Is My Dietitian Crazy?

mikeyrp

This is not based on science but on deduction/instinct... so take it with an appropriate pinch of salt ... but having read a lot of comments on MFP about exercise calories and starvation mode I have reached the following conclusions.

- If you don't do a lot of exercise then it is really important that you average 1200 calories per day minimum. Sure, some days can be over and others can be under but if you don't eat 1200 calories on average there is a good chance you are not getting sufficient nutrition.

- a caveat to the above is that if you had a perfectly balanced diet which is high in protein and carbohydrate and contains all the essential vitamins, minerals, essential oils etc then you could probably come in a little under: but the second you through in, say, a kit kat (personal favorite) you have got to go the whole 1200.

- another caveat: 1200 is a semi-random number - I mean men and women have different bodies and it should be different for them both - right? and a small woman compared to a large guy should be even more extreme. On this basis - listen to what your body is telling you: if you are feeling tired all the time eating 1200 then you are not getting enough nutrition! increase your intake!

- A really good way to work out what you should actually be eating is to go 24 hours wearing a heart rate monitor which calculates your bodies Calorie use. A 500 Calorie deficit per day will be approximately 1lb of fat. Given that the average man with a sedentary lifestyle would burn about 2000 Cals a day its simple to see that to loose more than a pound a week without exercise is going to be dangerous. The answer: do some exercise

Which brings me to the more controversial topic of exercise calories.

- Not all training does the same thing to your body and you should consider your personal goals: Gaining muscle is a really good way to loose fat as the muscles themselves will consume more calories even when they are at rest! In my opinion you don't really need to consume any more calories if you are just strength training – an hour in the gym is only going to be 300 calories… However it is important to ensure you are getting enough protein and carbohydrate both before and after training sessions (you will need to do some research to find out what ‘enough’ is for you). If the only way you can do this is to increase your overall intake for the day, do it! Failure to do so will result in your body cannibalising your muscles – so you will re-use leg muscle to build arm muscle and vise versa depending on the circuit you are doing. Not harmful but pointless!

- If you are doing CV then you will burn a lot more calories. Normally 600 per hour but up to 1000 depending on how hard you are working. As with the weights you need to ensure you are getting sufficient protein and carbs for that days work out – but I don’t believe you need to consume all the calories.

HOWEVER – If you are doing regular exercise then your base rate of calorie burn is going to increase – even on days you don’t exercise! In my experience, you start getting major fatigue if you don’t increase your base intake. It’s better to do this and eat the same way every day than to do constant adjustment based on your workout.
A final, really, really important point but slightly off topic: muscle is 18% more dense than fat. So, if you gain 1 kg of muscle and loose 1 kg of fat (4 blocks of butter) then you will be 20% smaller (3.2 blocks of butter). In other words – ditch the scale in favour of a tape measure if you are getting fit to get thin! Scales are only meaningful if you don’t change the amount of exercise you do.