.

31

There is a prescription that you can take that suppresses gallstones. I forget the name at the moment, but I’ll probably go on it in the next couple of weeks myself.

SenorBeef, I can appreciate the ascetic qualities of what you want to do, because I’ve done similar things myself. It’s one thing to take up Tae Kwon Do as a mid-30s fat guy, and actually get a black belt, but starvation and death marching in the gym is a whole 'nuther kettle of fish.

My counsel is that you get the opinion of Qadgop or one of the other physicians here, Short of that, stick to a well tested diet, be it Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, or something else well known, and supplement that with the extreme workouts. I can promise you that WW and exercise will give you noticeable results within a month.

32

Senior - I’ve asked a couple of the diabetes specialists around this joint for their input.

Starvation - which is what a 900 calorie/day diet is for a 350 lb man - results in a whole boat load of things -

  1. The hypothalamus freaks out and sets the body to ‘storage’ mode. It triggers the release of things like thyroid hormone, neuropeptide Y, leptin, etc.

  2. Various organs respond to these things. For instance, the liver begins producing an increase of fat handling enzymes geared towards fat storage.

  3. With this sort of diet, the risk of dehydration is high - this is one of the factors that can cause problems with the gallbladder. The temptation is to drink a good deal of water (or iced tea). This can result in a very dangerous disruption of potassium and salt levels which can cause grand-mal seizures, heart-failure, etc. Can anyone say Terri Shiavo?

  4. Going on a super-high protein diet, with severely limited carbs, without drinking a whole shit-load of water, will cause the kidneys to shut down (I’m not talking Atkins here, I’m talking your bizarro diet plan.)

  5. Essentially, the consensus around these parts is that what you’re planning is a very slow, very painful way of killing yourself.

If you want to lose weight, consult with a nutritionist of some sort, and select a reasonable plan. Yours is completely crazy - boarding on obsessive. Were you to present to an eating-disorder clinic with your plan of attack, there’s a good chance you could be diagnosed with a disorder.

33

Well, I appreciate the effort you put in to asking. Is there a way to figure out what my minimum number of calories would be to avoid starvation mode?

34

Off the top of my head, I’d say 2000 ought to do it, but IANARegistered Dietician. You’re a bit bigger than I was before surgery, and during my workups 3300 was the calculated value where I was not gaining or losing.

Seriously, dude, consult a dietician. It’ll be the best $100 you ever spent.

35

Calculate your resting calorie rate - according to fitday.com, for a man your size your rate is about 3000 calories a day - that’s what you require just to live - not including any activities, of any sort (walking, breathing, chewing). By that calculation, 2,700 calories/day is about as low as you want to go before you’re in starvation mode, particularly if you’re exercising to the point of exhaustion every day.

So, basically 3 times as much as you were originally planning.

I think it’s great that you want to get fit and healthy - it would just be a real shame if you killed yourself doing it. :wink:

36

In my limited knowledge, a good way is to probably figure out what you’re burning now with your weight plus level of activity (or level of anticipated activity) and subtract a certain (reasonable) amount of calories from that. The web MD site recommends subtracting 500 calories a day, which seems reasonable.

Here’s a metabolic calculator .

Unfortunately, you can’t get a precise measurement of how many calories you burn, for example, if you have previously crash-dieted, your metabolic rate may be slower than the usual number they use to assume metabolic rates.

Does anyone know of any tests that will give an accurate measure of one’s metabolic rate?

In any case, I hope your asking this question indicates that you’re considering a more reasonable plan for adjusting your weight.

On preview, I see that alice has similarly posted, but hopefully mine will add some info.

37

Okay, I found this thing , which looks interesting.

38

Here’s an example of a maintenance calorie calculator:

http://edmondmedctr.com/HC_CalNeeded.asp

While they are not exact, they can be a good guide to get started. Find out how many you need to maintain and then work from there. For my height/weight/age/activity level, my maintenance is 2200 a day. Your requirements to maintain would be higher, since you are heavier and probably taller.

It takes 3500 calories to lose 1 lb. To safely lose 1 lb a week, you should create a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day. You can do that through diet, through exercise or even better a combination of both. For example, you could briskly walk for an hour and burn 250 calories and reduce your daily caloric intake by 250 calories for a daily deficit of 500.

With me, I lost a lot of weight with 1600 calories a day. But, eventually the weight loss stalled out and I plateaued for 12 weeks - doing exactly what I had been doing to successfully lose over 50 lbs. Lots of people said I should reduce my calories to lose additional weight but that seemed kind of scary. What if I started to maintain at 1400 calories or 1200 calories? I wanted a hot metabolism, so I actually increased calories to 1800 (still under my maintenance requirement) and lost more weight.

I play to stay at 1800 until I lose the last 2 lbs and then very very slowly increase my calories to 2200 to maintain.

39

This article from Shape magazine has some equations to help you calculate your resting metabolic rate and daily calorie expenditure, plus some info on how many calories deficit you need to lose a pound of fat (around 3,500), so to lose 1 pound a week, a safe rate of weight loss, you’d need to diet or exercise your way to a 500-calorie deficit every day.

Still wouldn’t be a bad idea to consult at least your doctor or a nutritionist about your plans, or at least follow a more researched diet such as South Beach or Weight Watchers.

40

I appreciate the info, but I don’t buy it.

Call me stupid or hard headed or whatever for scoffing at medical advice, but when I lost all that weight before, I was certainly eating less than 300 calories under my expenditure, but I was the picture of health. All of my blood lipids and nutrients were in the range concerned perfect, I built a large amount of muscle mass, lost a lot of weight, and enjoyed a lot of noticible benefits beyond that. There’s no way that anyone could make a reasonable case that I was unhealthy because I was eating way under my calorie expenditure level.

Now, that doesn’t mean my current approach is right - it may not be. But certainly a guideline of not going more than 300 calories below expenditure is faulty.

Nutritional research is conducted generally under the assumption that a person’s primary energy source is carbohydrates. There’s a lack of study out there for people who consistently eat plenty of fat and protein but few carbohydrates.

If you’ve never experienced it, it really shifts your body into a different gear, of sorts. After a few weeks, your energy levels are way up, your immune system is great (I tried to get myself sick low carbing long ago just to see if I could - I couldn’t), your muscles heal faster (in the last two days, I’ve worked out harder than I have in at least 9 months. I should be sore as hell, but I’m going out again today to do it), and there are other benefits. I don’t think a lot of what traditional nutritional science has to say applies in the same way to low carb dieting.

Of course, I may be wrong - I may be hurting myself. It should be fairly easy to test, right? If, in a month, I have significantly more endurance, can lift significantly more weight, etc… then the idea that my body is eating itself to death is pretty much shot, right? I can test that.