I’ve been in GD long enough to realize that when everyone says something, you don’t pull out personal experiences, you shut up and get a cite. The dammit, unless I’ve been losing muscle from places that I don’t use it (and I was doing misc. upper body weights, crunches, and the aforementioned up and down all the bloody time), I don’t see where I could have been losing muscle and not fat. All literature agrees with you, and I will certainly start eating more (not gorging, just healty snacks when hungry] and (sigh) exercise regulary instead of when I feel like it. But if my 600-800 cal a day was so horrible, how did my ability to move weights around increase and my waistline decrease?
Come to think of it, if I ‘only’ lost 25 lbs since I started college, does that not imply that I might have a whacked-out metabolism that for some odd reason only needs 1250-1500 calories per day to live? If there really was a 1000 calorie per day shortfall, does that not equate to 1000 * 25 * 7 / 3500 = 50 pounds I should have lost?
Your body can increase strength due to neurological adaptation. Your central nervous system just gets better at using the existing muscle fibers more efficently. Your body is starving, yet it thinks it needs the strength to get food. (shake a tree, pick up a rock etc) So it adapts by keeping the strength it thinks it needs and gets rid of the muscle.
It is really hard to say though, about your weight loss. No one body is the same, and trying to pin down something with 100% accuracy is next to impossible. They body slows down it’s metabolism when it is starving by losing muscle, bone density, skeletal muscle and decreasing things like red blood cell count etc. The body does this to lose as little fat as possible. It thinks it is starving and will do anything to ration out what is left in storage.
You may eat only 600-800 calories on any given day, but I would say it is next to impossible that you have been doing that every single day for any long amount of time. Did you gorge at christmas? Go out to eat once or twice a month and eat a buffet? Drink a lot of pop on some days, but not regularly? Every time you eat a bit extra food your body will store it greedily. This will slow down the overall progress.
I would say that 1500 is good if 2000 is what the counter said. If you exercise much you should add in the calories for that on your total. So if you run 3 times a week, on those days add in the extra calories. Instead of needing 2000 calories to maintain your weight, you would need 2200 (150 for running a mile and a half, and 50 for weightlifting, varies with the amount of work of course)
Just listen to your body. It takes awhile to understand what it is saying, but if you feel tired and are getting plenty of sleep, it might be saying it wants more food. Just add 100-200 more calories a day for a week and see if that helps. If not, add 100-200 more a day for a week and so on.