So for my cut do I need to eat 300 calories less than the day before or no?

kzrrk2wg5d

People tell me I need to eat 300 cals less then the day before until I hit zero then start again but I don’t really get it can someone just explain cutting to me? I’m new to all of this

claireychn074

Uh what? Who on earth told you that? No, you pick a rate of loss - 250 per day is a good start depending on how overweight you are - and then you track your calories. After a month or so you’ll be able to adjust up or down depending on how much you lost.
You don’t want to lose fast - you’ll lose vital muscle mass in addition to fat.

springlering62

Is this to lose weight overall, or a cut as in a body-building cut?

Either way, terrible advice.

Hobartlemagne

That way lies madness. For weight loss I eat 500cal below maintenance daily and I dont mess around with changing the numbers.

nossmf

kzrrk2wg5d wrote: »

People tell me I need to eat 300 cals less then the day before until I hit zero then start again but I don’t really get it can someone just explain cutting to me? I’m new to all of this

While the above posters have good intentions about preventing what they see as a dangerous situation, they fail to explain why it's so bad. Let's talk a moment about why they are concerned for you.

The idea of "cutting" or losing weight is to eat less than you need to maintain your current weight. For example, let's say I burn 1800 calories per day just by living. That's breathing, digestion, thinking, moving around the house: basics of life. If I eat 1800 calories in food, my food intake exactly matches my calorie requirement, so my weight remains the same.

If I want to lose weight, I need to shift the balance so that my calorie requirement is greater than the food I eat. I can do this through increasing my requirement thru movement/exercise, or I can do this through lowering my food intake (i.e. eat less calories), or a combination of both.

If I consistently eat less than I need, I will lose weight. But there's a limit to how fast I can lose weight without becoming sick along the way: I can't simply go without eating at all to speed up weight loss, my body will not only rebel with massive hunger pangs but also my internal organs will stop working correctly, hair and skin and fingernails will suffer, I will look and feel a hot mess until I eventually die.

Thus the advice you got to cut the food to smaller and smaller portions every day, while it certainly will lead to weight loss, it will have a whole host of undesired effects along the way.

It is possible you misunderstood the advice, and it was actually "cut 300 calories from what you ate yesterday and keep that new level while you lose weight". Using my example above, if I need 1800 to stay the same weight, but only eat 1500 (300 less than I need), and repeat this pattern every day, I will lose weight at about a half pound / quarter kilo per week. Not very fast I know, but it adds up: this is 26 pounds / 13 kilos per year, and along the way I'm not sick, I'm not dying, and I can learn how to combat any hunger issues (increasing protein/fiber or eating several small meals instead of two big ones are common methods).

sollyn23l2

nossmf wrote: »

kzrrk2wg5d wrote: »

People tell me I need to eat 300 cals less then the day before until I hit zero then start again but I don’t really get it can someone just explain cutting to me? I’m new to all of this

While the above posters have good intentions about preventing what they see as a dangerous situation, they fail to explain why it's so bad. Let's talk a moment about why they are concerned for you.

The idea of "cutting" or losing weight is to eat less than you need to maintain your current weight. For example, let's say I burn 1800 calories per day just by living. That's breathing, digestion, thinking, moving around the house: basics of life. If I eat 1800 calories in food, my food intake exactly matches my calorie requirement, so my weight remains the same.

If I want to lose weight, I need to shift the balance so that my calorie requirement is greater than the food I eat. I can do this through increasing my requirement thru movement/exercise, or I can do this through lowering my food intake (i.e. eat less calories), or a combination of both.

If I consistently eat less than I need, I will lose weight. But there's a limit to how fast I can lose weight without becoming sick along the way: I can't simply go without eating at all to speed up weight loss, my body will not only rebel with massive hunger pangs but also my internal organs will stop working correctly, hair and skin and fingernails will suffer, I will look and feel a hot mess until I eventually die.

Thus the advice you got to cut the food to smaller and smaller portions every day, while it certainly will lead to weight loss, it will have a whole host of undesired effects along the way.

It is possible you misunderstood the advice, and it was actually "cut 300 calories from what you ate yesterday and keep that new level while you lose weight". Using my example above, if I need 1800 to stay the same weight, but only eat 1500 (300 less than I need), and repeat this pattern every day, I will lose weight at about a half pound / quarter kilo per week. Not very fast I know, but it adds up: this is 26 pounds / 13 kilos per year, and along the way I'm not sick, I'm not dying, and I can learn how to combat any hunger issues (increasing protein/fiber or eating several small meals instead of two big ones are common methods).

You wouldn't repeat the pattern, you would stay at 1500 calories. That's where the misunderstanding is. I believe they think people's advice was to cut 300 calories MORE out every day. It likely wasn't. It was probably to cut 300 calories out, then stay at that. In this example, if you were eating 1800 calories, then to lose weight you want to cut out 300 calories, so that you start eating 1500 calories, and then continue eating 1500 calories every day.

nossmf

Yes, thank you for that very important clarification I somehow missed adding to my post!

lynn_glenmont

Just want to say that "what you ate the day before" is not a good metric for your starting point. You want to make your calorie reduction from the calories your body needs for maintenance, not from what you just happened to eat the day before with no examination of whether you were eating way above maintenance or way below that day.