Your calories are too low

This is great sir. One question: You mentioned 'usually walk 3-4 miles at a pretty fast clip (15mph)'. The average person walks 3.8 - 4.2 mph and world class sprinters have hit 18-20 mph. 15 mph on the recumbent is possible to sustain but I was curious about what you consider a "fast clip"?

Your calories are too low

Yah this dude gonna tank his metabolism. If he is still eating this way he probably feels like total crap.

Not true, or not for everyone. Five years ago I did a 750-900 VLCD for 3-4 months. Get past the first week or so and your body starts getting its energy from it's fat vs intake. After the first week I remember feeling like I was 18 again. I went from 245-250 to 163.....

Not going to argue your point but it goes deeper than simply "cutting calories" and Koenig is correct in that the drastic shift in caloric intake will have negative impacts on metabolism. This can happen even while showing weight loss on the scale it does not show the internal effects of what it does to organs and other 'healthy' tissues.
The "body" which is general but includes all organs which need proper fueling and hydration to function properly get fuel from nutrition. When not present in proper forms or timing of nutrients it finds the next most efficient sources. Form most this is muscle...hence the rapid weight loss that you see on the scale. Fat is not as efficient a fuel and the body burns it last. I could go on and bore you more but this is basic physiology and science. There are some metabolic calculations you can perform that will give you a good estimate as to your specific daily needs. These can be adjusted based on activity level etc.

Disagree again, to a point. Your body does NOT burn muscle before fat. Glycogen is the preferred stored fuel for energy, this is stored in fatty tissues. Once a person depletes fat stores then it will begin to burn lean body mass for its fuel. My statement was general however now I will be more specific. Our body is capable of using numerous sources of energy during exercise or daily activity – think of your body as a car with multiple fuel tanks. The first tank is glycogen, the storage form of carbs in the muscle and liver. The second is fat (strictly speaking, it is free fatty acids), which is stored in the muscle and in adipose tissue as triglyceride.our body’s glycogen stores are finite – muscle and liver glycogen supply energy for exercise for about two hours (depending, of course, on the intensity, level of training and habitual diet, among other factors), and once they are depleted, hypoglycemia (from liver glycogen depletion) and fatigue are the result.

On the other hand, fat stores are not limited. “Infinite” is not the correct word, because they’re not, but in terms of physiology, you have more than enough fat to power exercise for much longer than you can ever exercise, even if you are an elite athlete. Most reading this do not fall into that category, and so our objective is to cut down these already abundant fat stores. I'll leave out preferred fuel for now.

To get to that "to a point" now. If a person is doing nothing but an extremely low calorie diet then yes, they will lose muscle mass, just the same as someone would who is not doing anything to maintain it.
When I lost weight from running I was the exact opposite as you described. I went from a size 38 pants to a size 30. After less than a year of running my quads and calves could no longer fit in those pants, all on a low calorie diet. Define 'low cal diet' This is different for everyone including where the calories are sourced. i.e. - liquid, solid, combination. Your body responded to an outside stimulus and your fueling during training provided enough protein to support muscle growth in the areas trained. In conjunction with having a caloric deficit sufficient enough to increase metabolic function and change your body composition.


And again respectfully disagree, but a diet is basically just that, cutting calories. It is simple math, calories in vs calories out. I assure you that someone who eats 6000 calories a day eating fast food is doing more harm on their organs than a person who is eating a healthy 900 calories.....Your basic statement is accurate however the drastic shift in caloric intake WILL produce negative metabolic outcomes especially in the short term. For a 90 kg. person (198#) the base metabolic caloric intake calculated for the body to function properly is ranged between 1,050 - 1,200/day. BASE is key because this does not take into account activities of daily living OR exercise of any kind.


And if you are serious about a lifestyle change the scale is the worst tool for this. Agree 100% - throw it in the nearest dumpster.

How many calories in .25 lb of brisket?

Very nice. It will be freeing to step off the scale and just live healthier. Go by how you look in the mirror not what the number by your feet says.

So you just basically agreed with everything he said, Lol.

1700 calories is probably about right for the OP, maybe even too high. He needs to be in a 500-1000 calorie deficit per day to lose 1-2 lbs per week. At 288 pounds the last thing he should be worried about is muscle mass, he will lose very little muscle mass while dieting.