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> Despite the fact that I was only consuming 2000 calories, 500 less than recommended for my size/weight/age/sex, I managed to gain weight. You were eating too

> Despite the fact that I was only consuming 2000 calories, 500 less than recommended for my size/weight/age/sex, I managed to gain weight. You were eating too many calories. 2500 for maintaining body weight is a lot. Perhaps you were overestimating your activity level?

cptskippy 10y ago
I'm 6'5" and ~220lbs, every calorie calculator I've tried recommends 2400+ calories a day to maintain body weight with a sedentary lifestyle. At the time I tried this experiment I was running close to 30 miles a week and spending 2+ hours a week rock climbing.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Estimates like 2400kcal might work if you have a physically demanding job 40 hours a week. Running 30 miles a week and spending 2+ hours a week rock climbing will lift cause you to expend only maybe 500kcal a day extra on average, but if you spend the rest of that time being sedentary, you're still unlikely to end up at any more than 2000-2200kcal. Overall I think the typical old advice of 2500kcal for men and 2000 for women are dangerously out of tune with modern lifestyles. As your own results demonstrated, that's often way too high. Measure, weigh, adjust - ultimately the only thing that will tell you what the right amount of calories is for you is to actually adjust your intake and check what happens.
  - cptskippy 10y ago
    Source?
    - kaishiro 10y ago
      Your own body? If you weren't losing weight that should be enough of a feedback cycle to tell you what you need to know.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      Um, you were eating (or claiming to be eating) X calories a day and you were gaining weight. That should be the only "source" you need.
      - vidarh 10y ago
        > or claiming to be eating This, to me, is another reason why employing a feedback cycle and only relying on those estimates as a first approximation makes most sense. The estimates won't take into account how dilligent you are: do you estimate how many meatballs there is per 100 calories, or do you guesstimate based on measuring once? do you count the calories in your sugar free chewing gum (it's certainly not calorie free)? do you measure out the amount of ketchup you put on your food and count the calories? And so on. With a feedback cycle hopefully you're roughly consistent, and if you adjust on a weekly basis based on how you're doing you'll hopefully also counter-act your own self-sabotage (e.g. it's oh-so-easy to subconsciously take more of anything you've decided doesn't need measuring, like the above mentioned ketchup, or find yourself suddenly chewing 10x as much chewing gum...) (at the same time, one of the benefits of these shakes certainly is that if you adhere strictly at least for periods, you take dilligence out of the picture; though you still need a feedback cycle, as e.g. differences in how much energy you have can easily affect your activity levels and so change your rate)
    - jronald 10y ago
      You've done a great job proving it yourself - despite only consuming 2000 calories, you were still gaining weight. Unless you weren't counting anything aside from soylent (drinking, snacks, etc) you were past your maintenance consumption.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Anecdotes not being data and all that, both you and I had the same experience of that number being too high for us to lose weight. I don't have time to look for actual research on what the right averages should be, but the mor important point is that the averages are relatively unimportant: What matters is not what the average burn rate for your build is, but what you burn. And you yourself is the source for that calorie intake being too high for you. The averages matters for generc advice and as a starting point, but they can never be as good as measuring and adjusting. And I think that is part of the problem with this advice. Too many people seem to influence their intake by it but then get surprised and dejected when they don't get the result they expect, instead of using their result to tweak their intake accordingly.
  - davidcbc 10y ago
    2500 isn't an unreasonable maintenance estimate for someone that is 6'5 and 220lbs. Obviously if the op was gaining weight at 2000 calories it was a bad estimate for him (or he was eating more than he thought, which is often the case), but it isn't a crazy estimate or anything.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      It is an unreasonable maintenance estimate for someone who isn't engaged in a lot of physical activity as far as I can tell. The problem is not the estimate per se, it is that people don't understand what terms like sedentary and active implies, and tend to overestimate how active they are. E.g. the vast majority of people who work office jobs are sedentary, whether or not they think that their out-of-office activities makes them "active". An hour of activity here and there in the evening does not get anywhere near compensating for 8 hours in a chair.
- brandonmenc 10y ago
  Not trying to attack here - I'm seriously trying to help - but you must have been consuming calories you weren't aware of. For example, in my own experience counting calories, oil is always the killer - it's so calorie dense and sneaks into everything when you're cooking. You need 2400 calories a day to maintain weight, were supposedly consuming 2000, and were (off the cuff) burning close to 1000 a day from running and other activity. There's no way you'd gain weight at 220 lbs effectively consuming 1000 calories a day. I've lost weight eating more than that at 180 lbs body weight. Counting calories is very difficult. It's so easy to over- or under-estimate.
  - cptskippy 10y ago
    I was consuming one 2000 calorie packet of Soylent a day and nothing else. No snacks, no cheating, just the one a day.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    > You need 2400 calories a day to maintain weight No, his sources estimates 2400 calories a day. You're right to question if he's consumed more, but taking his claims at face value, they match my own experience and many, many anecdotes I've seen over the year to indicate that advice of maintenance levels around that range are way too high for most people. > and were (off the cuff) burning close to 1000 a day from running and other activity. I very much doubt that. My own off the cuff estimate is ~500 calories a day for that activity. > There's no way you'd gain weight at 220 lbs effectively consuming 1000 calories a day. I've lost weight eating more than that at 180 lbs body weight. More like 1500 by my account, possibly more depending on the intensity of his exercise. And if you assume lack of substantial muscle-weight in that, it matches pretty well with my own experience from before I started lifting weights - I had diets where I had to drop to around 1200/day before it made a noticeable difference. Once I started adding muscle, I could get away with more, but not a lot more. I don't doubt your numbers, but to me they'r why we shouldn't listen to estimates, but measure, as activity level (all day long, not just during exercise) and body composition makes the error margin on estimates of metabolic rate crazily high.
    - brandonmenc 9y ago

cptskippy 10y ago

I'm 6'5" and ~220lbs, every calorie calculator I've tried recommends 2400+ calories a day to maintain body weight with a sedentary lifestyle. At the time I tried this experiment I was running close to 30 miles a week and spending 2+ hours a week rock climbing.

