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Old Thu, Sep-28-17, 05:47
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teaser teaser is offline
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Posts: 15,075
 
Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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I eventually had to pay attention to calories to get below a certain body weight and to maintain it. But even then, a lot of it was learning that for me, eating a more ketogenic form of low carb made the lower calories tolerable. Still, I've never managed to tolerate much lower than 1800-2000 calories a day for very long. I can do stints of 1600 calories a day, if I do low carb refeeds on the weekend, but that's about my limit. I don't really see the point of eating 1200-1350 calories per day unless you've established that you can't lose body fat at a higher intake.

You might get some false data from bringing your calories up to 1900 a day. When people fast, another way to get insulin very low, they'll experience a rebound on refeeding, regain some of that lost water. As an active male, 1200 calories sort of goes past calorie restriction and a little bit into "modified fasting" territory. 1200 calories will reduce insulin quite a bit more than 1900 calories, even if it's ketogenic food, if your weight goes up for a while on 1900 calories, it's probably just water rebound. Personally I would stay the course at the higher calorie intake for at least a couple of weeks. Calorie restriction can be of some use. Something you see on bodybuilding boards a lot--people don't drop their calories drastically, because those guys are sort of paranoid about losing lean mass. So first they establish maintenance intake, then they drop calories from there. It's not about trying to eat as little as you can tolerate, it's about finding the minimum effective "dose."
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