Thursday, July 16, 2020

CICO struggles and questions from a newbie calorie-counter

Hey y'all! I recently started calorie-counting/CICO a few days ago, and it's only been a few days, but I am struggling. Maybe you guys can give me some insight since I am new to CICO.

Based on my height/weight/age/sex/activity level, a bunch of different calculators have given me the following stats (some are ranges bc not all of the calculators agreed)

  • TDEE/total daily energy expenditure/maintenance calories: 1751 or 1752
  • BMR/basal metabolic rate: 1459 or 1460
  • Calories per day for mild weight loss: 1379-1501
  • Calories per day for faster weight loss: 1034-1251

I plugged all my info into MyFitnessPal, and it gave me a daily goal of 1200 calories. I see that a lot of people on here seem to do really well with 1200 cals/day, but I've just been feeling so hangry and grumpy and irritable with this calorie goal, and it doesn't feel sustainable or even healthy to me. I understand that in order to lose weight, you might need to restrict a little bit, but this calorie goal feels like it's bordering on disordered eating. It's so little food! In terms of the quality of the foods I've been eating, I've been eating really healthily (fruit, veg, etc.), so I don't think that's the issue here.

Is it okay/normal to go below your basal metabolic rate?? I thought that was a no-no.

Also, I was able to lose 20lbs in 3 months just by cleaning up my diet (whole food, more veggies, less processed foods, no alcohol, portion control), and not calorie-counting at all. (If I had to guess, though, I was probably eating around 2000 calories a day, but of all high-quality foods.) When I plug this same diet plan into MyFitnessPal, though, it says that I'm eating too much and that my macros are off. But when I followed this diet (for those three months before I got off-track due to breaking my hand and being unable to cook for myself), I felt very healthy, never restricted (which is a really big deal to me, because restricting puts me in a bad mental state, due to disordered eating at a younger age), and had great progress/results. Why is MFP telling me this diet plan is so bad? It's really confusing me because following this meal plan was the healthiest/most balanced I've ever been with my diet.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

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