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February 7, 2007
The Extreme Difficulty of Recommending Calorie Levels
[Disclaimer: as you know, I'm not a doctor, nurse, registered dietician, or gourmet chef. I'm just a girl practicing CR who lost a bunch of weight, feels great, met the man of her dreams, and bought a house with an orange kitchen. I've done a lot of research and have quite a bit of experience, but I am not an authority. And even if I was, you still shouldn't take anything I say as absolute truth -- reasonable people can disagree, and it's always best to combine advice you get from others with your own research and self-experimentation to come to your own set of conclusions.]
I get a lot of questions along the lines of, "How much should I be eating?"
That question is very difficult to answer because it depends on individual factors that vary tremendously from person to person. Here's a list of questions I would ask before I would even attempt to answer that question:
a) How many calories are you eating now? Are you also tracking your nutrition to make sure you're getting your RDAs? Are you carefully weighing and measuring, or are you guessing?
b) Are you doing exercise, especially bone building exercise (the kind with impact?)
c) Height/weight/age/how much has your weight fluctuated over your lifetime?
d) Are you getting blood tests regularly, at least once a year?
e) What is your activity level?
f) How often do you eat out, and what kind of meals, where?
g) What are your long and short term goals? Lose weight, slow biological aging process, something in between?
h) Did you just start restricting calories, or have you been doing it for awhile?
i) How consistent are your calorie levels?
j) Do you drink alcohol? How much, what kind, when?
k) What are your other health concerns and risk factors?
For anyone, my suggestions will largely be the same:
1. Don't lose weight too fast. No more than two pounds a month if you're already thin, no more than five pounds a month if you're starting moderately overweight.
2. Search out a doctor who has some understanding of CR or is willing to learn, and will order you bloodtests and monitor your progress.
3. If you're not willing to put in the effort to monitor your nutrition, serious CR is not for you. A more mild version is the only safe option.
4. If you are willing to put in the work, the answer is still to start slowly, always leaning on the side of caution. I'm three years in and still fine tuning my calorie level.
5. Pay no attention to the claims of low calorie levels that you read here and there... most people have no earthly idea how many calories they're actually consuming, and if you try to eat very low calorie levels based on something you read, you may harm yourself, and at least set yourself up for a binge. People who don't weigh and measure don't really know, with the rare exceptions of people who have been doing it for a long, long time and have fairly consistent diets. (We have a few of those rare exceptions around, you know who you are.)
6. If it doesn't feel good, it's not working right. You should not feel lightheaded, weak, dizzy, or exhausted (unless your howling calico kept you up all night, which clearly is not a side effect of CR.)
7. Doing serious CR requires serious responsibility for your own health. You must commit to getting your bloodtests regularly, doing bone buidling and cardio exercise, eating your RDAs, doing your research to determine what is right for you. You can just lose weight and feel better with a lot less work, but if you want to take your calories lower for the purposes of slowing your biological aging process, you need to commit to doing it right. Otherwise, you risk harming yourself.
It's easy to give recommendations to people who just want to lose weight and feel better. Most people who are overweight can dramatically improve their health and quality of life with just a few small changes, especially if they're willing to weigh and measure their food and track calories and nutrition just long enough to get a clear idea of what they're eating. KNOW WHAT YOU EAT is the first rule of healthy weight loss, in my book. Most people have no clue. If you own a food scale and nutritional software, you are already way ahead of the game.
For most folks, the level of precision that I practice is not necessary. Most people's goals are moderate, so their practice can be moderate. After a few weeks or months of measuring and tracking, they'll get the hang of a healthy diet, get on the path to losing the weight they want, and develop a consciousness of how they got unhealthy in the first place. When you discover the magic of getting the right nutrition, problems with hunger and cravings tend to go away, as long as your keeping your total calories high enough for your body's energy needs (factoring in age, height, activity level, etc.)
For those who want to practice more serious CR and are willing to invest the time and effort, the answers become much more complex. The lab rats who lived the longest were much more severely CR'd than any of us would find tolerable, so we have to make a complex calculation based on our personal health risks and concerns, our quality of life issues, and what makes us feel our own personal best. My philosophy is that I want to live as long as I can, as healthy as I can, while enjoying every moment that I'm alive to the fullest. That influences everything I do, not just my CR practice. I don't see my CR practice as a trade off between happiness in the here and now and a longer life: rather, my CR practice both maximizes my pleasure today and my chances of having similar pleasure in the years to come.
