Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | I know you low-cal dieters don't want to hear this...

but have you considered that your metabolism has slowed enough that you cannot lose on 1500 anymore?

Weight loss is not as simple as "BMR + exercise - 500 = food budget" If it was that simple, everyone would be thin and never worry about gaining weight again. For example: my BMR + normal daily activity level (which adds about 900 calories) + exercise = about 2900 calories a day. So according to the above method, eating 1800 calories should cause me to lose a lb every three days. But it doesn't work like that because your metabolism is more complicated than a simple equation.

Most medical professionals suggest going no lower than 1800 calories for weight loss, unless the patient is obese or has a considerable amount of weight to lose (i.e. more than 5 or 10 vanity lbs.), in which they are put on a low-calorie diet for a SHORT amount of time. NOTE: This is not to say that the doctors that advocate it are completely right, but neither are the doctors that tell you it's ok to eat 1200 calories.

Eating too little calories for a long amount of time causes the metabolism to slow down to accomodate the body's feeling of starvation. In short: At some point, you can no longer lose on 1200 calories a day.

My advice: get your BMR actually tested. You may find that you do actually burn the amount of calories a day the online calculators say, or you may find, like me, that after years of low-calorie diets, your BMR is barely over 800.

How do you fix it? Upping your calories. You're going to gain a few pounds at first (I didn't, but most do), but most of it is water weight and you will lose it (and MORE) once your metabolism kicks back into gear. It took me 7-8 months of consistently eating between 1800-2000 calories a day for my metabolism to get high enough that I can now eat 2300 and not gain. And I finally started losing weight and am now at a lower weight than I was when I was eating 1200 and at the gym for hours each day.

Upping sucks, but it's worth it.

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Elizabeth

all those years it wasn't IBS - it was celiac!
send me an email: liz@dopple.net

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