There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

How exactly does one eat 1500 calories a day?

I’m trying to lose weight and was told that hwo I eat about 800-1000 calories a day is too low and lowers my metobolism which will prevent weight loss. I’ve looked up some meal plans and can’t really afford stuff like chicken breast, steak, or salmon every week. So that is why I’m wondering how I can eat 1500 calories a day. Are there some alternatives that I can do?

Also I’d like to ask, say I exercise and burn say 500 calories would I have to eat those calories back or no? I ask cuz I’ve been told yes and told no.

deranger ,

You’re absolutely going to lose weight at 500-1000 kcal a day. It’s not particularly healthy, and you’re going to lose significant muscle mass, but you will absolutely lose weight rapidly. A significant caloric deficit will not prevent weight loss; its thermodynamics. You’ll lose muscle with that much of a deficit, which in turn decreases basal metabolic rate, but you’re not going to violate thermodynamics.

How are you tracking intake? If you’re not losing weight, I don’t believe you’re tracking calories correctly. Are you using a scale and weighing portions, or just eyeballing it?

Valmond ,

Your body probably will go full panic mode and store back as much as possible as soon as you starts to eat normally again. I’d advice agains doing anything so violent, and just lower your food intake to a bit under normal.

zero_spelled_with_an_ecks ,

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17469900/ just read the abstract if nothing else.

Scipitie ,

Whelp that’s not helpful on its own though to be honest. “long term lifestyle change” is the key word I am aware which is… Well at least I didn’t manage it so far. “just do X” is like telling an alcoholic to “just stop drinking, oh but you need a sip every other hour”.

zero_spelled_with_an_ecks ,

Did you not read the abstract?

Scipitie ,

Have you not read either the abstract (“calorie deficit not helping”) or my comment? (“input on the inefficiency of diets is useless to OP without any impulse on what to do instead”)?

I don’t understand of what you’re aiming for with your oneliners.

zero_spelled_with_an_ecks ,

Your previous comment didn’t make sense in relation to the abstract (like nothing about long term change was in it). This one is more understandable. I don’t think replacement advice is needed. Don’t diet is pretty clear. If you couldn’t grasp that from the info, I don’t know what to tell you and you’re not really pleasant to engage with, so I’ll be blocking you.

Dagrothus ,

As someone who lost 60lb this year: just stop eating ultra processed garbage. Find real foods that you enjoy, and make meals out of those. Eat as much chicken, vegetables, fruits, unsweetened yogurt, fish, eggs, etc as you want and you will lose weight. Unhealthy stuff is fine to eat on occasion but only if you consider it well worth the calories and you are aware of how much you’re eating. Dont mindlessly eat a family size bag of doritoes that you dont even like that much. Dont drown yourself in vegetable oil. I stopped buying loaves of bread, sweets, cereals (why are entire aisles of grocery stores dedicated to this garbage?) , carb-based snacks, etc.

Also no, working out does not mean you can eat a snicker’s bar for free. The new Kurzgesagt video explains how that works. I dont believe you’re gaining or even maintaining your weight at 800-1000 calories, but im just a random person.

The costco rotisserie chicken is only $5, just dont eat too much skin. Yogurt can be affordable and high in protein. Almond milk too. Nuts & beans are decent. Just look at protein to calorie ratios on cheap stuff so you maintain muscle, im sure you can find plenty of foods that work.

Delphia , (edited )

Ok, you have been fed some bullshit. Anyone who just gives you a “eat X calories” advice without knowing your age, height, gender, etc… is full of shit. Makes me no end of mad when you see “Contains 25% of your daily…” on food packaging. Because a 19yo male rugby playing bricklayer and a 46yo female accountant have vastly different requirements.

At the core of it, its CICO (Calories in, Calories out)

www.calculator.net/macro-calculator.html Tap your details into that, select a REASONABLE weight loss goal a week, underestimate your exercise, and select the high protein option since you are weight training and want to avoid muscle loss.

A few eggs on a couple of pieces of wholemeal or multigrain toast, pot of greek yoghurt and a coffee is a perfectly good breakfast and Protein shakes are a great way to get protein in and keep calories reasonable, my lunch at work is 2 scoops of Casein protein and a protein bar. I eat boring and super low cal during the day because I train in the afternoon and want to enjoy my dinner.

