Eating under 1000 calories dangerous?

[Snowball_z]

I have a friend who counts calories and about a year ago I decided I would give it a go, since I was curious how many I ate. Turns out almost every day I eat less than 1000 calories. I was reading that this can cause heart and other problems. I don’t restrict. I eat 3 meals a day and sometimes even snack or dessert. I stop eating when I’m satisfied. Is it putting me at risk? I’ve always eaten this way. Edit: snack and desserts is rare. I’m not miscalculating.

[TheAwfulToad]

If you're not hungry and you don't look like a bag of bones, then you're fine. The experts are full of wind about stuff that "puts you at risk" of this or that, but there aren't really that many dietary mistakes that one can make (and most of those are embodied in "healthy eating" advice from said experts).

You might have made some sort of miscalculation. If you're eating three meals a day with occasional snacks or dessert, it seems a bit unlikely you really eat less than 1000kCal. But if you have a sedentary job and you're 4 foot 11, I guess it's possible.

[Shotglass]

Undereating by that much makes it very hard to get all your nutrients in, which puts you at risk for trouble down the line regardless of your weight. I'd say keep a full food&drink journal for a week, check if your initial assessment was correct (often paying conscious attention to what we're eating makes us eat less without noticing; if that's the case you should see a loss on the scale after that week) and if you really ARE eating that little maybe talk to your doctor/get a blood test to see where you stand.

[andyswarbs]

Eating the required calories for your body & lifestyle is the ideal. Any lifestyle that supports that is where you want to be heading. Anything else is okay in the short term, and the further away from the calories for your body & lifestyle the shorter the better, imo. Overeating leads to obesity, under-eating leads to possible nutritional deficiencies, and some of these can cause irreversible damage.

[Cooper27 Administrator]

I guess the main thing is: are you a healthy weight?

Lots of factors play into how many calories we need. If you're short, sedentary, have medical conditions, etc, you may need less calories than the average recommendation. Based on my height, if I do no physical activity, I only need to eat 1400-1600 calories a day.