Checking the calorie calculations are correct
 

Hi everyone, I'm new. I decided to diet after being put on meds three weeks ago which have the pleasant side effect of reducing my appetite (so far at least), and I've been tracking what I eat with Fitday PC for the last week. I'm pretty short, and certainly way off the "2000 calories for women" average that gets quoted all the time. I'm probably short enough that the 500 calorie shortfall per day that is often recommended is too much for me too, so I just wanted to check that I've got the calculations about right. I've been entering custom foods into Fitday wherever needed, including if the stats they have don't match the ones on the box, and I'm entering in raw veg in order to avoid the ungodly amount of salt and fat it automatically adds, along with the actual amount of olive oil that I used.

I'm also being cautious because I'm disabled with severe ME/CFIDS, which not only bans exercise (the hallmark of the condition is that exertion makes it worse) but may also be messing with my metabolism, so it's entirely possible that this won't work at all. The plan is to give it a month after I first started eating less and then buy the scales if it seems to be going well. So far, judging by the fit of my clothes and how I look in the mirror, it does seem to be going well, huzzah!

In terms of diet, I've been vegan for many years and know how to cook nutritiously, combine proteins and so forth, and I'm making an especial effort to cook well at the moment. I'm eating the same size supper as before, but slightly smaller breakfasts and lunches, with small snacks only if I end up with calories to make up, and trying to stick to salad or soup for lunch. Actually, I might try to keep the balance with small snacks, I suspect it's doing better things for my blood sugar. I'm drinking plenty of water and some herbal tea, and I'm taking multivitamin supplements.

Gender: Female.
Age: 33
Height: 4'11
Weight: probably about 135lb
Activity level: makes most sedentary people look active!
Diet: smaller portions, sensible options

After customising the metabolism page with hours of sleep, hours spent pootling at the computer, hours spent lying down etc., it reckons I burn about 1470 calories a day. I've been eating about 1000 to 1100, and to my joy, haven't been hungry past the first few days. I think I'm in what they call the honeymoon period, I'm really rather enjoying this.

Firstly, do the calorie calculations sound good to you? If I try different calorie calculators on different sites, I get vastly different figures.

Secondly, I gather it's normal to feel chilly and get a certain level of menstrual cycle disruption. How long does this tend to continue for? Obviously I'm not getting cold due to losing fat, I've not been dieting long enough for that. I've started taking ginger supplements as it's an all-round useful herb, which will hopefully help with the circulation and digestion and so forth, and I may consider adding in evening primrose oil (on top of the 2g echium oil I already take) if my hormones misbehave for long.

By the way, I'm visually impaired, so I would hugely appreciate it if people could refrain from posting in different fonts, font sizes, italics, bold or what have you. No Squint is great for standardising colours, and Adblock for getting rid of smilies and sparkly signatures and such, but there's nothing I can do about the first lot.

Welcome to Fitday.

I'd say your number look fairly close based on the calculators I use. Keep in mind this is not an exact science for anyone. If you can get your actual results close to your projected results you're doing great. For me, and most here I'd suspect, these tools are used as a guide to help us stay on course.

For you, since you say your activity level is non-existent, I would image that your burn rate is much closer to your basal metabolic rate than to the sedentary calculation, which going to be almost 100 calories less. This would put your burn somewhere around 1370 (a complete resting rate would even less), though you could actually be doing the 1470 as FD states. At any rate, with your average consumption at 1100 you can expect to lose from 1/2 to 3/4 of a pound per week depending on the actual burn rate. Just track everything as best you can and you will learn of any variances and how to account for them. If you're like me it's likely that the variances will come from not meticulously measuring food. I tend to guesstimate portions. (maybe that's why I've been gaining lately...:D)

As for your other inquiries regarding hormones and cycles I can't help you.

Well, my activity level isn't entirely non-existent, I'm not in a coma. My day is generally a mix of sitting up (using the laptop, sewing when I'm up to it) and lying down (resting, watching TV, reading), with the odd bit of standing or walking around (probably an hour's worth overall, including getting my meals together). I did set up Fitday with reasonable estimations of how long I spend doing each of those. Do you reckon its calorie estimations for "light seated activity" are likely to be realistic for someone sitting at the laptop? It estimates 1.27 cal/min for that, and for "typing while sitting" it estimates 1.53 cal/min (honestly, these numbers are so odd I suspect they're converted from another format), so it seems like it shouldn't be too far out.