When it comes to adding back in workout calories… both sides are right. “Diet fatigue” is a real thing, and if you want to keep your calorie defecit around a certain number to avoid getting burnt out then yes, you add them back in. Personally I calculated my macros and calories to “mild” weight loss and estimated my exercise as “none” so my training was where I found the larger part of my deficit.

I could write a very short book on this stuff so if tou have any questions feel free to PM me.

credo ,

On apple there is an app called mynetdiary. HIGHLY recommended to help answer your questions. It sounds like finances are an issue, but the paid version really helps you dial in nutrition with detailed nutrient info and meal plans. The key feature of this app for me was the predicted weight loss trend line… and then seeing my results line up perfectly. It’s almost like they knew what they were talking about.

DO NOT go below bmr…

If you are going into deficit, stave off the full effect of adaptive thermogenesis (“starvation mode”) with weights and higher levels of protein.

whynotzoidberg ,

Poor advice, IMO. Going below BMR is ok, starvation mode is largely a myth, and, while nutrition is important, it is not necessary for caloric-deficit weight loss.

lord_ryvan ,

As is always the case when people say it’s on Apple/iPhone, it’s also out on Android

Here’s their website with buttons to both stores: www.mynetdiary.com

It’s cheaper and easier to release on Android, and almost twice as many people use it, of course every single Apple iTunes app is going to be on the Google Play Store as well

Aquila ,

If your goal is to lose fat it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you’re in calorie deficit.

10% restriction off your personal basal metabolic rate is not too bad. But it sounds like you’re wanting a severe cut so I’d recommend 25% under your BMR. You won’t be able to keep that up forever tho only like 6 weeks. You can find BMR charts online for age/height/sex

Fat loss is a lifestyle change. Do what you can be consistent with. It’s easier to add before taking away. So adding veges and protein is easier than trying to stop eating junk food. Protein will make you feel full and veges will fill you up just from quantity if your eating a decent amount of cals of them

Mediocre_Bard ,

My brother.

Do not eat before 11am and do not eat after 7pm.

Drink water.

Weigh yourself daily, in the morning, right after you piss and shit, and then look at yourself in the mirror.

Eat as you please during your open window, don’t lie to yourself about what you are eating. Trash is trash.

Let this truth wash over you as you buy your food. The shame will drive you to make better purchases.

To be successful, you must hate yourself as you are and love yourself as you want to be.

Good luck.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Man, I gotta be real with you. You aren’t going to be able to crowd source this. There’s just too much outdated information, well meaning but flawed advice, and outright bullshit online. Finding the up to date, good answers among the junk would only be possible if you already knew it.

The only reliable way to get good answers about bariatrics is going to specialists. Seriously, you can’t even totally rely on a general practitioner to be caught up, though you might get lucky with an internist. You can make do with nutritionists if they’re either fairly newly graduated, or you know they keep up on their subject.

Hell, there’s some specialists that lag behind in terms of proper, evidence driven best practices.

And the thing nobody online will likely admit is that there isn’t a single, complete answer because part of how fat loss and gain works is governed by individual circumstances regarding hormones, metabolism, and capabilities, which still ignores external factors in making a prescribed weight loss plan work. If your broke ass lives in a food desert, and you’re limited to the corner store for the majority of your supplies, the task gets much harder, just as one example of what I mean by that.

Any medications you’re on, that’s got to be factored in to an overall plan, even OTC meds, supplements, etc.

Now, there are strategies that are fairly reliable in helping manage calorie intake, like going predominantly plant based. You’ll have to study up and make sure that whatever plan you set up has the whole gamut of nutrients you’ll need, but as long as a food desert isn’t in play, that’s usually easy enough. The good news about that is that the core foods tend to be very affordable, and easy to buy in bulk as long as you have storage space.

Another piece of good news is that if you’re using exercise as part of your overall plan, not only will you give yourself a wider space for intake, but it improves your health no matter what weight you’re at along the way. I mean, losing excess fat is great, but it isn’t going to magically make your cardiovascular system work at its best.

And, again, you can only take this comment with a grain of salt because you have no way of knowing that I’m up to date on the interrelated subjects to a degree high enough to be useful. For all you know, I’m thirty years behind on things. And, truth is that the general subject matter isn’t a high priority for my reading time. I do put a bit of time every week into digging through journals and publications with a focus on medical shit, but bariatrics isn’t something I’m into for my own curiosity. So I have to be at least a little behind as default because I’m always behind even on my favorite subjects because I can’t devote enough time to it all.

