Where in there is a cite saying that 1800 calories will make you lose muscle?
What it does say is “Drastic diets or diets without exercise chew through muscle. Less muscle means lower BMR.” I don’t think 1800 calories is a drastic diet for most people…mind you that site is about weight training…which differs a bit from what we’re talking about because for someone who is weight training, you’re right 1800 calories may not be enough to sustain muscle on that person. But we’re talking obese/very heavy here, they aren’t in superb physical shape such that they have to worry about keeping a lot of muscle. This is an advanced issue, not basic, remove some poundage.
I don’t think Coldie, or anyone else, is talking about making judgements about individuals - they are talking about populations. I don’t see anywhere where Coldie is saying he can tell who has a metabolism issue, or a hormonal problem, or some other contributing health factor.
What I believe he is saying, and which is true, is that looking at populations - Canadians vs. Americans, for example - Americans tend to be more obese. You cannot explain the population difference through health differences - you may be able to explain an individual in that manner. There is obviously more at play here than just health - what is it?
Dr. Alfred Leiser, endocrinologist, in Houston, Texas in 1972.
I had, at numerous times in the year preceeding that, fasted for at least a month. I had no problems from it, as I took vitamins daily.
The few times, in the timeperiod when I would quit eating completely, that I did have problems were generally when I didn’t take vitamins or vitamin shots.
It still is not uncommon for me to go for several days without eating. The females in my family (biology, not raising, as I have a cousin that was raised in California away from all of us, by a mother that weighed 98 pounds at 5’4" and didn’t allow her daughter to gain weight…when she got married and out of her Mom’s house, she gained from 135 to 320 in 22 months, and according to her husband, without overeating) anyway, we all gain weight at about age 6, and my Mom was prepared. No snacks, no sugared beverages (this was the 50’s and 60’s so think Koolaid with saccharine tablets), no cookies, desserts, bread with meals, fried foods, etc. I still have trouble drinking a simple Coke.
Not eating had become the norm for me in 1972. I was in college, double majoring, 19 semester hours and working 21 hours a week. Food was too much trouble. A One-A-Day with iron, 2 vitamin C and a B complex, and I was good to go.
Dr. Leiser knew this, he just wanted “credible evidence”, IOW, as every doctor will do…“yeah, sure, you’re a fat slob AND a liar”. Actually, Leiser DID know, he needed proof. And he got it.
Most of my cousins have had at least one weight loss surgery (starting with bypass in the 60’s when it was first done), and several of them exist on basically liquid diets, as the have no discernable digestive system left. With my medical record, though, it seems that a weight loss surgery wouldn’t work, and nobody would do one when I was younger.
There was some discussion of pituitary/thyroid stuff at that time. Later on, when my Mom had a pituitary tumor removed, there was some question as to checking me for one, but I had no insurance, so, no check. (Mom lost about a hundred pounds after her surgery, then leveled off, still large, but less so.) Now, nobody wants to bother. I have enough problems…why borrow trouble?
Oh, Dr. Leiser was Chairman of Endocrinologf at Diagnostic Hospital at the time, teaching at Baylor Medical School, and VERY well respected. And I was monitored medically.
Sometimes, a life will just suck. Such is mine. I don’t get really worked up about it most of the time. I figure that people who judge me by my size are bigots and assholes anyway, and who needs more that one asshole??
Canvasshoes and Ultrafilter I’m trying to get some people’s arguments clear in my head.
I thought I heard several people espouse that idea and I think ultrafilter is trying to show me that he?she? believes it to be untrue. I am talking about a majority. I understand there are exceptions. I just truly don’t believe that obese/heavy people will go into ‘starvation mode’ if they’re restricted to 1800 calories a DAY…OR 2000 for guys. Yes, I suppose their are exceptions, but the majority would be just fine. I juxtapose this with say, a person who is in shape and is weight training, it is more likely they might need more calories to sustain their muscle mass.
This is not an attack on anyone, I’m trying to get the argument clear and I’m hearing different things from different people. For me to discuss the issue of the majority, I have to get over the fact that I believe my proposition to be true for the majority and it just isn’t going to happen.