I'm trying to be careful about measuring foods. A lot of the time, I measure anyway as I can't do it by eye: 3 oz pasta per serving, 1/3 cup rice, 4 cutlery spoonfuls of oats for porridge. What has been most instructive has been finding out how different foods vary with regard to calorie content. Bagels have a surprising amount, for instance so I've stopped thinking of them as smallish snack material. You just inspired me to make sure that I knew exactly how many almonds I fished out for a snack just now - and I'm glad I did, they turn out to be surprisingly calorific. Though I still have a few calories left to make up for today, which is nice, it means we can curl up and munch grapes together later. (Er, the "we" there referred to my partner, I'm not randomly inviting you over to eat grapes!)

1/2 to 3/4 lb a week is slower than some people get, but I don't think that cutting 500 calories a day would be wise, especially if I am actually using more like 1370 than 1470. Any weight loss at all would be fantastic, frankly, especially if I can eventually get down to the weight I used to be. I'm now at the stage of dithering over whether to buy scales or wait a bit longer. I think I'm losing a bit of weight, a couple of key garments are fitting better, although it's always tricky with clothes since they shrink and stretch a bit with washing. But then I gather that weight loss doesn't behave typically in the first few weeks anyway? I'm fairly confident that I can keep up this level of calories providing that I don't suddenly get ravenously hungry (due to meds or whatever), and that even if the appetite suppressant effect wears off, I've got myself into enough of a good routine that I should be able to keep going. Do you know if it's possible to be eating a sensible amount less but still fail to lose weight at all, say due to meds or screwy metabolism or something?

I'm not a nutritionist or any other expert. I can only say what happened with me. I think, for myself, the early going was much easier to shed the pounds. I feel my body is always attempting to stabilize itself and after I've been doing the same thing for a while it slowly stops working and I have to change things up to break the plateau.

Again, I have no professional background in these matters. That being said, I suppose it's possible.

I think you should just continue working at it and see how your body responds. Most people here will tell you that adjustments are necessary to keep losing over extended periods of time.

What sort of adjustments do you mean, in terms of diet?

Hi Esofia,

Not a dietician, a nutritionist, or an MD, but I can tell you what I've figured out in four months...however much that's worth!

Another poster here, Cassie, has made the allegory before that dieting is often akin to throwing something to the wall and seeing if it sticks. It's often, unfortunately, a trial-and-error process since you're dealing with a biological system (your body) that is unique to YOU -- no one else has your exact same body and internal states.

Different diets and strategies tend to work for different people. The first few weeks of weight loss often go faster for most, since you tend to shed a lot of water weight. Then it slows down. You can hit "plateaus" where you don't lose any weight at all, even if you've been sticking right to your numbers, and you have to shake up your routine to get your metabolism moving again.

This can mean adding/changing exercise (even just walking), or changing your "macros" -- that is, your percentages of carbs/protein/fat in your diet.

For example, when I first started dieting, I had VERY high carbs (60-70% per day) even though my calories were down, and I found that making a conscious effort to up my protein helped my body a lot. Now I aim for 30% of all of my calories consumed to be from protein -- it fills me up for longer, and in general I eat less. Sometimes I miss the mark, but that's ok, no one is perfect! I had started on a 50% carbs/30% protein/20% fat regiment a couple of months ago, and now I'm seriously thinking of changing it to 40/30/30 carbs/protein/fat because A) That's what my body seems to be responding to and B) having lower carbs is feeling good. 40/30/30 is a common regiment, but you can find what works for you too.

Also, how much water are you drinking daily? Water is very VERY important. It helps flush your system of sodium (which retains water and weight) and helps you more easily metabolize/flush fat. Plus, staying hydrated is awesome and important!

I hope any of this helps you at all, and I wish you good luck on your journey. You seem to be very conscious of what your'e doing and what goes into your mouth, and learning the caloric content is definitely a journey!

