Hey,
I am a chronic under feeder… … tried to increase my total daily cal intake as per macro calc… but that stalls me… only way i can reduce inches or weight, is to do keto omad… with about 35-50% cal requirement…
my question is… how do i ensure that i dont get kicked into starvation mode or how to make sure that my body gets kicked out of starvation mode?
As painful as it sounds, if it were me, I’d put weightloss on the back burner for a bit & slowly increase my caloric intake despite the result on the scales. Over time your body should get used to the higher amount of food coming in then you can tweak your eating schedule to regulate your insulin & burn your body fat.
If you have been undereating chronically a long time, it’s possible the stall you get whenever you eat more reflects your body adding to your bone density or lean mass after years of “underfunding”.
Just my opinion though.
I also was a underfeeder (about 1400 calories a day and I am a 45yr old male who weighed 275). I was having issues with not losing weight and getting frustrated with keto/diets because I couldn’t lose weight. I finally gave in and trusted the system … I went and calculated my keto macros on 9 different calculators and took an average (about 1800 calories to lose weight). I then started upping my calories by about 200 every couple of weeks while sticking to OMAD. Did I gain weight … yes … BUT in about a month I started dropping weight like crazy and found I had more energy and motivation.
Point is, if you need to up your calories, do it slowly (about 100-200 calories a week) and understand you will [most likely] gain some weight as your body gets this extra influx of food/energy. But once your body adapts and realized this is now the new “normal” it will start to release more energy and you will feel better and have more energy to use.
Juss to clarify… i have lost about 23kg kgs in the last 6 or so months… with good dips on EF of 3 days or more… i am about 6 kgs off my target weight of 65kgs…
The thing that worries me is that i feel im adding damage to my metabolism by under feeding… at around 750 cals… (calculators suggest anywhere between 1600-1800)
gradually adding cals… yea… i think i can do that…
I also lost a little while under feeding … but it was S … L … O … W to the point that is was pretty much to a stall. I think you will see good things if you increase your calories, I know for me the weight started to go down and my energy went up.
Good luck and don’t get discouraged if for a while you see some weight gain, just add the calories slowly and know that it will stoke the fires and get you where you need to be.
The point of a well-formulated ketogenic diet is to allow the body to burn stored fat, as well as dietary fat. If your body is metabolizing its fat store, what does it matter whether you are losing weight or not? Even if your body needs to add pounds of muscle tissue, you will still lose fat. Is it losing the fat that is important to you, or seeing a particular number on the scale? Personally, I choose the former, because I love being able to wipe myself again (not to be too gross), to be able to bend over and cut my toenails, to be able to get up from the floor with no chair handy, and to be able to sit in a restaurant booth without my belly getting in the way. Being able to zip up my jacket when I went out to shovel snow this morning didn’t hurt, either! And my recent checkup had my best blood pressure and blood work in decades. What do I care what my scale tells me, so long as all these other things are true?