Confused.

Your nutritionist is wrong. And starvation mode is a total pile of crap.

I ate very low calories until I was wayyyy past my surgeon's goal, and well past mine. Until I was in the middle of the normal BMI range. I did not get stuck eating at that level forever. I slowly ramped up my calories until my weight stayed steady -- at a little over 2600 calories a day. Pretty much exactly what all the online calculators say it should be for a man my height, age, and activity level.

I could call myself a nutritionist if I wanted. There are no degrees or even certifications required. A registered Dietician does rwquire a minimum of a bachelor's degree, passing state exams, continuing education, etc. But most of their training has nothing to do with working with folks post WLS. Almost none of their eductaion deals with it.

Keep your calories low. Do not eat extra if you exercise.

It's interesting. Everything in our lives -- our cars, heating systems, air conditioners, phones, computers, light bulbs, etc etc -- we try to make run on the smallest amount of energy we can. But when it comes to food, we want to burn as much as we can, just so we can eat more. Throwing energy away.

Thanks for the reply. It sounded wrong to me when it was posted but I figured there would be more learned people than me who could tell me for sure :)

This makes the most sense to me since I know I have dieted and restricted m calories before but it never stopped me from falling off the wagon and being able to eat a whole pizza later on.

PS...If I could call myself a nutritionist I totally would, but only 'cause I like to sound fancy Unfortunately, my response would always be "Ummmmm I don't know what you mean" and I would quickly be found out as a fraud. :D

EXACTLY what Grim said.

GRIM-I love that analogy. I've never heard it put that way. I certainly will be...ummmm...borrowing it, in my future arguments

This has is often a hotly contested issue. Based on the comments so far, most people here on OH seem to fall into the "starvation mode doesn't exist" camp, which aligns with my beliefs. I did make a post about this on another board a few months back, and that board was decidedly a "starvation mode definitely exists" site.

I, personally, have seen no studies that show any long term SIGNIFICANT damage to metabolism by eating low calories. I also think the advice during a stall that "you are in starvation mode and have to eat more calories to lose weight" has no scientific backing at all - even less scientific backing than long term metabolic damage.

Much like Grim, I stayed roughly around 600-800 during my weight loss phase, and lost very rapidly (over 180lbs in about 10 months). I now maintain (just 5 months so far, so I am no expert in maintenance) by eating about 1800-2100 calories a day - fairly normal for my height/weight (5'8" and ~150lbs).

Thanks Jester.

Personal question for you...are you a boy clown or a girl clown :). Feel free to not answer and no offense meant. I'm just wondering b/c Grim is about 4 inches taller than me and you are about 2 inches shorter, so that would put me at between 2100 and 2600 calories when the time comes. I know that is no way guaranteed as everyone is different, but that is a much MUCH less intimidating # than some I see on the menu thread.

LOL, I'm a 43 year old boy clown. Although being referred to as a "clown" makes me feel decidedly less cool than a "jester"!!

Obviously your physical activity will plan into it as well - I am moderately active. I try and walk nearly every day and work out 3 times a week. Key word is "try", not always "succeed".

And yes, I agree, I see what some people eat in maintenance and I know I would never be successful if that was required of me. And people who are 1, 2 and even more years out that say they can still only eat 0.5 - 1.0 cup of food are amazing to me. I can definitely eat a lot more than that, but (at least so far) I seem to have found a good balance for myself.

I still track everything (although to be honest not as meticulously as I did in the past) and have found that if I am mindful of what my body is telling me, I have "hungry days" where I eat up to 2400-2500 calories (this is rare) and I have "not hungry days" where I maybe consume 1400-1600 calories. They seem to balance themselves out and I have been bouncing around between 146-153 (usually in the 148-152 window) pounds for the last 5 months.

I don't know what you mean.

:D:D:D

There are not a lot of men here, and there is a difference in maintenance levels between men and women.

But I also know women here who maintain on 1800 calories, and they ate VL****il they hit maintenance as well.

I'm not going to jump into the "starvation mode" fray.

