Confused about daily calorie requirements

stick_figure

I calculated my BMR on a couple of sites, and they all came out around the 1400 calorie mark. So far, so good/ depressingly low. It's what comes after that that confuses me slightly. I need a bit of clarification on some points and would really appreciate some help with them so as not to mess my diet plans up!

Outside of exercise, my actual lifestyle would qualify as sedentary. This means it takes me 1680 (1400*1.2) calories per day to maintain my current weight, right? To lose a pound of fat a week, I'd need to knock 500 cals off per day, which would take me very slightly below the 1200 calorie mark, which I've heard people should never eat below.

I do exercise a good bit though, and on days when I exercise I plan to factor the calories burnt in, and make sure I eat enough back to get myself back up to a net total of 1200 calories.

However, I heard that when calculating how many calories you burned doing an activity, you should subtract your BMR calories from that. So if my BMR is 1680, I burn 1.16calories per minute doing nothing. If e.g. an hours running burns 600, should I then subtract 70 (1.16*60) calories from that and call the burnt amound 530?

So let say, fingers crossed, I lose weight and my BMR drops, meaning that my daily deficit gets smaller and smaller. Does this mean that in order to continue to lose weight in a healthy manner, the smaller deficits will take longer to sum up to 3500cals, and I just have to suck it up and accept a slower weight loss?

Sorry, that got a bit lengthy - but if anybody can struggle through it and come up with some advice, it would be great

g'em

Well you forgot to put up one vital piecec of information - your height/ weight! Without that all those cal requirements are meaningless

Try not to get bogged down with all the numbers - even though I posted up a big long calulation formula for figuring al that stuff out, the truth is I only use it sporadically myself and it tends to suit people who are fond of being quite exact.

But by and large, your efforts would be better spent concentrating on making sure you eat good, wholesome foods at an approximate deficit of 10-15% of your daily calorie needs. As you say, as you lose weight the lbs will begin to drop slower but you can use a few techniques to speed it up again and work through the plateaus.

stick_figure

Sorry! I'm 5'4, 134lbs, 27 y.o. I used calculators on: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
http://health.discovery.com/tools/calculators/basal/basal.html
and a couple of others....they all came out roughly at 1400.

Thing is, I do quite like to be exact (fellow scientist!) and the weight loss at a 10% deficit would be too slow to keep me motivated. I need the rigour and satisfaction that a plan give me to keep me going. Once upon a time I gave up wheat, sugar, dairy and alcohol for a month, and managed to gain 4lbs just eating wholesome food. I need stringent guidelines or I'm useless. I should be sent to some sort of food brat camp

g'em

Well 1400 cals sounds about right for those stats. I understand what you mean about having the need for a well structured plan, but I dn't agree that goind on a 10% deficit is too slow - it's healthy. Any more than that (i.e. some sort of rapid weight loss plan like the idiotic Kellogs two-bowls-of-cereal-a-day diet) will virtually certainly cause you to lose water not fat and you'll put it all back on and then some when you start to eat normally again!!

What are your current daily eating habits like? Post up a typical days' eating.

stick_figure

I'm afraid to say that I wouldn't have a typical day. I know all to well exactly what I should eat, but the problem is putting it into action and sticking with it. This is why I work best under a strict regime, I think. On a day where I'm "behaving" myself I'd eat something like:

Bfast: All Bran, skim milk or peanut butter on brown toast
Snack: low cal cup of soup
Lunch: Tuna (in tomato sauce) sandwich on brown bread or chicken breast sandwich, soup, yoghurt, apple
Pre-gym: Popcorn + yoghurt or peanut butter on toast (if I didn't have it for bfast)
Dinner: Veggie burger + frozen veg or small lean beefburger with baby potato wedges or some kind of lentil, bean or chickpea concoction with rice
After: Yoghurt

Gym would normally be either a spinning class, a 4-6 mile run outdoors, or some weights and interval training on the treadmill.

Problem is, I only ever manage to stick to this good behaviour for a couple of weeks, and what always derails me is socialising. I'd be out to dinner and drinking about 3 nights every week, and when I'm hungover I eat like I'll never see food again. It's complete self sabotage as I'm going over calories on the days of socialising AND the days after. So if I was hungover it would go more like this:

Bfast: Brown scone w/ butter and jam
Lunch: Something bad from the butter-laden canteen like shepherds pie, wedges or chicken curry
Afternoon: Yorkie or some other chocolate bar
Dinner: god only knows. I either eat something crappy or just snack endlessly on junk.

