Starvation and Metabolism

[shelly13 27]

Hola Fellow Sleevers!

I am about 10 weeks out from VSG and I started tracking my food on My Fitness Pal again. I am averaging about 800-1000 calories a day and My Fitness Pal keeps telling me I am eating too few calories and could be putting my body into starvation mode and slowing my metabolism. Just wondering if anyone else has had this happen and what I can do about it. I can only eat so much (duh!) and that was the point of surgery, right? I follow the guidelines set by my surgeon and dietician and am losing consistently but much more slowly than right after surgery. Thanks guys!

[Nuchnuch 120]

One thing you need to do is customize your goals (i.e. Protein, carbs, etc) according to your doctor's guidelines.

Tis may make a difference with what your goals are.

[Houston17 115]

With the surgery and our smaller stomachs, you won't be able to go by the recommended calories on mfp. My NUT doesn't really encourage calorie counting. She is more into the Proteins and measuring. Just make sure to follow your recommended guidelines from your surgeon/nut. Good luck!

[SMO 193]

Yep. You are starving and that is the point. That is also why you should get up to a more reasonable number of calories as quickly as you can. There are a number of people on the forum that eat well in excess of 1200 calories a day - not at 10 weeks, of course, your stomach is still healing - and are losing a lot of weight. I try to eat no less than 1000. I am losing about 2 pounds per week.

[NtvTxn 1,262]

MFP is great for tracking calories and Protein and even carbs if you do that.....but you cannot pay attention to the amount of protein it recommends or the 'you're eating too little' stuff. It THINKS it is dealing with normal folks, not ones who've had WLS. It tells me I need 45 grams of protein. I enter it all manually. I am three years out and need 1300 calories to maintain. When I was where you are, I was getting about 400 calories, give or take 50. I never went into starvation mode, I had my doctor's OK. I felt good, labs were good and I lost weight, I never tried to "HANG ONTO" the pounds! I didn't get my 1300 in yesterday, just under 1100 and I got the same message you did. You're fine, when I reached goal, I was getting 650 - 800 per day - if in doubt, talk to the doctor! Good luck!

[ShrinkingBiker 121]

exactly what others have said here.. I vary between 600-1100 calories per day depending on what is going on. With WLS it is a bit of a different ballgame.. the way I look at it is in the early stages when we lose weight the most rapidly we are pretty much eating what we need to stay alive and active. Our small stomachs make it very hard to maintain much calorie intake anyway.

Once you get to the maintenance stage then you will want to work more on making sure you are getting a good amount of calories. Obviously protien is #1 then you want to try to keep your carbs low. under 50 should give you optimal weight loss by putting your body into Ketosis. I don't really pay too much attention to ketosis unless I am in a stall.. I will eat carbs for a couple days and then cut them out as much as I can (only 20-30g a day) and it usually kick starts my weight loss again.

Just a tip for something that worked for me when you get to that stage.. but for now, ignore the notice from MFP, but it is a great tool to track what you eat, how much, and be able to look back and see trends in your diet that can be adjusted to make sure you lose as much as you can.

[TJL 222]

I use MFP, I manually adjusted the settings, it didn't like it but it works for me to keep track of my Protein grams, I am only 5 weeks out from surgery but I like to make sure that I'm getting enough protein. I'm not worrying about the calories yet, I get 600-700 per day.

[JoiaRox 430]

I just giggle at the MFP recommendations . I use it to track my Protein, more than anything, and watching calories is just an interesting, daily observation!