1800 calories is a fairly drastic diet for a lot of people, men especially. I’m only about 5’10", and my BMR is about 2300 calories per day. There are plenty of calculators out there that will predict your BMR based on a number of variables. Here’s one you can check out. Let us know what your BMR is, please.
Also, obese people do have a fair amount of muscle. Weight change is very rarely just fat, or just lean tissue. You lose/gain one, and you lose/gain the other. Keeping in mind that muscle loss leads directly to a depressed metabolism, can you see why losing muscle is a bad idea for an obese person?
I’m sorry life dealt you such a lousy hand, I really do. And like I said, I wouldn’t judge an individual case without further knowledge. But having said that, do you at least understand my other remarks? Can you see that they’re observations from a (pardon the horrible phrase) helicopter view? Americans, on average, are too heavy. Individual cases aside, this stems from a diet that’s too rich in comparison to the amount of calories burned.
Surely, you can see how one could come to that conclusion without meaning to offend individuals who DO happen to have a medical reason for their weight?
Sorry, had to add something to BBJ’s question. See, there are two different things that happen when you restrict calories (and again, all this is laid out much more scientifially on Dr. Hussman’s site)…
One is that when you severely restrict calories to far below your BMR, yes, you would lose Scale weight. But as some of us have explained in this thread already, that’s NOT a good thing.
The first thing your body “goes for” when it is in starvation mode, is the muscle tissue, NOT fat tissue.
If a person has had many years of failed and “yo-yo” dieting, their metabolism is likely pretty messed up by this time. Hence a simplistic “eat less, exercise more” will not work successfully for those people.
Successfully meaning that they lose the fat, keep the muscle and become fit.
Skinny does NOT neccessarily = fit and healthy.
I have a young lady in one of my classes. She has a darling and tiny figure. But unlike some of the chubby girls in my class, a few dances and the poor thing turns white, gets out of breath and is ready to pass out.
I’ve seen many such “skinny” people. Also, it’s very probable for a person who may weigh more than another person, but yet be much much smaller than the “lighter” person.
My LBM is 129 pounds. That’s my muscles, organs, bones etc, everything not counting fat.
I’m only 5’-6", many people (Tom Leykis for example) hearing such a “huge” number of pounds on such a short girl, think "oh that’s too heavy for my taste, yet I wear a much smaller jeans size than many girls weighing 20 pounds less than I do.
Sorry, I’m babbling. As you all can tell by now, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. I’ve been on the fat side (though no, I wasn’t ever “morbidly” obese), and I’ve been on the fit side and a PE instructor.
I would never tout a “one size fits all” (no pun intended) fat loss plan for a student of mine.
The Metabolism Results Are:1493.3 calories per day is your Basal Caloric Rate. This is:
no more then 49.778 grams of fat (30%) for your Basal Caloric Rate
56.000 grams of protein (15%) for your Basal Caloric Rate
205.33 grams of carbohydrate (55%) for your Basal Caloric Rate
I’m 5’9ish and 135.
I did screw up on the 1800 thing, I guess guys get more, damnit, about 2000.
To me, after playing around with the BMR, that’s how much you have to burn to keep your current body weight…I’m not seeing evidence that cutting it down to 1800 for women and 2000 for men with exercise will burn muscle and put you in starvation mode. I cann see that happening if you cut back too much, but dear lord, you can’t justify to me that less than xBMR will put me in starvation mode if xBMR is significantly over 1800-2000.
For instance: I played around with these numbers and got the following results:
Please note that with a BMR of 2316, you can safely eat less than 2000 calories and be ok and lose weight and not go into starvation mode. Then again, I’m talking about the majority, not folks like thatDDperson
BBJ, he didn’t say 1800 calories will make you lose muscle, he said “Anyone whose BMR is above 1800 calories will lose muscle”. This is not a good thing, having and keeping your muscles is.
And NO, lifting weights will not make girls “icky and bulky” that’s a “diet ninny” myth.
A pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day. The more muscles you lose, the less you will be able to eat and still maintain your body fat percentage.