Weight management is something you have to take on as a long term project where you adapt along the way. You can’t look at it as weight loss either, because just losing excess fat is only part of the project. You have to keep it off and improve your overall health.

GBU_28 ,

Well CICO is always true, but what modern professionals would help with is the other stuff: mental health, planning, long term, etc.

So in the lab, CICO wins, it’s thermodynamics. In real life, people need more support, and they (rightfully, realistically) can’t maintain CICO.

Hugin ,

True.

CICO it’s what is called a bounding condition. It’s true but the CO half is almost impossible to know or predict long term outside of being in a 24 - 7 lab.

Hormones, types of calories, activity, and biology all have a huge effect. And long term even small errors in these numbers can have big impacts on weight.

nous ,

While being accurate about it is hard outside the lab it is very easy to tell where you are on the balance and how much out you are. Just count the calories you consume and weight yourself regularly. If you are gaining weight then you are eating too much, so lower the number of calories you are consuming, if you are losing weight then you are eating less than you are burning. If you weight remains stable then you are in balance. And the amount you are gaining/losing tells you how much of a surplus or deficit you are in.

Over time you can then change the amount you eat by I few hundred calories at a time and you will see yourself move on that balance point. If anything else changes but your intake remains the same then it is likely your calories out that has changed. But even if technically you are digesting less for some reason it does not really matter - the bigger/easier leaver you have to pull is the number you are eating.

Because you are measuring the final output - your weight - it is fairly accurate over time and helps you track actual progress. There is no need to get super accurate about how much your body adobes, shits out or you burn off at rest or through exercise - those might be important in the lab but in real life the far easier to measure weight and how much you are eating is more important.

ByteOnBikes ,

Most realist comment here.

SkyNTP ,

Eating healthier is not nearly as complicated as this post makes it sound, unless you have unusual underlying medical issues or are aiming to sculpt your body in a very specific way.

  • To lose weight, eat about 5-10% less than your daily caloric requirement (there are tons of free calculators and counters online). Water helps to feel full. Increasing exercise can help if changing dietary habits is a struggle.
  • To eat healthier overall, eat less processed foods, more fresh stuff.

That’s it. This is all the advice most people realistically need to lose weight/eat better. The hard part is being disciplined about it. Now, discipline, on the other hand, that’s a very personal matter.

TheTechnician27 ,
@TheTechnician27@lemmy.world avatar

I can attest from a personal anecdote that eating plant-based makes it enormously easier to cut calories. Provided you don’t decide to take the costliest, least healthy route of basically living off heavily processed plant-based substitutes or the cheapest, second-least healthy route of living off pasta, ramen, and cereal, you’re likely on a diet with plenty of healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats (and pretty minimal saturated), a high amount of proteins from nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes, a moderate amount of carbs in the form of cereal and simple sugars from fruits, and an absolute abundance of fiber (of which 95% Americans don’t get enough).

Even just incorporating something like tofu into your diet helps a bunch, because it’s basically all protein and good fats while having just a small amount of carbs. Per calorie, it does the best job I’ve ever seen of making you feel full for a long time.

Preflight_Tomato ,

There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread, one thing to note is that too much change too fast is a recipe for failure. Whatever you do, make sure it’s manageable. For each change, ask yourself whether it can become a permanent habit for you. This is the only way to sustain it enough to achieve your goals. It could help to write down good ideas, and try them one week or month at a time.

chrischryse OP ,

What do you mean by that?

GBU_28 ,

Rapid habit/ lifestyle changes aren’t sustainable. You don’t have the discipline to maintain them. (That’s not a dig at you, it’s just literally counter to human nature.) Better to gradually build habits that you can actually keep

ColeSloth ,

It’s hard for most people to eat and drink under 1500 calories a day. Are you saying you’re having issues getting up to 1500 calories a day?

Eggs are the cheapest and most perfect protein you can get. Just eat loads of those (around 80 calories an egg) and do some spinach or kale and bell peppers as well. That will cover your veggies and your protein. Then you can fill the rest out with a bit of rice or oatmeal. All of that listed is pretty super cheap.