Ok, I will say a couple of things. LOL. I will say that I agree with the posters here who say the science does not support at least what most people believe is the "starvation mode". The "studies" that get cited about starvation mode tend to be questionable, or related to research done with concentration camp survivors or other survivors of true starvation situations. Which means they were limited, and mainly observational, not experimental. The latest one with the Biggest Loser competitors is such a small study, observational only, and self-reported, and for anyone who knows anything about science that's all that needs to be said to know that it's worthless as a study. The observations raise some interesting questions, but that's about all that "study" can do.

What I will say is that most physicians don't know a whole lot about nutrition. Nurses tend to get more nutrition training than most physicians, and having graduated from nursing school in the last decade, I can attest that it ain't much. If a physician knows anything significant about nutrition, it's because he's taken it on himself to research/learn, and his knowledge can be limited depending on what sources he used. (Side note, D.O.s tend to have more holistic training than M.D.s so you'll tend to see more nutrition awareness if they attended an osteopathic medical school.)

Nutritionists have no formalized training, certification, or oversight. If it weren't a violation of my ethical standards as a nurse, *** I *** could hang a shingle as a nutritionist. And I daresay I'd give better advice than most of the NUTs I've run across. I have found them collectively to be followers of diet fads and whatever latest guru notion that will net them the most $$. The one I was assigned to for my WLS program wanted to sell me expensive blood testing to tell me what I should be eating based on my "genetics" because even absent any signs or symptoms of such, I could have "latent allergies and sensitivities". Yeah, bite me. Sign my damned paper, and let me get out of here.

Registered dietitians on the other hand, actually study nutrition. They have a base curricula and certification standards and oversight. They tend to know what they're talking about. Even among RDs however, you will find that a lot of them don't know much about WLS. RDs tend to know the most about patients recovering in long-term care facilities, or learning how to manage diabetes and other metabolic illnesses. That's historically been the forte' of the RD. But of all of the nutrition professionals out there, these are the guys I'd give the most credence to.

Another group that tends to give nutritional advice is the sports trainers group. This can range from trainers at the gym who have less training and oversight than the NUTs all the way to those like my kiddo who is in a college degree program for kinesiology (exercise and sports science). But remember that the training and information these people have is focused on performance atheletes (professional ones and otherwise). My daughter knows a lot about sports nutrition, but she's horrified at the thought of someone taking in only 600 kcal a day but working out 3-5x a week, because her training is telling her that the body will cannabalize muscle for that. Her training doesn't cover WLS patients. My trainer at the gym was even less useful.

So when you get conflicting information (and you will) keep in mind the source, and ask questions about where they got their training, and what the focus of their training is.

And keep in mind how you feel, and how you're losing weight, and your specific situation.

My surgeon advises a more moderate approach than many others, she wanted me up in the 1,000-1,200 kcal range by 6 months post-op. I don't know if her rationale is driven by the idea of starvation mode or not. But that's what I've done, partially because I have a couple of chronic conditions that I'm battling, and I feel like hammered dog crap if I don't get enough intake. I also cannot do ketosis, so very-low-carb is not an option for me. So my weight loss has been slow compared to some of my surgical cohort from August 2016. But it's been steady, and I'm OK with that as long as I can keep it up. Because of my other conditions, I am having to learn to listen to my body and adjust as needed with exercise and diet to function at my best. I may take longer to get to where I'm going, but that's OK with me, because I am balancing other things along with the WLS.

Grim (and others) did better on a more restrictive diet, and had no issues slowly increasing his caloric intake once at maintenance. Most long-term successes here report their best results on a very-low-carb eating plan. Some have done well with more balanced macros. It's worth noting what works for most people, as that's what's most likely going to work for you. Don't fix it if it ain't broke, yanno?

But ultimately, you are an individual, with your own situation. If you find that you feel like hammered dog crap at 600 kcal, but you function well and can exercise and feel good at 800 kcal and are losing weight as you want, do 800 kcal and to hell with 'em. If your surgeon keeps pushing you to increase to 1,400 kcal but you're finding that your weight loss is slowing to a crawl and you feel overfed, then you need to find the intake point where you're losing at the rate you want/need and you also have the energy to get through your day and exercise and all that good stuff, and to hell with 'em.

Just my spare change, FWIW.