It’s not real basic, and it’s NOT “remove poundage” but remove FAT". Big difference.
To Dangerosa, Coldie etc, sorry, I didn’t mean to be so harsh on you guys, yes, you’re right, there are some interesting conclusions to be drawn regarding the American lifestyle vs other cultures, insofar as the correlation between diet, lifestyle and fat. Unfortunately some of the items brought up sort of tied into my arguments against the simplistic “diet ninny” mindset. I wasn’t meaning to rag on you guys, just make clear that they were separate issues.
Didn’t say anything about lifiting weights make you icky and bulky, did you think I did?
I actually used to be heavily involved in weight training. I did have to eat more to keep my muscle up. But what really sucked is when I stopped going to the gym regularly, it turned to fat really darned quick.
I tried Dr. Hussman’s site, again, my BMR is one thing, but it said I could cut that to lose weight. After reading, it appears that a BMR is what your body needs to STAY THE SAME SIZE and the sites all mention cutting it to lose weight, just not drastically.
NO, didn’t mean you, I just threw that in because as soon as one mentions weight lifting most women (who haven’t tried it) say JUST that “oooOOH, I’ll get all big an UGLY,waaah”.
I understand the observation. I DON’T understand the need that so many people have to obsess about the overweight. If some of that thought and effort would go to obsessing about homeless people or poor children, it would be better for Life In America on the whole. (Like, how the poor have little choice in food available cheaply other that starches, with something greasy to make them more palatable. Proper diets are the province of the middle class. You can feed a lot of poor folks on 20 pounds of beans and rice if you toss in a little cheap meat to give it flavor. And none of it is healthful or any other thing but filling.)
Sorry, one of my favorite rants…Let’s All Obsess About Something We Can’t Change Instead Of Doing Something About What We Can…AKA “The Useless Obsessions of the Upper Middle Class”.
Or did I strike a match about ‘Them Worthless Welfare Cheats’?
I have a goal. It is to stop ONE person a year from being so concerned with themselves and their “entitlements” and get them to open up to the world as it is and help the needy and helpless. I’m up to 1983…
Regarding the BMR info from Hussman’s site, I have known several women who’ve lost many many pounds of fat using his program.
There is a support group of over 6000 women who all follow that program. Most of them need to lose several sizes, and they are in various stages of completion regarding their size goals.
BMR is your base metabolic rate, what your body burns per day just to keep you alive so to speak. Exercise is just gravy (sorry no pun intended).
If you check out the links, he has calculations on what size a deficit you need to have in order to lose fat.
Looks like you already did, but you’re mistaken if you think this is just for maintenance. It works quite well (it did for me and for the 6000 women in my online support group).
Ultrawhat I found on your site is slightly different from other sites but I’ll work with it. My BMR is 1400 calories. What I found on your site is to increase the BMR over 2000 for men, it started to recommend LESS than your BMR to lose weight. It also cautions you not to increase your calories by using the BMR calculator if you want to lose weight.
Again, yes, for ME I see that eating less than 1400 calories a day would burn muscle, but I am not obese or heavy…my BMI is pretty good. If one’s BMR is higher than 1800/2000 the case could be made (since BMI is a factor) that there is simply more fat to burn. Making sure you get good nutrition and exercise with those calories, 1800/2000 is NOT going to put you into starvation mode.
Funny, your post here sort of starts tying together all the various arguments of this thread.
You last statement in particular. Perhaps I haven’t made it clear enough, but a big part of the problem imHo, is that too many people, Honest to goodness, do NOT really know what constitutes “good nutrition and exercise”. As some of the others have mentioned, part of it is the aforementioned bad lifestyle and eating habits of Americans, part of it is the “youth worship culture” and “heroine chic”.
The trouble is, that for many people, without the right education would think that 1500-1800 calories consisting of salads and slimfast would be “proper nutrition”.
And that part of that is due to the pressure in this society to “just do it” etc.
LOL, we better watch out!! We’re all agreeing way too much, and being way too friendly here to be in “da pit” hehe
