Portion Control

I had a working lunch with a colleague today.  I had my Kashi frozen meal (300 calories), and she had the smallest portion sizes I've ever seen in my life.  Her lunch consisted of one chicken wing, probably less than 1/4 cup of fried rice (she must have been having a naughty day!!) and a half cup of yogurt.  If you look at her lunch compared to mine, we probably had the same amount of calories.  Mine was healthier, and it will stay with me longer, but all I had was a frozen dinner, and still, she had about 1/3rd volume of food as I did.

I've seen her lunches before, and this wasn't an exception.  How do you get to the point where you require such a small amount of food?  She is very active, and I would say she's quite a healthy person.  Is that all we really need to eat to survive?

I've often heard we need 2000 calories/day to live, and that dieters shouldn't go below 1200 - 1500.  I also know that my MD told me that as long as I was getting in the right amount of nutrients, it was fine when I was eating 600-700 calories/day.  After all, I was getting in plenty of protein, veggies, fruits and grains.  Where did these numbers come from?  How little is too little?

I know a lot of it depends on how much you expend, and it's also a bad habit to eat too little volume if you can't sustain that level for life, because you'll just gain it back.  Still, though, have we just trained our bodies to feel like we need way more food than we really do?

I know all the literature in the US is hyperaware of eating disorders, but I'm just wondering if this 1200 calorie per day minimum is true or if it's nonsense.  1200/day certainly hasn't been doing me any favors.  LOL.  Couldn't it be that I've stored up enough energy that I can live off less for now??

Eh - we'll see.  It's just very interesting watching the habits of these thin creatures.  So far, I would say about 10% of the thin people I know/have observed embrace the healthy living eating habits I've been wired to embrace.  I'm not sure what that tells us, other than thin doesn't mean healthy, necessarily, but we already knew that...