Editorial source note
When is it Time to Go Super-low Calorie?
Joe names the legitimate occasions for dropping to very low calories and gives his numeric protocol: trim the plate to 600-700 when stalled, then ramp back up through 800, 1,000, and 1,300 — never jumping straight from a deep deficit to a feast.
Related principles
An editorial summary of views Joe expresses in the linked video. The original recording remains the primary source for his full words and context.
Detailed notes
A closer look at the ideas, examples, and reasoning Joe presents in this recording.
Joe's rules for the very bottom of the calorie range
This October 2017 video is Joe's most numeric statement of when — and how — he thinks a dieter should drop to very low calories. He names two legitimate occasions: breaking past a plateau, and tapping extra energy for a stretch, when a skipped or tiny meal serves better than a large one. Everything in the video is Joe's own counsel from his coaching and experience; very-low-calorie eating is a practice mainstream guidance treats with far more caution than he does here.
The cautionary tale and the ramp back
The anchor is a viewer Joe calls Abel: a 34-year-old man diagnosed with insulin resistance and pre-diabetes who, on 400 to 500 calories a day, averaged about five pounds of loss per week and — per his doctor, in Joe's telling — completely reversed his insulin resistance. Then he treated himself to a pizza splurge and felt terrible. Joe's explanation is that very low intake scales the whole body down, insulin production included, the way a hibernating bear's heart rate falls; a sudden carb blast then sends blood sugar skyrocketing.
The rule that follows: never jump from super-low calories, or any fast, straight to a huge meal. Ramp back in small daily increments — roughly 600, then 800, then 1,000, then 1,300 — until normal intake returns.
Trimming the plate
His working method runs downward the same way. Start from a normal plate and progressively trim the sides; when two weeks pass without a loss, cut again — from around 1,100 calories down to roughly 600 to 700 for a week or two. Several weeks at a time is fine in Joe's view, months on end is not: "use wisdom." He attributes the good, productive feeling at low calories to growth hormone, and pushes back on the calories-are-a-myth camp — eat too much fat and protein and you still gain, he says, because calorie restriction and fasting are the same mechanism of getting less. The governing frame is his line that your body is there to serve you: teach it to function on less food and it will.