I think I've stunted my metablolism

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the minimum calorific requirement needed to sustain life in a resting individual. It can be looked at as being the amount of energy (measured in calories) expended by the body to remain in bed asleep all day!

BMR can be responsible for burning up to 70% of the total calories expended, but this figure varies due to different factors (see below). Calories are burned by bodily processes such as respiration, the pumping of blood around the body and maintenance of body temperature. Obviously the body will burn more calories on top of those burned due to BMR.

BMR is the largest factor in determining overall metabolic rate and how many calories you need to maintain, lose or gain weight. BMR is determined by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, as follows:

• Genetics. Some people are born with faster metabolisms; some with slower metabolisms.
  
  Gender. Men have a greater muscle mass and a lower body fat percentage. This means they have a higher basal metabolic rate.
  
  Age. BMR reduces with age. After 20 years, it drops about 2 per cent, per decade.
  
  Weight. The heavier your weight, the higher your BMR. Example: the metabolic rate of obese women is 25 percent higher than the metabolic rate of thin women.
  
  Body Surface Area. This is a reflection of your height and weight. The greater your Body Surface Area factor, the higher your BMR. Tall, thin people have higher BMRs. If you compare a tall person with a short person of equal weight, then if they both follow a diet calorie-controlled to maintain the weight of the taller person, the shorter person may gain up to 15 pounds in a year.
  
  Body Fat Percentage. The lower your body fat percentage, the higher your BMR. The lower body fat percentage in the male body is one reason why men generally have a 10-15% faster BMR than women.
  
  Diet. Starvation or serious abrupt calorie-reduction can dramatically reduce BMR by up to 30 percent.Restrictive low-calorie weight loss diets may cause your BMR to drop as much as 20%.
  
  Body Temperature/Health. For every increase of 0.5C in internal temperature of the body, the BMR increases by about 7 percent. The chemical reactions in the body actually occur more quickly at higher temperatures. So a patient with a fever of 42C (about 4C above normal) would have an increase of about 50 percent in BMR.
  
  External temperature. Temperature outside the body also affects basal metabolic rate. Exposure to cold temperature causes an increase in the BMR, so as to create the extra heat needed to maintain the body's internal temperature. A short exposure to hot temperature has little effect on the body's metabolism as it is compensated mainly by increased heat loss. But prolonged exposure to heat can raise BMR.
  
  Glands. Thyroxin (produced by the thyroid gland) is a key BMR-regulator which speeds up the metabolic activity of the body. The more thyroxin produced, the higher the BMR. If too much thyroxin is produced (a condition known as thyrotoxicosis) BMR can actually double. If too little thyroxin is produced (myxoedema) BMR may shrink to 30-40 percent of normal. Like thyroxin, adrenaline also increases the BMR but to a lesser extent.
  
  
• Exercise. Physical exercise not only influences body weight by burning calories, it also helps raise your BMR by building extra lean tissue. (Lean tissue is more metabolically demanding than fat tissue.) So you burn more calories even when sleeping.
  

Hopefully you can find something useful in all this information.

[elcee 3,343]

Wren , if you are looking for an aussie site to log stuff on the best one is calorieking. The American sites might be better but there are a lot of our foods that they don't have.

[WrenBird 11]

Wren , if you are looking for an aussie site to log stuff on the best one is calorieking. The American sites might be better but there are a lot of our foods that they don't have.

:huh2: Thankyou Elcee! xx

[Jachut 487]

I refuse point blank to eat under 1200 a day or so (so I guess it was lucky I lost weight well on 1500 a day or so). I maintain nicely on about 2000 a day - that's pretty much a normal, healthy metabolism, only a little less than what the charts say I should be eating.

I have to unfill my band soon for a surgery and I'm VERY glad I dont have to try to stick to 1200 a day unbanded simply to maintain my weight. I figure if after 5 years of healthy banded eating if I cant stick to 2000 a day I've really done something wrong.

I dont really believe in starvation mode - calories in less than calories out and eventually you will lose weight. But live on next to nothing for a few years and it would seem its highly likely you'll always have to. Your body definitely becomes very efficient.

[ElfiePoo 109]

Cleo'smom...great post. I'm one of those that does not do well on a low calorie diet. Years ago...when youth was on my side...I did the Optifast diet (800 calories) for a month and lost nothing. I managed to stay on it for another few weeks and did drop 3 lbs but that was it. My doc sent me to see a nutritionist who told me that it was because my body was becoming more efficient at conserving my calories and that I would do better eating more. We bumped it up to 1100 calories and I started losing 2-3 pounds per week almost immediately.