And clearly no gym.

Drinking is out the window for January. I'm hoping that a solid month of good eating and exercising will form the habit and that any results achieved will inspire me to keep going. Tbh the exercise is the easy part as I already run about 3 times a week and am training for a half marathon. Food is my downfall.

g'em - is that a 10% deficit on the 1400 or the 1680 you were recommending? and what about calories burned exercising?

g'em

oooh, scary... you sound exactly like me a year ago!!!

I'm going to take a bit of a risk here, and be totally frank and possibly painfully honest with you. I'll do it because you sound like you can handle a few hometruths and you genuinely want to impove. You go to the gym and you know the value of weight training and cardio (and HIIT cardio at that!!). You have all the good intentions, but you're still making excuses. Cut it out. Excuses get you nowhere: what you eat and what you drink is, at the end of the day, a choice. No-one forces you to eat and no-one forces you to drink, you choose to. And believe me, the feeling of wellbeing and happy health you get from not overindulging regularly greatly outweighs the guilt, nausea and general crappiness that you get from eating sh!te and drinking too much!!

stick_figure wrote: »

I'm afraid to say that I wouldn't have a typical day. I know all to well exactly what I should eat, but the problem is putting it into action and sticking with it.

Just do it. If you know what to eat then just do it. Think of the flat tummy you have from cutting down on starchy foods. Think of the clear head you get when you wake up on a Sunday morning when you only drank two white wine spritzers the night before and not two bottles. Think of how much extra energy you have and the confidence you gain when you look after yourself and you can go into the shops and get a size smaller than normal.

Bfast: All Bran, skim milk or peanut butter on brown toast

the peanut butter & toast (one piece) is a slightly better option, purely because generally most people eat bowls of cereal that are *way* too big!

Snack: low cal cup of soup

usually highly processed muck with little or no nutritional value. Fruit, organic yoghut, nuts or chopped veg would all be better.

Lunch: Tuna (in tomato sauce) sandwich on brown bread or chicken breast sandwich, soup, yoghurt, apple

You've already had bread/ cereal for breakfast, there's really no need for more carbs at lunch. Try a lettuce wrap/ salad?

Pre-gym: Popcorn + yoghurt or peanut butter on toast (if I didn't have it for bfast)

Keep popcorn as a treat for eating with a dvd or at weekends or similar. It's not very energy-rich for pre-gym food.

Dinner: Veggie burger + frozen veg or small lean beefburger with baby potato wedges or some kind of lentil, bean or chickpea concoction with rice

I love the sound of the chickpea/ lentil concoction, but why not eat it with veg and not rice?

I think I can imagine why you found yourself putting on weight with "wholesome" foods - you're extremely over-reliant on carbs. Breads, cereals, rice, wedges and even highly sugary yoghurts - these are all disasterous when eaten in excess. Generally speaking, restricting carbs to earlier in the day is a great way to cut down. You should have no prob burning off teh energy from carbs throughout the day.

There's a lack of lean proteins (white meats, fish, shellfish, eggs, low-fat dairy) and good fats (nuts, oily fish, seeds, seed and nut oils) in your diet. Protein is very hard for your body to convert into adipose even when eaten in excess, and converse to popular belief, dietary fat does not make you fat if its eaten in moderation, and it's the right kind of fat that's eaten.

Have protein at every meal, eat veg with at least three of your meals, and include seeds or nuts or oils or oily fish at least twice a day.

And if you *really* want to do the whole calorie count thing, get your daily calorie needs and multiply by seven. Estimate the average number of calories you burn in the gym and multiply it by the number of times you workout. Add that to your weekly calorie needs and divide by seven. Subtract 10% and this will be your new daily calorie allowance e.g.

1400 x 7 = 9800 (daily reqments)
550 x 3 = 1100 (gym cals)
9800 + 1100 = 10900
10900/7 = 1557
1557 x 0.9 = 1400

stick_figure

Cut it out. Excuses get you nowhere: what you eat and what you drink is, at the end of the day, a choice. No-one forces you to eat and no-one forces you to drink, you choose to.

