I too have always felt accepted around here. I love this forum. This place helped me to change my life and has assisted me in losing 4 dress sizes. This forum had helped me become the healthiest I have ever been in my life. That said, I have extremely STRONG objections to the 10-12 guideline repeatedly being offered up to LCers when advice/assistance is requested:
Objections to advising the 'guideline' calories times 10-12 body weight:
1. I have given up 30 years of low cal/low fat dieting. My LC book -- Atkins, Protein Power, Schwarzbein Principle, SugarBusters, etc. -- recommends against counting calories or even thinking about them! and boy am I relieved. HOWEVER, I joined this wonderful forum and I am suddenly asked to tally my calories to make sure I am eating enough. What is this? I had a hard enough time counting them down in the old days. Now I am asked to tally upward? What is wrong with me and where did I miss this in my book? I will buy another LC book. Again, nothing regarding 10-12 x guideline? What is wrong with me? I reread the books over and over and don't see any mention of this statement, whether as a guideline, suggestion or rule. In fact, all I notice is that I am not really meant to calculate calories! What did I miss? Why should I have to count calories AT ALL?
2. Well, ok, I guess I missed this in my LC books. If I must calculate my calories according to 10-12 times my CURRENT body weight, then I am on a diet: As I lose weight, I must accordingly reduce my calories. If I am to tally my caloric needs in terms of my body weight, then I am constantly reducing calories to comply with the said equation. As my body weight reduces, so do my calories, right..... ??Or, is it true that my heaviest weight--my start weight--for some strange reason serves as a constant in this bizarre formulation? Even if I weigh 350 pounds, comply with the guideline and thus begin my LC journey eating 3500 calories, I guess I will have to figure out a way to remain at this number for the rest of my life. The alternative, again, is constant reduction of calories in relation to reduction of body weight. This is a DIET, not a healthy WOE.
3. I TRY out the 10-12 forumula and immediately feel sick, stuffed, confused and strangely as if I am on a diet. What am I missing that everyone else at the forum is getting? Eating to fulfill a caloric requirement is not working for me. It didn't work in the past and it is not working now. Though now I am attempting to UP my calories, I feel oddly the same as I did when I tried to RESTRICT them! Why can I not just eat and count up my simple 25 carbs and go with what I learned in my books?
4. Low carb MDs suggest not to count calories at all.
I quote:
Dr. Schwarzbein from page 259 of TSP:
Do not count calories, weigh food or count fat grams. Calculating and focusing on numbers causes an unhealthy obsession with food.
Dr. Atkins, from AtkinsCenter FAQ:
I'm used to counting calories. How many am I allowed on Induction?
There is no need to count calories. The Atkins Nutritional Approach counts grams of carbohydrates instead of calories. In Induction, you are allowed 20 grams of carbohydrates. When you progress to Ongoing Weight Loss, you gradually add carbohydrates in 5-gram increments as you move toward Pre-Maintenance, and finally to the Lifetime Maintenance phases of Atkins. Although there is no need to count calories, they do count. Gaining weight results from taking in more calories than you expend through exercise, thermogenesis (the body’s own heat production) and other metabolic functions. Research has shown that on a controlled carbohydrate program, more calories are burned than on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, so there is a certain metabolic advantage to the controlled carb approach. But understand that this does not give you a license to gorge.
If you are used to counting calories and it makes you uneasy to not do so, know that women usually can safely consume 1,800 calories a day and still lose weight; men can typically take in 2,000 calories, and in some cases more.
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