To how many calories do you +300 cut down to ?

Hey there,

I was wondering and this goes out to all the +300lbs people here, to how much did you reduce your daily caloric food intake when you started loosing weight?

With our bmr being higher I'm afraig to put my bod into starvation mode If I cut down to say 1400 - 1600 cals.

What do you think?

I'm doing 1800 cals a day if I don't work out and 2000 cals if I do work out (gym- cardio, weights or pilates or walking in nature)

Hey 300+ any feedback before this gets bumped?

What do the CC tools say you should eat?

i am at 1400-1500 and seem to be doing well at it. i just recently went up from 950-1050 to 1500 and now i have the energy to get things done and still lose weight. i did lose 25 lbs my first month of this diet with the help of phentermine.  i hope to lose 15 a month for the next few months and then it will probably taper off to 10-12 a month.

Hi shiptona very funny... what I was looking for were some experiences from former 300lbs people. 

I started at 312 lbs and didn't change my cal consumption (around 2000) at first, but added exercise.  After about 6 weeks cut back to 1400 - 1500.  I've lost 68 lbs and have a hard time reaching 1400 now.  HTH

Hi Ajjciir,

thanks for your reply to this thread. I'll take It into consideration along the way.

My weight's dropping nicely so far with 1800 - 2000 cals and exercise once I hit a standstill I might resort to lowering the cals a bit and switching up the exercise routine.

I am just starting (yet again) to diet .... starting weight is 369 pounds. I will be using 2000 calories per day as my starting point (which will already be a huge change for my prior, abysmal eating habits.)

I will let you know how this goes. 

=^..^=  MollyMouser

at my highest wt...i just started my diet with cutting out some unhealthy junk food habits i really didnt need.

its a lot easier as a launch pad to stick to.

track what you eat still. and you can tweak it as you go.

i really only had to pay attention to cutting calories later on when i got smaller and my wt wasnt moving.


you can cut up to 1000 cals from your maintain level for your wt.

if you like counting cals and are 300lbs or over 2000-2500 cals is an ok number to work with.

simple easy math is take your wt times 10. and your calorie intake should be around that.

but take advantage of the CC allowance tool on here too.

good luck!

When I started, I was at 379 lbs and I was eating 2000-2200 calories a day.  If you are over 300 lbs, I would eat at at a minimum of 2000 calories a day and see how you feel and how you do.  I have lost over 100 lbs and I am still eating 2000 calories a day.  Slow and safe is the best way as we all know.   

-Ed

I started at 343, and I lost over 40 pounds the first 3 months by eating 2250 calories a day on average. I also exercised most days. I am stalled now though, and haven't lost weight all month (I am still losing a bit on inches though). I am changing my intake now to 1900 and will see if that helps. I say if it is working for you to eat more, then do it until you lose enough that you need to drop it lower.

I started at 393 and took some very good advice from a few people on these boards - talk to your doctor.  Mine told me that I would be fine eating around 2000 a day.  I actually started out by trying to develop a couple good habits before really hitting the diet.  Mostly making myself eat breakfast every day for a month before my start date.  Then, the week before I began, I ate almost nothing but fast food and pizza - all the things I loved most - and never felt worse in my life.  And dear God, did I go through some antacid.

The day I started, I went with 2000 calories, ate fruit and vegetables and immediately felt better than I had in months.  I added exercise shortly after and started changing things up calorie-wise: some days I would go as low as 1800 (if I was taking the day off from exercise) and some days I would go as high as 2500.

your weight times 10? that seems to actually be true. how cool.

When I started on here at 362 I aimed for 1800-2000. And I did lose weight. Now Im playing around with different daily goals to see what one works best for me - allowing me to lose a decent amount of weight each week without going down too low, leaving me hungry and likely to binge. Plus I feel like if you go down to far, you have no where left to go as you lose weight. I would do as you said, and stick with what youre doing now...if your loss stalls, it will signal you to adjust your intake.

Good luck! =)

Hi, wasn't trying to be funny.  I just thought you were asking for this info instead of going to the tools.

silvaraynebow:  Dieting by multiplying your weight by 10 (instead of a lower number) works for people who are active, have a very good metabolism and/or a low percentage of body fat.  Because fat is not metabolically active, if you have a high percentage of body fat, there is no energy cost to these fat pounds, except for carrying it around... so in theory being very overweight lowers your calories-to-pounds ratio. Some people will need to multiply by 8 or 9... it all depends on how many calories you need to maintain.  Most sedentary to moderately active adults need  11 to16 calories a pounds to maintain... more if a competitive athlete, or have a raging metabolism. Almost no one needs less than 10 calories a pound. The Biggest Loser diet has you multiply body weight by 7. Some of these folks that posted here are doing a ratio of 5.  But for most people, any time you eat body-weight-x-10 or less, you will lose... though 10 might be very slow for many people.

The advantage to "dieting by ratio" is that you start out at a higher calorie number, and give yourself time to gradually ease into your diet. If you redo the math each week, as you lose weight, you will gradually lower your calories. As a result, your weight loss remains about the same each week. In contrast, if you dieted with a fixed calorie number (like 1500), never lowering your calories eaten, as you lose, your deficit will get smaller and smaller each week. For some people, they end up dieting on their maintenence calories, and think they are plateauing.

