How Low Can I Take My Calorie Intake?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

5’9"
168 - 172 lb, according to scale past four weeks.
37" waist.

My weight loss seems to have stalled over the past two or three weeks @ an intake of 1600 kcal per day. I’m walking everyday 1.0 - 1.5 miles depending on how my hip feels (rehabbing glute tendinopathy) and doing rehab/training with weights 2 - 3x/week. Other than that, I’m sedentary, but I’m trying to work up to the physical activity guidelines.

Are there any negative effects from reducing my calorie intake further, besides having difficulties getting vitamins and minerals?

2

In a developed country, the risk of vitamin deficiency is generally pretty low for folks unless they have malabsorptive conditions or very, very limited dietary patterns. You could go much lower, though I would bet a large sum of money that your energy intake is > 1600 Cal/day on average. I’d be looking for errors in measurement and give that energy intake more time to work. Just my 0.02.

3

I’m currently logging every gram of food on chronometer, as well as liquid calories. Weighing my meat after cooking, mostly using the NCCDB database. Anything else I should be doing or trying to correct?

4

I’m not sure that a time piece is the best way to measure the mass of food, but weighing food after cooking is a large source of error. 10/10 would weigh food prior to cooking and using the nutrition info on the label.

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5

is there a general rule of thumb for guesstimating when you’re working from a large batch of already-cooked meat (like a rotisserie chicken, or a skillet’s worth of hamburger)

Or, when possible, is it better to weigh before and after, figure out the proportion and use that as a guide?

6

No really reliable rule of thumb, as losses during cooking depends on the meat, cooking technique, etc.

I would weigh before and then see how many servings you have based on that.