Actually, yes it is.

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat...a-calorie.html

Op should read this, and most of the other articles here:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/articles

And should probably just not listen to what 99% of the people ITT are saying.

Wow, I opened this thread ready to take my lumps, then remarkably read congratulations instead. Just continuing the theme of "I thought I knew everything, but I don't know anything!"

Well, since I've started logging (or should I say, since I saw in numbers what those bagels were doing to me), I've gone over my fat and protein targets each day, and way under my carb targets.

Good/bad/indifferent?

"Down" to once a week? Before this summer, I usually didn't drink six beers in a YEAR. My drinking has only recently skyrocketed UP to once a week!

Yeah, once a week would be the absolute max, and now that I'm taking this stuff seriously, I'd be surprised if that wasn't cut in half immediately, and cut even further as we move down the line.

Good, assuming you also hit or were pretty close to your calorie target. Over on protein is definitely a win.

good. while we have been preaching calorie is a calorie, its not quite that simple. google thermic effect of food and realize that protein actually uses moar body resources to process.

protein takes like 20-30% of the calorie to process. fat is like instantly processed and only requires 1-3%. so by eating moar protein, you can eat a bit moar calories. it gives you a bit of a buffer.

thats why everyone preaches protein. its moar filling per calorie, and it uses moar energy to process.

See the Lustig/Aragon debate for an exception.

YTF, not gonna give advice (yet) since it'll just be lost in the abyss, and I'm sure you're doing good things to start off. Just wanted to ask, why do you drink so much Diet Coke? Not hating or implying anything, I just wanna hear your answer.

Draft Beer in the US is typically 12 oz glasses that we have been taught is 16oz. Order a 12 oz bottle of beer, ask for a glass and try it yourself.

PP

0 cals, sweet, yummy, caffeine

Wow, just logged Wednesday's numbers, they blow me away. I guess I was feeling guilty about last night's beer.

BREAKFAST: Same ol', veggie omelet in olive oil and sausage links, except this time I added a fourth link--hey, they come 14 to a pack, you do the math. 671 Cals.

LUNCH: Same ol' Caesar salad w/boiled chicken breast at work. This time I noticed they sprinkled a pinch of some sort of grated cheese, I'll have to find out what that is, but there was so little of it, you couldn't even taste it. Until I find out the pinch of cheese is a game changer, I'm still figuring this one as 384 cals.

DINNER: My specialty, chicken teriyaki bowl! 7.5 oz boneless chicken breast, marinaded in teriyaki sauce (measured the leftover marinade, each chicken breast soaked up about 0.5 oz of teriyaki sauce, and most of that probably flowed out while cooking, based on the mess in my George Foreman grill, but I'll still count it as 0.5 oz). One bag of Uncle Ben's Boil-in-Bag white rice. Steam some broccoli and shredded carrots. Serve chopped chicken and veggies over the rice in a big bowl, dump some more teriyaki sauce over the whole thing (I measured out a quarter-cup, and that turns out to be way more than I usually add), and stir! It's fun to stir, and delicious, it tastes like candy, kids love it, it seems pretty healthy to me, and best of all, it's only 689 cals if you can eat the whole thing!

Only problem with it is that I skipped the usual pre-dinner small salad, and now that I sit here and type this with the giant empty bowl next to me, I'm still a little hungry. I'm still almost 1000 cals shy of my target for the day, and I've got one Milky Way ice cream bar left in the fridge that somehow survived the purge. It feels weird to go ahead and eat it, it's contrary to all the dieting advice I've received lifetime, but you guys keep assuring me that it's OK, so I'm having the ice cream bar (it's mostly air, any way), and still coming in 700+ calories under my 2710 target.

Did you feel *that* much hungrier eating only 2000cal as opposed to the 2700+?

I don't really know much about dieting... but I don't see why you shouldn't just aim for 2000 cal per day... It's plenty of food.

He's used to huge amount of calories, his daily maintenance is like ~4500cal, being at 2700 is much better in the longrun than 2000, thats too extreme at this point

That's an extremely solid day ytf, good work. It goes without saying that milky way bars can probably be substituted for something more filling or whatever, but if there's one left in the fridge, it's one left in the fridge

Actually, this is something I've wondered for a while... I'm not necessarily talking about op and I'm basically just guessing (and I should know better), but it feels like this "oh, he's 400lbs, his maintenance is 4000cal" story is stupid. What is he maintaining? 250lbs of fat?

Is he really spending 4500 cals per day staying alive? (Obviously not because he is storing it as fat).

Not sure what you mean, "what is he maintaining?". His weight. If he (again, not OP particularly) ate less, he would lose weight. If he ate more, he would gain weight. If he ate at maintenance, he would stay the same weight.

"Staying alive", no. If he ate less than 4500 calories, he wouldn't die, he would lose weight (in this hypothetical).

So why is 2000 cal not sustainable?

EDIT TO ADD: Wait! I just remembered I bought bananas today for the first time in forever! Cancel the ice cream bar, I'll have a banana instead, and see how that goes.

In theory, sure it is. In practice, it probably makes it a lot more likely someone who's used to 4500 calories a day would fail. That's a lot less food to get used to.

If you're of the "suck it up, fattie" mentality though, then yeah 2000 calories works fine. I'm not. You might be more extreme still and say that everything is banned except eggs, tuna, chicken and broccoli, and let's limit it to 1500 calories, too. The weight will melt off for sure, but in practice, probably not for long I'm guessing. Perhaps down the road, it'll be easier to eat even less.

Let's see, how do I put this?

At 2700 the past several days, I've felt satisfied after each meal.
At 2000 today, I still felt hungry after dinner, which hasn't happened all week.

Now you ask, "Did you feel *that* much hungrier" today?

Well, no, I guess I wasn't *that* much hungrier, as the banana did the trick.

But the fact that I felt hungry at all is a huge difference from not feeling hungry at all, even if it's only *that* much. See what I mean?

Some of you, when dieting, seem to carry hunger around with you between meals. I'm striving to avoid that.

But I mean you can eat a fair bit of food for 2000cal... it's not like you're going to be starving yourself.

Fair enough. My question was pretty stupid anyway.

Are you a 400 pound fattie who's lived on mcdonalds and chocolate your whole life? I'm not either. I mean, it's not that you're "wrong" per se, you can indeed eat quite a lot of food on 2000 calories, but I think saying "suck it up fattie time to get healthy" to a more extreme degree is just unsustainable and thus really bad advice. Sure it's possible in theory (JP OSU did a pretty sick transformation going from ~450 to something very normal by eating 16-1700 calories a day for 2 years, or something pretty close to that), but in practice I think it would hurt compliance for most people, a lot. suzzer would agree with you though (to be fair, he was pretty ridiculed for it).

I've been reporting my food log, but not much else, and I have a few observations to make, even so early in the process:

--my energy level is already picking up.

--As indicated ITT, I'm perfectly satisfied at this calorie count. It was all that bread that was killing me! I've always eaten bread with every meal, and lots of it.

--I beat off the other night without porn, which never happens any more. And my dick was a lot harder than normal. I had gone to Viagra a couple of years ago, and the results it gave me were startling--suddenly, a routine hard-on became a raging, rock-hard, feel-like-a-young-man-again hard-on. I haven't had need for the Viagra for about a year now, but this weekend's spank session starred an erection that was startling in its intensity, reminiscent of those halcyon Viagra days.

--I can't wait to get on the scale when I wake up Friday.