Fast forward a decade and I decided to drink nothing but Protein shakes all day. Again, little to no weight loss at 900 calories but when I starting drinking extra shakes and took it to 1200, the weight started dropping off at a nice rate.

The latest 'fad' seems to be telling people that 'starvation mode' was a fad. Yet it's hard to argue with the fact that there are an awful lot of people eating 800 or 1000 calorie diets...sometimes 2000 calories less per day than they used to eat...and who are not losing. Supposedly, cut your calories by 500 per day and you'll lose 2 lb per week...so how come they aren't losing anything...or only losing 4 pounds in a month?

Even Optifast increases calories over time and brings people back up to around 1200 calories. Oh and the part about 'stunting' your metabolism. I have a vague recollection of an article a few years back that talked about how crash dieting (under 1000 calories) will impair the metabolism over time.

My suggestion...if you aren't losing weight, try increasing your calories. That's what worked for me.

.

[samomom 19]

Cleo'smom...great post. I'm one of those that does not do well on a low calorie diet. Years ago...when youth was on my side...I did the Optifast diet (800 calories) for a month and lost nothing. I managed to stay on it for another few weeks and did drop 3 lbs but that was it. My doc sent me to see a nutritionist who told me that it was because my body was becoming more efficient at conserving my calories and that I would do better eating more. We bumped it up to 1100 calories and I started losing 2-3 pounds per week almost immediately.

Fast forward a decade and I decided to drink nothing but Protein shakes all day. Again, little to no weight loss at 900 calories but when I starting drinking extra shakes and took it to 1200, the weight started dropping off at a nice rate.

The latest 'fad' seems to be telling people that 'starvation mode' was a fad. Yet it's hard to argue with the fact that there are an awful lot of people eating 800 or 1000 calorie diets...sometimes 2000 calories less per day than they used to eat...and who are not losing. Supposedly, cut your calories by 500 per day and you'll lose 2 lb per week...so how come they aren't losing anything...or only losing 4 pounds in a month?

Even Optifast increases calories over time and brings people back up to around 1200 calories. Oh and the part about 'stunting' your metabolism. I have a vague recollection of an article a few years back that talked about how crash dieting (under 1000 calories) will impair the metabolism over time.

My suggestion...if you aren't losing weight, try increasing your calories. That's what worked for me.

.

I agree. Cleo's post is really helpful. I am totally with you on the no go with the very low calorie diet. I did the HMR shake thing twice before. You get somewhere between 500-800 calories a day. I did great the first week and lost 8 pounds, but never lost anything after that, but my freaking mind. It was awful. My body just shut down. I was so tired, cranky, starving and this was all through an Endocrinologists office!! He should have known better than to shut down someone's metabolism like that. My sister had the same thing happen on Optifast. She had a total meltdown after two weeks and never lost any weight.

About a year and a half ago I was working with a Registered Dietitian who I swear was anorexic, but that's another story. She had me on a 1500 calorie plan which was working slowly, but I got very frustrated with a few things and dropped it to 500. Well, guess what? I never lost a pound on such a low calorie intake. When I decided to 'blow it' and eat more, I lost about 3 pounds in a week.

I think it's all about finding the right number for each person, but going super low like so many of us are doing isn't the key for long term success. It is true that you slow your metabolism down. The way the dietitian explained it to me was using a wood burning analogy- She said your body is like slow burning embers. When you throw fuel to the fire is flares up and wakes up. That is when your body burns more eneggy and calories. If you keep your body in the ember stage then you aren't efficiently burning calories.

I can appreciate what someone said in an earlier post that if you eat less than you burn then you will simply lose weight. It's sounds good in theory, but it just isn't that simple or true. If that were the case then none of us would be fat! My metabloic rate to maintain my weight is 2267 calories a day. That is just to maintain! I am eating 1000 calories or less a day and exercising. In theory, that should mean I would be losing 1 pound every 3 days. I wish!!!! I haven't lost anything in over 3 weeks and that isn't because my body is 'adjusting' as so many people on the board like to say.

I have my first fill in about an hour. Time to jump in the shower and get my fat ass over there. I cried for hours last night about this. I really, really don't want to get on his scale. If I have gained a pound I will cry in his office. I am praying to the scale Gods to show mercy on me.

Melissa