In part I got this idea from a weight-loss success story I found online (which I can't find now). The guy weighed over 400. He dieted by multiplying 10 times his target weight of 350 pounds. When he got to 350, he dieted at 3000 until he hit 300... and so on, until he got to the low 200s. I was intrigued, did some calculations... what he did worked out about the same if he had just multiplied his weight each week by 9, and ate those calories.

It is an interesting way to diet, and really simple enough for anyone to master.  In contrast, you'll notice that a lot of people in this forum get confused when trying to figure their deficits, and when they have to eat back calories.

Shiptona, you are making sense to me.

I'm sure that my cals are a bit on the high side @1400. CC tells me that 1300 is more like it and the more I think about it, i'm starting to agree. It doesn't make sense for me to eat the same cals as when I started at 180lbs.

I'm going to try this for a couple of weeks and see what happens. I'm ready for the gym too, havent been for a while and now have the motivation to leave the house ;o)

cyas all later, elttiks ~x~

Hi shiptona,

I really appreciate your extensive response and I did look at the tools but wanted some human advice. :)

What you wrote sounds good to me, I am about 400cals below 8times my weight but it's been working nicely so far. I agree you have verbalized the thought I have had about cutting down too low too early it seems kinda off to just work with one fixed number of cals.

Thanks for your post.

as to what miss shiptona said on x10

i got that from a diet article i read long ago.
i do think i fall into the good metabolism classification on that.


i do agree that it is a lot easier to wean down your calories of you are having problems sticking to a low cal count.
usually it should be redone every 10-15 lbs.

and being bigger REALLY makes you hungry when you try to "diet"
that insane hunger noticiably disappated when i was just overwt.
and is totally controlable when i maintained a healthy wt for awhile.

its an interesting journey to say the least!

?

curses: didn't mean to make it sound like I in any way "invented" this bodyweight-x-10 thing.  However, you have to look really hard to find any diet site or book that suggests this as a way to diet. I have been interested in weight loss for a few decades now, but hadn't really come across this idea until recently.  As I said Biggest Loser does x7... just that I think that is severe... also people can easily go under the 1200/1500 recommendations. Actually you can on a 8 or 9... you have to level off at the calorie minimum.

What really got me going on this was a recent contact with a woman who had PCOS, thus she believed it was extremely difficult for her to lose weight due to super-slow metabolism, whose doctor told her she would not lose weight unless she dieted on 1000 calories a day. She was having a hard time dieting that severely. But when she told me she was quite certain she maintained 220 pounds when eating 3000 per day, a light bulb went off in my head. She was maintaining on 13.6 calories a day... I maintain a lean weight on 12 calories a day. Metabolism was NOT her problem. Logically then, if she never ate over 10 calories a pound, she could lose weight... she didn't have to diet on 1000 per day. It didn't need to be an all-or-nothing diet... she could diet on 10 calories a pound. She pretty much did that, and last I heard had lost about 20 pounds. 

I have been intrigued, and since then have been collecting stats from real people, and also in general reading up on all things to do with calories a pound.  It is extremly difficult to find stats from people who knew how many calories they ate at their heavy weights, easier to find lean people. But most sedentary to moderately active people DO fall into this 11 to 16 range... whether lean or heavy. There are many sites which explain how to estimate maintenance calories by multiplying your body weight by a number from 11 to 16.  This method actually works out about as well as various sites which figure them for you.

I've not found anyone who compared metabolisms of one person to another by dividing their caloires to maintain by body weight. That alone I find interesting. Many people who are overweight believe they have a slow metabolism... but in fact, their metabolisms are very often faster than many lean people... when comparing both total calories consumed... and also comparing by calories-per pound.  Then you get the folks who think they can't eat anything, as compared to someone who can eat whatever they want. When you start doing this calories-per-pound comparison, the difference is not so great as imagined.  I just think this is a useful and constructive way to look at weight loss issues.

If you happened to track calories before you dieted, know what you actually need to maintain (as opposed to what CC says) that gives you a better idea of how to multiply body weight times a ratio.  For example, just today I bought a diet book in which the PhD author, a very active guy, said he ate 3000 calories to maintain 160 pounds.  So he is maintaining on 18.7 calories a pound. So if a guy with this metabolism wanted to lose weight,  he would probably lose too quick on 10 calories a pound.  I've also collected stats from people who maintain on 11 calories a pound... so those people would barely lose on a diet of 10 calories a pound. That was the point I meant to make.  For for people who don't know their maintenence calories at their current weights, they coud start with 10, the adjust depending on their rate of loss.

Mainly though, I see this as a much more reasonable way for people to diet... starting at a high calorie number, and gradually moving the number downward. It takes a lot of time to adjust to a lower calorie diet... a change in taste buds, new strategies and tricks, your stomach needs to adjust to smaller quantities.  Many people fear dieting, fear it will be overly restrictive, and so never make a start.  So this sort of diet is a gentler way to approach it.

Hi Shiptona,

so I've gestimated what I used to eat and I think my metabolism isn't the fastest. I know that I've been maintaining at probably around 2800 - 3000 cals a day and I am loosing weight by lowering to 1800 - 2400 cals a day.

So statistically speaking I was going at 9.5cals a pound and now I'm working with 7.5cals a pound so a bit above the biggest loosers but it's been working out well thus far.

fascinating!

elttiks ~x~