Your philosophy, however, may be different. I have known CR practitioners who do consider their daily practice to be a sacrifice, yet it's a far smaller sacrifice in their minds to the long term sacrifice of life and health that they believe, based on their reading of the evidence, a non-CR'd life would cause them. We all have to make our own decisions.
If you're an actress and you want to look as young as you can for as long as you can, you may be willing to put considerable effort into CR, including turning down the snacks at the Oscar pre-party, in order to achieve your goals.
At the risk of repeating myself, we have to make our own decisions. We can learn a lot from each other, from the scientific research (more soon on how to read evidence) and from our on-going self-experimentation. But no one can tell us what matters most in our own lives, what our values are, and what our long term vision of our future should be. If you find yourself in a situation where someone else is trying to tell you any of those things, I'd advise you to take a step back and ask yourself, and if appropriate, any spiritual authority you like to consult, "Is this person interested in what's right for me, or for him or herself?" We've all had partners, friends, and family members who want to impose their values on us. Sometimes we come to agree with them over time, but sometimes we come to find a different path. I've observed that all of the life decisions that I've made that turned out well were made when I paid attention to what felt right *to me*, sometimes flying in the face of what others told me to do. To me, to me I say! Call it selfish if you want. Too many women (and men too, but we chicks I think are particularly prone to the people pleasing disease) have wasted too many years living inauthentic lives because we fear to stand up for who we are, what we believe, and what we want for ourselves.
If you choose to start down the path of serious CR (and you moderates beware... some of you may find yourselves headed in that direction in a few years... never say never, lest we laugh at you -- in a nice way -- when you change your mind) you will very likely face social struggles, people thinking you're weird, at least one person telling you you're too skinny, and a mysterious aversion to sports on TV. (Wait, the sports on TV thing is just me, not a CR side effect!) Maybe the world will become more accepting of our choices, but I doubt it, at least not any time soon. In a country where the overweight and obese outnumber those of "healthy" weight, where food is viewed as a moral issue, and where the public debate over what's sensible for human beings to consume is driven by lust for profit, not concern for health, I think we're going to be swimming upstream for a long, long time.
But then again, that's better than rotting on the banks with the rest of the dead fish.
Now that's a foul metaphor if I ever smelled one.
Posted by april at February 7, 2007 7:42 AM
Comments
Ahhh, you double posted today (HOW do you do this?) And I had blogged a response to your first post about (along the lines of Sheila's comment)
Thank you April. This was a wonderful discussion. Very well thought out and obviously necessary given the amount of people reading and writing these days.
D
Posted by: Deborah at February 7, 2007 9:18 AM
Love the post!
Posted by: carolyn at February 7, 2007 12:47 PM
Another wonderful post, April, packed with truly useful information for both CRONies and we mere obesity avoiders and health-seekers. I think, though, that it's a "fishy" metaphor, rather than a "foul/fowl" one. JD ;-)
Posted by: Judith at February 7, 2007 2:00 PM
Is it all right to ask questions here?
if so, how does weighing your food compare with measuring with measuring cups and tablespoons?
I don't have any scales yet and frankly, i think i'd feel silly using one.
Posted by: bethsheba at February 7, 2007 6:01 PM
We love questions!
Cups and tablespoons are fine for things that are fairly liquid like yogurt, cottage cheese, oil, etc, but it's pretty difficult to get a leaf of kale or a breast of chicken into a measuring cup, so many of us use food scales in addition. They're cheap at Target.
Loved your comment the other day, btw! (if that was the same person -- two different email addresses but same name)
a
Posted by: april at February 7, 2007 6:08 PM
I don't have a scale yet either. I'm trying to figure out what scales are good - there are do many! Based on everything I've read, scales make a huge difference, not only for CR, but also for just recipe repeatability. The really good cooks all use scales because they're more accurate than 1 cup, 3 tsp, etc.
Any scale recommendations?