To your other quaestion- no, you do not need to eat an extra 500 calories if you burn an extra 500 if weight loss is your goal. Eating too little calories (like less than 1200, depending on sex and height) makes your body try to keep your fat and will start removing your muscle in order to make your body have less upkeep. That’s really bad. However, if your body knows it’s getting more calories than that, and that your having to use a lot of your muscles (burning 500 extra calories per day) it will burn off the fat reserves and try to maintain the muscle you keep using.

chrischryse OP ,

Yep. Because it doesn’t seem plausible for me to get to that which is why I eat under.

That’s a good point for the eggs which I’ll eat more of.

cheesymoonshadow ,
@cheesymoonshadow@lemmings.world avatar

Beans are another good, cheap food.

ColeSloth ,

Are you overweight? Really, it’s very easy to get to 1500 calories in a day if you throw in some carbs and some calorie dense foods. Heck, right now mcdonalds is selling a $5 meal deal that’s 1200 calories. Eat that and 4 eggs for breakfast and you’re already at your calories for the day. A few slices of pizza can be 1000 calories. Just one small breakfast sausage patty is 150 calories. A big bowl of cereal with milk can be 500 calories.

None of that is really a healthy way to go, but all I’m saying that is people who need to lose weight usually have issues getting down to 1500 calories. Someone overweight but having a hard time getting up to 1500 in a day is pretty strange.

Regardless, if you just aren’t that hungry and need some healthy foods with a lot of calories, pecans and macadamia nuts are 200 calories an ounce. Full fat Greek yogurt is really calorie dense. So are things like peanut butter. Trail mix is also a great and really high calorie snack. Also, avocado. Really, there’s a lot of foods that are super calorie dense if you look for them. These are just some of the high calorie healthier ones.

angrystego ,

Careful with the spinach though. Regular lettuce is safer.

rowinxavier ,

You’ll get a lot of contradictory answers with this question because of two major issues.

  1. There is more than one way to make your scale number go down.
  2. Your scale number going down can be for multiple reasons.

For example, dropping a bunch of body fat is a way of posing weight, but it does not look any different on the scale than losing muscle mass or losing a leg. You can have more healthy recomposition where you drop a bunch of fat slowly over time and gain some muscle but overall lose absolutely no weight on the scale, and you can also gain weight without changing fat but be in a better position.

So what would you aim for? It depends on your goals. Do you want to be jacked? Maybe you have early signs of type 2 diabetes and want to stop it there. Or maybe you just really want to get rid of your skin issues like acne and dermititis.

Nobody benefits from being insulin resistant. That is the state that pushes you towards weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, and many other issues including dementia. Fixing that is a central goal for a lot of people and it actually helps with most other health related goals. If I were starting somewhere that is where I would probably try to start.

That said, if you have very little muscle that may be better to work on.

Can you give more detail about your goals?

chrischryse OP ,

Basically I have a gut which I want to get rid of (Ik you can’t spot reduce sadly). I don’t want to get super jacked I just want to lose this guy and get muscle. And avoid diabetes since it runs in my family.

I’ve currently been working on muscle more since my job thankfully has a gym I do strength there two days a week and walk/run 3

rowinxavier ,

OK, so good, a clear starting point.

First, adding muscle is a fantastic way to go. Muscle burns energy and new muscle is not insulin resistant, so it lowers your overall insulin resistance. This is key to liberating fat and burning it for energy.

The other big key is diet. Your current diet is overwhelming your body’s ability to burn without storing as fat. This means you are gaining body fat and this will get worse over time. Gaining muscle can help a fair bit but your existing muscle tissue along with other things like fat cells and other organs are all at the point of damage from high sugar levels in your diet. The fact that you can make yourself go to the gym is great, it means you have caught this before it has gotten too bad.

So to make progress on your diet you probably need to do a couple of things. First is check for other symptoms like swelling around the jawline, fat build up over the spine between your shoulders, rash and skin discolouration, pale gums and lips, and any sort of weakness in nails and hair. These are all potential indicators of an acute deficiency and may need medical support. That said, all of these are generally helped by dietary work, so if nothing massive is presenting like a goiter or anaemic gums you should probably just move forward with diet and reevaluate later.

So what to eat. The biggest problem seems to be sugar, followed by the sugar/fat/salt hyper palatable mix, then hyper processed, and lastly problematic plants. If you eat meat, which I would strongly recommend, then paring everything down to very simple meals is the best option. A kilogram of meat per day is a reasonable base for basically everyone. If you start there and can make it a week without anything else you will have a good starting point for completing an exclusion diet. If you can’t jump directly to that then dropping out the worst items is a good step.