I think I'm drinking about 2l a day, 3/4 of which is water and the rest is herbal tea. A good amount for my height, I reckon?

Adding exercise is unfortunately not an option, as I discussed above. I'm fairly limited in how I can change my macros since I'm vegan, but I'm keeping an eye on the balance there and noting what's going on for days which are higher in protein. At the moment I'm averaging 28% fat, 52% carbs and 15% protein. I'm not planning to go for a low-carb diet, especially since I've been told by doctors to eat carbs regularly; low glycaemic index, on the other hand, is quite a good idea. As far as I can tell, my diet is pretty low GI, though it's a real pity that FitDay doesn't track sugars. My diet has always been naturally quite low in sodium, and if anything I tend a little towards low blood pressure, so I'm not worried about that. It's not as if I'm eating processed foods, beyond the odd slice of wholemeal bread or what have you. Protein will probably improve further once the local Chinese supermarket reopens and I can have tofu again.

How long do plateaus tend to go on for? Long enough that they're a serious problem, or is it more than they last long enough to make you antsy but aren't necessarily serious?

The amount of water per day doesn't seem to really depend on height, but rather how much weight you'd like to lose, and more can't really hurt.

If you're drinking 2L (a little more than 8 cups, by U.S. measurements) of water a day, you're getting a bit over the daily recommended amount. A lot of common thought here says that you should drink that amount (roughly 2L) and then about 1/4L more for every 10 lbs. you'd like to lose.

I hope you can get more tofu soon! I admit I know little about a vegan diet as I do eat meat and animal products, and if you're comfortable with the protein you're getting now, that's good. I just knew it helped for me!

Lowering sodium is always good for the heart; I just know that if I have a "high-sodium day" (usually due to eating out) that I will retain water for a couple of days until the sodium flushes out of my system, but if it's not a problem for you, then great!

Plateaus can go on anywhere from a couple of weeks to months and months... they're usually not a serious problem, and they happen to everyone. As long as you're feeling healthy and know you are eating in your limits, it's probably okay to plateau without having to worry about it (though they are very frustrating). Happens to everyone - and the closer you get towards a goal weight, the harder it is to lose.

250ml more for every 10lb you'd like to lose? Surely that would end up with crazy amounts of water for people aiming for large-scale weight loss? There is such a thing as drinking too much water, you know! Come to that, there is such a thing as not getting enough salt. You don't hear much about it in Western countries where salt intake is usually too high, but it's still possible, especially if you're losing a lot of sweat through heat or exercise, and if severe it can kill you. (There are also reports of people having a modest amount of salt, way too much water, and ending up with the sodium in their body so diluted that it killed them.) Having just done a quick google, apparently the minimum recommended amount of sodium is 1,500 mg, and the maximum is 2,300mg. I just had a look at my charts, and I seem to be within that most days, slightly above it once, under it a few times, which probably evens out overall. I can see how it would be very easy to go way over the recommended amount of sodium if you're eating processed food at all, or anything particularly salty. I've been told to increase my salt intake in the past, when my blood pressure was about 90/60 (possibly lower than that when I hadn't just had the exhaustion of a trip to the doctor's) and I was blacking out a lot. My blood pressure seems to be normal for the last few years, thankfully, though I still black out occasionally.

Tofu is useful stuff, and turns out to be even higher in protein than I thought. Some people say you should balance out the, erm, probably phytoestrogens by consuming a little seaweed with it, can't quite remember how it works but I tend to put seaweed with my tofu anyway, at least when I can be bothered (which from now on will be practically always, I hope). The whole phytoestrogen thing is controversial, of course, you get people extrapolating practically everything from the Japanese rates of breast cancer and such, even though you can't possibly reduce an entirely different diet and lifestyle to a single factor. From what I've gathered, going through a block of tofu a week is fine, it's when you have soya added to practically everything you eat that you start running into problems.

Out of curiosity, are you Jewish too? I'm a humanist by belief but was brought up Jewish, and I'm used to the convention of adding "-ele" as a diminutive (and have been known to do this to the name of a Hindu/Sikh friend of mine). There's a rather good short story by I.B. Singer called "Taubele and her Demon Lover" which I've always been fond of.