Posted by: Sierra at February 7, 2007 6:09 PM
Sierra,
I bought a Salter electronic kitchen scale a couple of months ago and it works great. It was $30. Here is a web site that has it, I didn't buy it there though: http://www.cutleryandmore.com/details.asp?SKU=10635
It does everything I need. I've been using it in conjunction with Cron-O-Meter to get a handle on my daily caloric and nutritional intake. You can put any bowl you want on it and when you turn it on it reads zero. I used it to load several recipes into Cron-O-Meter by weighing all of the ingredients and then weighing how much I ate after I cooked it. I also use it when I have a snack like almonds by putting the whole container on the scale then I grab a handful and see how much I took. It has worked well for me.
Before I bought it I did some research and the three main brands that stood out to me where Salter, Escali and Taylor. They all have scales in the $20 to $30 range any of which would probably work for your purposes.
Good Luck!
Tim
Posted by: Tim at February 7, 2007 6:52 PM
I'm going to make this as short as possible a question but I have a bit of a CR history and it made me too skinny. I was eating around 1200 cals a day and my BMI honestly eventually dropped to about 16.5 where it stayed for a few months as I continued yoga (3-5 times a week) and a decent amount of local walking (for errands and such I tried to drive less for a while). I don't know if it was too much moving (aka burning calories) or the large amount of green tea, my daily tsp of cinnamon, the 1200 calories or the fact that my BMI has NEVER been higher than its current 18.7 (whew!), but I want to do a CRON diet for health! I actually felt better being that thin, but my face looked too thin I felt as though people were thinking bad thoughts and my periods were not normal anymore. I got scared. I'm not anorexic, but I used to eat badly (even though I was skinny my whole life and am now the HEAVIEST since I got scared about my BMI and started eating maybe a little too much now!!) and although I think I eat too much now (I snack excessively) I feel heavier and slower, my sleep is definitely poorer, I wake up later, my flexibility has gone, I just... felt better before.
My question: Obviously if I did 1200 I'd go back to a scary BMI and although I ALWAYS ate VERY whole and healthy with varied natural foods, and LOTS of fruits, veggies, whole grains, calcium products, lean meats, etc., I feel it would be unhealthy for me to go back. Can I do a 1700 - 1800 cal diet in order to maintain weight in the low 120s (I'm 125 now but can safely let my weight drop 5 lbs and keep a healthy BMI) and if I did eat 1700 - 1800 cals while doing yoga and walking again (I stopped that too in a successful effort to gain weight) would that be considered a CR diet? I felt as though CR had to be 1200-1300 cals or at LEAST under 1500!! But I think 1500 with exercise would still be low.......
Hmmmm....... sorry for this long post......
All-in-all: Can 1700-1800 cals (my new projected ideal) by considered CR if someone like me has ALWAYS been thin/skinny and likes to engage in moderate cardio and moderate to vigorous strength/flexibility training (my 3x/wk hour long power yoga)
If a BMI is below the "recommended" 18 is that dangerous?
I want to start back up again soon. I need to feel healthy again. I feel weighed down. I'm DEFINITELY eating too much all day. I think today I probably ate around 3,000 cals (that's actually pretty high, but I definitely eat MORE than 1,800 cals most days I would say... I'm pretty realistic). I want to cut back to about 1700-1800 all the time, though. I hardly exercise anymore and want to start doing that again, too. Nothing crazy. Just healthy moderate stuff! :D
Posted by: Petra at February 7, 2007 9:41 PM
Hi, April.
Here are some websites providing nutrition-related diagnostic tests. The first is a website link, the second a link to nutrition-related tests. If anyone reading has feedback on the (lack of) value of these tests, please respond to this comment or on my blog. Thanks.
www.gdx.net
http://www.gdx.net/home/assessments/findsystems/nutrition.html
www.metametrix.com
http://www.metametrix.com/TestServ/
www.doctorsdata.com
http://www.doctorsdata.com/tests_assessments_info.asp#Nutritional
Nutrition-related tests can serve many purposes. For example, an orthomolecular physician might prescribe an amino acid analysis plasma test to check if you are in a very catabolic state, or if you are deficient in particular amino acids. Vitamin and mineral profiles can tell you more about your food intake and/or your food absorption. Some tests, for example, the CDSA 2.0 from Great Smokies, aside from testing digestion/absorption and gut metabolism, can also test for a range of presence of beneficial bacteria. The CDSA tests for lactobacillus acidophilus, escherichia coli, and bifidobacterium. Any additional bacteria found are also listed, including those not known to be " etiological agents of disease".