vidarh 10y ago
Estimates like 2400kcal might work if you have a physically demanding job 40 hours a week. Running 30 miles a week and spending 2+ hours a week rock climbing will lift cause you to expend only maybe 500kcal a day extra on average, but if you spend the rest of that time being sedentary, you're still unlikely to end up at any more than 2000-2200kcal. Overall I think the typical old advice of 2500kcal for men and 2000 for women are dangerously out of tune with modern lifestyles. As your own results demonstrated, that's often way too high. Measure, weigh, adjust - ultimately the only thing that will tell you what the right amount of calories is for you is to actually adjust your intake and check what happens.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  Source?
  - kaishiro 10y ago
    Your own body? If you weren't losing weight that should be enough of a feedback cycle to tell you what you need to know.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Um, you were eating (or claiming to be eating) X calories a day and you were gaining weight. That should be the only "source" you need.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      > or claiming to be eating This, to me, is another reason why employing a feedback cycle and only relying on those estimates as a first approximation makes most sense. The estimates won't take into account how dilligent you are: do you estimate how many meatballs there is per 100 calories, or do you guesstimate based on measuring once? do you count the calories in your sugar free chewing gum (it's certainly not calorie free)? do you measure out the amount of ketchup you put on your food and count the calories? And so on. With a feedback cycle hopefully you're roughly consistent, and if you adjust on a weekly basis based on how you're doing you'll hopefully also counter-act your own self-sabotage (e.g. it's oh-so-easy to subconsciously take more of anything you've decided doesn't need measuring, like the above mentioned ketchup, or find yourself suddenly chewing 10x as much chewing gum...) (at the same time, one of the benefits of these shakes certainly is that if you adhere strictly at least for periods, you take dilligence out of the picture; though you still need a feedback cycle, as e.g. differences in how much energy you have can easily affect your activity levels and so change your rate)
  - jronald 10y ago
    You've done a great job proving it yourself - despite only consuming 2000 calories, you were still gaining weight. Unless you weren't counting anything aside from soylent (drinking, snacks, etc) you were past your maintenance consumption.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Anecdotes not being data and all that, both you and I had the same experience of that number being too high for us to lose weight. I don't have time to look for actual research on what the right averages should be, but the mor important point is that the averages are relatively unimportant: What matters is not what the average burn rate for your build is, but what you burn. And you yourself is the source for that calorie intake being too high for you. The averages matters for generc advice and as a starting point, but they can never be as good as measuring and adjusting. And I think that is part of the problem with this advice. Too many people seem to influence their intake by it but then get surprised and dejected when they don't get the result they expect, instead of using their result to tweak their intake accordingly.
- davidcbc 10y ago
  2500 isn't an unreasonable maintenance estimate for someone that is 6'5 and 220lbs. Obviously if the op was gaining weight at 2000 calories it was a bad estimate for him (or he was eating more than he thought, which is often the case), but it isn't a crazy estimate or anything.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    It is an unreasonable maintenance estimate for someone who isn't engaged in a lot of physical activity as far as I can tell. The problem is not the estimate per se, it is that people don't understand what terms like sedentary and active implies, and tend to overestimate how active they are. E.g. the vast majority of people who work office jobs are sedentary, whether or not they think that their out-of-office activities makes them "active". An hour of activity here and there in the evening does not get anywhere near compensating for 8 hours in a chair.
brandonmenc 10y ago
Not trying to attack here - I'm seriously trying to help - but you must have been consuming calories you weren't aware of. For example, in my own experience counting calories, oil is always the killer - it's so calorie dense and sneaks into everything when you're cooking. You need 2400 calories a day to maintain weight, were supposedly consuming 2000, and were (off the cuff) burning close to 1000 a day from running and other activity. There's no way you'd gain weight at 220 lbs effectively consuming 1000 calories a day. I've lost weight eating more than that at 180 lbs body weight. Counting calories is very difficult. It's so easy to over- or under-estimate.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  I was consuming one 2000 calorie packet of Soylent a day and nothing else. No snacks, no cheating, just the one a day.
- vidarh 10y ago
  > You need 2400 calories a day to maintain weight No, his sources estimates 2400 calories a day. You're right to question if he's consumed more, but taking his claims at face value, they match my own experience and many, many anecdotes I've seen over the year to indicate that advice of maintenance levels around that range are way too high for most people. > and were (off the cuff) burning close to 1000 a day from running and other activity. I very much doubt that. My own off the cuff estimate is ~500 calories a day for that activity. > There's no way you'd gain weight at 220 lbs effectively consuming 1000 calories a day. I've lost weight eating more than that at 180 lbs body weight. More like 1500 by my account, possibly more depending on the intensity of his exercise. And if you assume lack of substantial muscle-weight in that, it matches pretty well with my own experience from before I started lifting weights - I had diets where I had to drop to around 1200/day before it made a noticeable difference. Once I started adding muscle, I could get away with more, but not a lot more. I don't doubt your numbers, but to me they'r why we shouldn't listen to estimates, but measure, as activity level (all day long, not just during exercise) and body composition makes the error margin on estimates of metabolic rate crazily high.
  - brandonmenc 9y ago