Shannashine22's Journal, 07 Feb 22

It's also the absolute minimum a complete sedentary woman should eat. It's not really healthy. Rather have a smaller deficit so that you get enough nutrients & protein. And if you workout at all, then it's most definitely too low. You also need to fuel your workouts properly and be able to recover.  

agreed with SuperRiot 👌  

Yeah it's definitely too low. Eating too little can start affecting metabolism, there's a lot of research about this online. So in the long term it might actually negatively affect weight loss rather than help.  

What you might find helpful is to do a body fat calculator (either with a professional at a gym or get an approximate by doing an online one where you give all your measurements. Then you can do a BMR calculator using body fat % rather than just height and weight. It’s far more accurate because height and weight vary so much with fat vs muscle which need different amounts of calories. People can say it’s too low, but I see you are very small, and if you are short and not too active it may fit you. PS toddlers and babies and children do sometimes have higher metabolic rates than adults - they need to GROW and we don’t 🙃 

I get by on 800 cal per day... I'm not hungry, not tired, don't feel faint, enjoy my food very much... I'm a preschool teacher, so not particularly sedentary either. I eat wholegrains, lean protein and lots of veggies. feel great.  

@Monika You might feel fine now, but you are going to cause a lot of damage. There's no way you get sufficient nutrients on 800 calories a day. 

If you get your BMR worked out you will see exactly how many calories you need. I read online today staying in a 30% deficit of your BMR will help you lose weight but you can only do it for so long until you plateau. The reason for the plateau is because your metabolism would have gotten use to it so having high days and low days definitely seems to be the way to go. I would just say make sure you get the nutrients/calories in that your body needs on the high days.  

1200 is the recommended lowest intake for an adult female... My RDI is 1330 but intake ranges between 800 to 1200 and sometimes way over. 

Depends on your weight. Formula is: BMR x 1.2 if not active. Your BMR will be 1200 if you weight like 50kg. So yes whoever told you this was somewhat right. You will be loosing muscle if you eat so little - last thing you want to do even if you aren’t an athlete 

It is not healthy to eat less than your BMR And for most people it is not below 1400 calories