Ain't that the truth. Although when it comes to my sugar cravings, it actually does feel like another person takes over my body and marches me to the vending machine/ shop. I've gone cold turkey on sugar before and have given it up for Lent, so I think a couple of weeks cold turkey again would help kickstart me.

I think I can imagine why you found yourself putting on weight with "wholesome" foods - you're extremely over-reliant on carbs

.

Generally speaking, restricting carbs to earlier in the day is a great way to cut down. You should have no prob burning off teh energy from carbs throughout the day.

I'll give this a go but I think I'll have to ease myself into lower-carb eating. Like you said, I appear to be desperately reliant on carbs. Much like lot of men seem to feel like a meal is not a meal without meat, I don't feel that it's one without carbs. Plus I don't like shellfish, non-white meat or any fish except tuna, which makes my meals carb + veg heavy.

1400 x 7 = 9800 (daily reqments)
550 x 3 = 1100 (gym cals)
9800 + 1100 = 10900
10900/7 = 1557
1557 x 0.9 = 1400

Hehe I do love a plan and a target, so aiming for a weekly burn of 1100 is something good for me to work towards.

Thanks so much for all your help and time g'em. I'll be starting a diary in the fitness section for my half-marathon training but I'll log food etc in there too. Maybe if people berate me I'll be even more inclined to stick to it

g'em

It's no problem at all. The absolute worst thing you could do at this stage is give up. Trust me, I know *exactly* what you mean about sugary foods, and 12 months ago I'd regularly have three or four major indulgences per week. These days, as sad as it sounds, the odd cup of low-fat hot chocolate or a spoon of good quality vanilla ice cream is enough to satisfy my sweet cravings.

Even if you do still succumb to the odd blow-out, the best thing you can do is get back on track as soon as you can. I didn't go from having an almightily sh!te diet to a healthy, wholesome clean one all in one fell swoop, it's taken a few false starts.

Best of luck, and the forum is always here if you need an extra helping hand!

g'em

And I've just noticed that my maths is totally crap...

3 X 550 = 1650 so..

1650 + 9800 = 11450/7 = 1635 cals per day oops...

stick_figure

I was thinking about this yesterday evening and had another couple of questions (sorry!)

the peanut butter & toast (one piece) is a slightly better option, purely because generally most people eat bowls of cereal that are *way* too big!

You've already had bread/ cereal for breakfast, there's really no need for more carbs at lunch. Try a lettuce wrap/ salad?

One slice of bread a day is all the carbs I get? :eek: I know there are carbs in other foods and in the veg, but seriously? One slice?

Keep popcorn as a treat for eating with a dvd or at weekends or similar. It's not very energy-rich for pre-gym food.

Even the individually bagged stuff? I didn't mean the 500 cal microwave stuff. I thought it would be good and filling for only 130cal per packet. And it sure as hell ain't tasty enough to qualify as a treat

g'em

stick_figure wrote: »

One slice of bread a day is all the carbs I get? :eek: I know there are carbs in other foods and in the veg, but seriously? One slice?

well that's up to you. You really don't need the bread at all, plus the quality of the bread will be a factor. White bread is obviously crap, and even some "brown" breads are really white flour coloured with caramel. There should be "wholemeal" in the bread description and added nuts and seeds are a bonus.

As i said in the previous post though, restrict carbs to the first half of the day - breakfast, mid-morning and lunch i.e. porridge/ toast for breakfast, fruit/ yoghurt to snack on and a small portion of wholemeal pasta or brown rice at lunch. No wedges, chips, wraps or processed (empty) carbs.

It's not hard after a while, carbs are just a psychological crutch. If you can restrict them you'll lose weight easier and be able to keep the weight off. But it's up to you at the end of the day!

stick_figure wrote: »

Even the individually bagged stuff? I didn't mean the 500 cal microwave stuff. I thought it would be good and filling for only 130cal per packet. And it sure as hell ain't tasty enough to qualify as a treat

If you want to eat popcorn, eat popcorn. But personally I prefer the bread and PB option here, as popcorn isn't exactly reknowned for its health benefits. If you want to fill up why not do it and get good fats, some fibre, protein, folate, vit E, magnesium and zinc (all in PB)?