Different tests can overlap. For example, the comprehensive Organix test from Metametrix looks for D-Lactate as a marker for acidophilus, and dihydroxyphenylproprionate as a marker for clostridial species in your gut. It also offers a vitamin/mineral profile, (it even looks for neurotransmitter markers) but plasma tests are also available for those, too.
Amino Acid analysis is interesting. The Amino Acid Analysis plasma test available from Great Smokies provides an "Interpretation at a glance - Implied Conditions and Presumptive Needs" section in their test results. Actually, these companies tend to provide full color packets of results, along with treatment recommendations, supplement recommendations (with some warnings), dietary recommendations, reference information, and additional commentary. You can tell from reading the commentary section of one of these reports that AI software helped write it, checking test results against diagnosis possibilities and printing out the alternatives. The Presumptive Needs section of the Amino Acid analysis from Great Smokies contains 18 different analyses, including:
*need for Folic Acid
*Need for Magnesium
*Nitrogen Insufficiency
*Deficient Plasma Cyts(e)ine possibility of Cystinuria
*Increased susceptibility to occlusive arterial disease
*collagen or skeletal disorders
...
and then a listing of results related to:
*gastrointestinal dysfunction.
*results relating to endocrine dysfunctions or hormonal imbalances.
*results relating to infection or gut dysbiosis.
That's a lot for a small test, but that is exactly why your physician can help you choose which test when. A person suspected of eating too-little protein might get a plasma amino acid test to check if they might be digesting their own muscle tissue. Another concerned about digestive disorders might order the CDSA 2.0. However, the Organix test from Metametrix can also tell you something about both those problems. The CDSA might identify a digestive deficiency relevant to protein digestion, providing more overlap. You can take your tests a la carte, or get the full course. You actually save money sometimes by ordering a comprehensive test, and confirmation by different tests can be helpful to double-check diagnoses of some conditions (related to your nutrient intake or not).
Or not. Each of these companies provides tests that are not necessarily accepted by the entire medical community. Identify what your doctor is helping you look for, what your doctor plans to do with the results, and whether the tests do in fact work. How you identify what depends on your M.D..
Whether or not such tests serve their intended purpose, you should know that they run in the hundreds of dollars.
April, thank you for your post. Hope this material is of interest. It might help those concerned about their nutritional status.
-Noah
Posted by: Noah at February 8, 2007 2:39 AM
April,
Great Post. Thank you!
Best Wishes,
Niko.
Posted by: Nick Theodorou at February 9, 2007 2:40 AM
hi petra -
i'm not as knowledgeable as april about CR, but i do know the answers to some of your questions.
first off, you can definitely be CR'd at 1800 (or more!) calories - MR is very CR'd at over 1900 (though he is male). the reason april can eat so little is because she's short. given that you're 125 with a bmi of 18.7, you're probably 5'8" or so - i could look it up, but it doesn't really matter, you're definitely taller than i am (5'5").
since you're taller, 1700 calories is probably quite CR'd for you!
regarding CR and weight: weight loss is a side effect of CR, and your weight does not matter, really. lower weights are not necessarily more CR'd. weight depends on body type, and also on exercise - and you need to go back a couple days in the comments to read about how exercise doesn't really relate to CR
i want to write more but i have to go - i hope this helps at least a little
april/everyone - correct me if i gave any wrong info!
Posted by: Emily at February 9, 2007 11:50 AM
Petra..and all
Here is a link to an interesting CR diet calculator
You can fool with the numbers a bit to see where you are and where yo'd like to be what your CR twin is doing
http://www.scientificpsychic.com/health/cron1.html
Posted by: Deborah at February 10, 2007 6:46 AM
Who in the world could do this without weighing and measuring? And they're blogging?
Posted by: Christina at February 10, 2007 2:45 PM
Where are ya, A?
Mike J.
Posted by: Mike J. at February 11, 2007 9:37 AM