For the water -- 250mL for every 10 lbs., within reason of course! There is certainly such a thing as too much water.

I drink between 3-4L of water a day with no side effects other than having to use the bathroom a lot (in fact, I look forward to all the water and my body seems to want it - a far cry from when I barely drank any per day and lived on soda...) and I know others on here that often aim for 4L per day, but I haven't seen too much over. There's only so much you can drink without feeling bloated.

I do think the salt problem is largely Western, you're right. I went routinely over my salt intake every day without even realizing it until I had to sit down and track it.

It's interesting to meet a fellow low blood pressure sufferer, though your case seems to be a bit more severe than mine - for the greater part of my adulthood I usually clocked in around 90/65 or 95/65, though I had gotten as low as 85/55 on one occasion (after a fainting spell, at the hospital). I haven't fainted as much in the past few years, thank goodness, but I'm usually down for the count at least a couple of times a year (usually in the summer, when it's very hot). Phytoestrogens is such a hot area of research right now (I do study hormones in part) but you have a very healthy view on it - reducing anything complex to one factor is bound to lead to a lot of trouble. A skeptical but informed eye is often best.

I am not Jewish - my last name is "Aubele." I'm told the ancestry is from the Black Forest/Dusseldorf region of Germany, which was a hotly contested border with France for a very long time - I happen to believe my last name looks more French than German, though it does not have a French pronunciation. I was brought up Irish Catholic (the other side of my family is Irish) though I am lapsed from religion. I had never heard of the "-ele" ending as a diminutive though! How interesting - and now I simply must look up that book, that's too much of a coincidence to set aside. Not sure if my lover is a demon, but he certainly acts like it from time to time (as we all do!)

It's not actually the name of the book, it's one in a collection of short stories. Short Friday might be the collection. Like most of Singer's stories, it's set in a Jewish community in Poland a few centuries ago, with lashings of the occult. In this case, Taubele is a widow, and the "demon lover" is in fact an impoverished teacher who sneaks into her house, tells her he's a demon, and makes up all sorts of incredible stories for her. He does write some stories where the demons are literally real, however, and plenty more where the demons aren't literal but the situation is pretty demonic.

Ooh, you study hormones? Can you tell me more about what weight loss tends to do to them? Admittedly three weeks in is a bit early to tell, and perhaps I'm just stressed this month, but mine seem to be turning somersaults. I've gathered that spotting is usual when dieting, and I've heard theories about fat cells releasing oestrogen on their way out, but not really much about how it affects PMS and the like. This cycle has been nasty for PMS, odd for bleeding, shorter luteal phase than usual, and pretty much got let off the hook for migraine.

Thanks for the information about the book, I'll see if I can find it!

I'm actually a neuroscientist, and one of my research areas of interest is how steroid sex hormones (like testosterone and estrogen) affect brain functioning. My particular interest has been hormones in the androgen family in men - there's far more research done about "estrogen brain" in women, but when people think of testosterone, they tend to think of hairy bodies and deep voices and sex drive -- not brain function. However, I believe that androgen is extremely important for proper brain function in men, and the lack of it is a bad thing. Thus, I would say I'm more of a testosterone guru than an estrogen guru!

I'm not an expert on hormones in terms of their effects on peripheral systems, and there are many, many more hormones other than the sex steroids or the steroid family of hormones. A change in diet can certainly affect your cycling, and I know in particular that the amount of fat in your diet seems to affect estrogen (as estrogens are necessarily dependent on fat for many of their metabolic properties). Thus, the amount of fat and the type of fat in the diet is the most likely to be affected by estrogens and to affect the cycle.

A low-fat diet tends to result in the excretion of more estrogen and estrogen metabolites from the system. A very low-fat diet can also cause irregularity in the cycle, especially if it's paired with a lot of fiber (basically, in doing this you're flushing out your estrogens). In contrast, a high-fat diet can cause more cramping and more protracted PMS symptoms in some women, but more regular periods (saturated fat, for some reason, seems to help the most with regular cycles. Go figure). Basically: Research has suggested that the more fat you consume, the higher your body's estrogen production will be. The less fat, the less estrogen. Fiber also plays a key role because it helps the body to flush out excess estrogen through the liver and bile duct: The liver pulls estrogen from the bloodstream, through the bile duct and into the intestinal tract, where fiber soaks it up and carries it out of the body with the rest of your waste.

You, of course, seem to have symptoms of both! Spotting could an irregular period (low estrogen) but the increased PMS could high estrogen. Thus, science is sometimes not an exact science. It may have to do with your balance of fats on particular days of the cycle, but I'm not a nutritionist nor a nurse or an MD (I'm a Ph.D.) and I wouldn't feel comfortable giving that sort of specific advice. Plus, there are plenty of other things that can affect your cycle (like stress, as you say).

Gaining or losing a lot of weight in a short time can also affect your menstrual cycle, but since you're only three weeks in and haven't lost a significant amount of weight, I doubt that your weight in general has much to do with it?

Estrogens do make it more difficult for women to lose body fat - the higher your estrogen, the harder it is to lose weight, especially around the belly and from "visceral" body fat (the body fat around your organs). However, it's natural for women to be higher in estrogen.

That's about as much as I know off the top of my head (and I double-checked the stuff about the liver, cause that was fuzzy). I'd say if it's bothering you, speak to your OBGYN about it.

I'm probably eating the same proportion of fat in my diet that I was before, which according to Fitday is 30% or a bit under. Not much is saturated fat, about 5% of my total calorie intake, and I don't eat any animal fats at all (which is presumably relevant since meat and dairy tend to have quite a lot of artificial hormones in them). Of course, I will be eating less fat now because I'm eating less overall, and I'm also refraining from some of the fattier foods - although even then, I really wasn't eating biscuits or crisps all that often, and come to that it was probably only two or three packets of biscuits (cookies in American, I think) a year. The problem with biscuits is that I will eat the entire pack in 24 hours at most, which is why I'm not even going to bother trying to have one now and again, I know it won't work. Anyway, I haven't changed what I eat all that much, it was always pretty healthy. I've just lowered the amounts and tweaked this and that, rather than needing to make mammoth changes.

Tangential rambling about biscuits aside, all I know about spotting is that a lot of women seem to be reporting it when they're losing weight, I get it sometimes due to having a copper IUD, and mine improved once I started taking echium oil (EFA supplement, basically meant to be the best veggie alternative to fish oils) about 18 months ago. We'll see what happens. I ovulated late this cycle and the last (weirdly low body temperatures last cycle too, no idea why), so I think stress is probably the factor there. I'm curious to see whether the shorter luteal phase continues. That's associated with PMS and excess oestrogen, and there's been the odd study reporting shorter luteal phase length with IUDs, though doctors all swear blind that copper IUDs don't affect your hormones. (Both the PMDD and the sudden weight gain started when I got the previous IUD, but since I'd had IUDs before without trouble, who knows what's happening there. Unfortunately I didn't start the FAM tracking until after I got the IUD, I'm using it as a warning system for the PMDD, so I don't know what my luteal phase length was before.) Something to do with prostaglandins, I think? I've started taking a good-quality ginger supplement, initially to help with feeling chilly (again, very common with dieting, they tell me), and also because apparently it's a damned good anti-inflammatory, for reasons which I can't quite remember but involving prostaglandins again, and I'd be thrilled if I could find an effective form of pain relief. So I'll be watching that with interest.

You've now got me curious about how androgen and its friends affect brain function when someone is undergoing hormone treatment as part of gender reassignment. I don't think I've ever known anyone FTM all that closely, at any rate not closely enough for them to tell me how hormone treatment felt.

I'm making a note of the various things that are cropping up and I'll mention them next time I speak to my GP, who covers the vast majority of my healthcare (and with whose blessing I am on this diet, don't worry). I'm in the UK where the system is a bit different. Women don't tend to see gynaecologists unless there's an actual problem, we don't have regular check-ups with them for instance, and right now I'm not under the care of a gynae. I've found my GP to be far more helpful with gynae matters than some of the gynaes I've seen anyway, she's a stonking good doctor.