It's pretty low calorie, msbelle. My gut says too low, but that's just me.

For goodness sake msbelle, that's only 3 Starbucks cookies!!

This 1200 calorie menu looks fairly tragic to me: [link]

Here's the "American cuisine" one: [link]

I feel like I have been eating way more than that 1600 cal/day diet and yet FitDay tells me no.

The UN's hunger-fighting organization, the World Food Programme, generally cites anything below 2350 calories/day as below the "food security" line (aka, not adequate intake, or, what used to be called HUNGER). (Here's an article that cites that amount: [link]

However, I'm assuming that's a very general number, applied globally to all adults (men and women). And, frankly, American women don't have to do 14 hours of hard physical labor a day the way men in developing countries do t edit (I'm making an assumption here that men in developing countries who don't have cars or public transportation and elevators, etc., and who probably don't work 9-to-5 desk jobs, expend more energy than the average American), so a small-to-average American woman like msbelle wouldn't need 2350 calories a day unless she was doing some serious triathalon training.

I've often read that, to maintain weight, multiply your weight x 10. If you engage in light activity it's weight x 12, moderate activity is weight x 13, and strenuous activity is weight x 15.

YCaloricNeedsMV.

So, theoretically, if you multiply your ideal weight by 10, you will lose weight if you weigh more than that?

I've often read that, to maintain weight, multiply your weight x 10.

Huh! V. interesting.

Vortex thinks like I do.

Hangry is my new favorite word.

Ooh, I like that. But I don't think so. Say you're at 250 and want to go to 150. 1500 calories a day is just going to shut your system down hard, rather than start stripping the lbs off.

I do like Steph's little formula, though. And I choose to believe it is true, because the body has so many funky little points of symmetry.

So, theoretically, if you multiply your ideal weight by 10, you will lose weight if you weigh more than that?

Theoretically. The body really isn't a calorimeter, and way more factors go into gaining/losing/maintaing weight than "calories in < calories out."

If you eat too little, your body thinks it's starving, and so it'll hang onto as much weight as it can. Yes, if you push on through and subsist on 600 calories/day, sooner or later you'll have that lovely Skeletor look, but your body will fight you for it.

Like, 1200 calories/day for *me* -- there is No. Fucking. Way.