Minimum Calories?

(Eve) #1

I don’t know if I’m fat adapted, or if it’s because I’ve been sick but I’m eating far less. My question is, if I’m not fasting, what’s the lowest I should go on calories? Is it ok as long as I’m hitting my protein minimum?

(G. Andrew Duthie) #2

Ideally, you don’t want to focus on calories at all, per se.

The most basic formula is:

  1. No more than 20g per day of carbs
  2. Protein sufficient to maintain lean body mass (no need for more…fat should provide the majority of your calories)
  3. Fat to sateity (until you’re full)

Without knowing a lot more about where you’re starting out, it’s hard to say a lot more.

One quick thing, though. Most of us, starting out, had plenty of body fat to supply all of our daily energy needs, once fat adapted. So if your body isn’t giving you hunger signals, and you have a good supply of your own internal food, it may well be that you won’t be hungry. That can be a very good thing. What’s not so good is restricting calories in the mistaken belief that it will help make things go faster. If you’re hungry eat (according to the guidelines above), when you’re full, stop.

Good luck.

#3

Echoing @devhammer.

It may sound simplistic, but listen to your body and if it’s telling you that you’re not hungry, then don’t eat and if you are hungry then eat, especially when you’re not feeling well.

“Minimum Calories” will vary from person-to-person based on things like activity, height, weight, age, gender, hormonal balance, and overall state of health which is one reason CICO is a myth and macro-calculators are misguided.

Day-to-day fluctuations should be fine and will even out over time, but it’s the longer cycles of excess and paucity that begin to take it’s toll and if you see that you’re chronically undereating as evidenced by losing too much weight or feeling cold or feeling unusually sore/achey, that it’s time to reassess.

In other words, if a week or more has gone by and you haven’t been eating because you’re not feeling hungry, but the weather is warm and you’re feeling cold all the time, then maybe you need increase your calories, especially fat.

(Eve) #4

I don’t focus on calories only, but my macros which add up to a number of calories. I’m part of another large Facebook group that advocates a fat minimum. Which I don’t understand. I’m definitely not purposely restricting calories. I’m just not hungry.

I ate about 1200 calories today, and that was kind of forced because I needed to get to my protein minimum. Strange thing is, I’m hungry in the morning. It’s later on that I don’t feel like eating. Like after lunch today I felt so stuffed that I felt ill. And I wasn’t hungry for dinner so I just ate some lunch meats to get protein. Then later I ate a snack because my calories were still well below 1000.

I [quote=“devhammer, post:2, topic:8737”]
One quick thing, though. Most of us, starting out, had plenty of body fat to supply all of our daily energy needs, once fat adapted.
[/quote]

I definitely have plenty of body fat. I have well over 100 to lose. So maybe that’s just it.

(Eve) #5

Thank you. This is great advice. I’m learning to listen to my body. Honestly I’ve never really even felt this way about food. Sure I’ve been full before, but I’ve never come up on meal time and felt “meh” about eating. It’ll take time.

#6

I agree with the guys. It is a tricky one and one that will do your head in the more you track because you will likely have low days and then start thinking about starvation mode and all that stuff right? I certainly haven’t got it clear in my brain yet. Eating as they have said is really the best way. Yes, most people need to track to start with just to get a hang of how much is in what quantity of food but as soon as you are au fait with that I would quite tracking.

I get what you are saying about seeing calories when you track. I am not sure if there is an app that doesn’t show calories! They are all obsessed!

There is no minimum fat requirement. The only time you need worry about upping fat is when you absolutely need to get that energy from somewhere because you are lean and cannot get it from your body. But people can go too far the other way and think - well I wont eat any fat then and just use my body fat - and that doesn’t work. Stick with ‘fat to satiety’ after taking care of the protein and keeping the carbs low and you really can’t go wrong.

#7

I’m one of those people that’s hungry in the morning unlike many others who report skipping the waking, ie. breakfast and lunch meals and eat later in the day.

Typically, upon waking blood ketones are at their lowest for people on a ketogenic diet, and rise throughout the day and I’ve confirmed that trend in myself, although not recently.

That would mean that I’m hungry when my ketones are at their lowest and not hungry when they’re at their highest which seems logical to me.