Dropping the worst means getting rid of the most packaged and insane foods, like cakes that last 6 months on the shelf or items with ingredients lists longer than The Art of War. If you keep eating sugars but they are in simple forms, for example honey or while fruit, you will avoid most of the worst stuff. It would also be good to learn more about cooking meat properly, so learn how to fry steak, cook chicken wings, and maybe roast a leg of pork. Learn to make basic stuff that tastes good and you will find reducing other crap easier.

Ultimately trying to hit numbers of grams of fat, protein, and carbs is a losing game. You don’t know all the internal systems you have and how they allocate energy, but you do have a handy system they operate with, hunger. We should fix your hunger to make it work properly and that is what the above is for. You have simple foods, your body learns what they provide, your hunger becomes more accurate for what you need.

Once your hunger works properly you will do something like work out and you will feel more hungry in the day or two following it. Then chasing numbers won’t be needed at all and you can relax.

Tywele ,

Suggesting to eat a kilogram of meat every day when they say they can’t afford chicken breast is probably the worst advice you can give.

Eating plant based would help much more since it’s much cheaper.

prettybunnys ,

800-1000 calories a day is not “slowing your metabolism”

kambusha ,

I’m confused too. OP is trying to lose weight by eating more calories? I feel like I’m missing something.

Cagi ,

I loose weight by eating 2 big meals a day. My go too seems to be frozen pizza (1000 cal each) and and curries (500-600 for curry, another 200 for my naan in butter). I eat 1600-1800 calories a day and feel like a glutton while my scale keeps going in the right direction. 50lbs down so far.

krellor , (edited )

I've read through your comments, and highly suggest a food diary for at least a couple weeks ago you really understand the calories in things you are eating.

Yes, your body does modulate its resting metabolic rate over the long term based on things like average daily exertion, food, etc, but that is largely inconsequential to weight loss.

As a rough guideline, you want about 50% of your calories to be carbs, preferably the fiber or complex variety, 30-35% protein, and the rest fat. If you run a lot, then a few more carbs. If you lift weights a lot, then a little more protein.

Protein will help you feel fuller, longer, so I like to go my ratio of protein a bit.

Meals that I enjoy: steal cut oats and peanut butter, pan seared tofu with salad and a light dressing, bean chilli, tacos or tostados using those low carb tortillas, bowl of rice, refried beans, salsa, and guac, etc

But you really, really need to have a good understanding of portions and actual calories. Most people are way off.

Edit: also, some fasting cardio, like a good brisk walk or jog in the morning before eating anything can help accelerate things. But don't fall into the trap of eating back the calories you burn.

chrischryse OP ,

For protein would protein powder be a good option? And I’ll try a diary too see if that helps

Also I usually try not to eat them all back I’ll sometimes eat like 100-150 back but trying to stop

howrar ,

Whole food is generally preferable, but protein powder is absolutely fine if that’s the best you can do. Just take the route that’s easiest to adhere to. You’ll get much bigger benefits from simply hitting your macros than optimising their source and micronutrients and all that other jazz.

krellor ,

Like the other person said, getting the ratio and amount is more important than the source. But you should ask yourself why you are taking the supplement? Are you sure you're not getting enough from your food? Your body can really only prices 20-40 grams of protein at once, so if you are loading up more than that at a time, you are just piking on calories.

Personally, depending on your current weight, you might think about focusing more on weight loss than bulking muscle mass. Absolutely work out of it is helpful, but don't worry about mass gains while trying to lose fat. You will develop muscles regardless of whether you micromanage your protein intake or not, and you can optimize better after losing some fat.

But again, you need to check, with, and measure the calories in every portion of food until you develop an accurate read on the calories in things. Like peanut butter having about 100 calories per tablespoon (half ounce).

IHawkMike ,

There’s no way you need to somehow eat more to lose weight. Are you sure you’re counting your calories correctly? Using an app? Tracking everything, especially drinks like sodas and alcohol?

chrischryse OP ,

So basically from what I was told, since I’m 240 lbs and 6 foot I should be eating 2000-2500 calories but if I put myself on a calorie deficit 1500 would be where to go

IHawkMike ,

Yeah that sounds about right.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •