Seems like a lot of calories

I'm confused. It tells me to eat 1500 a day, i logged in and i ate 800, and worked out and lost 400...I'm really confused about this. I think I'm suppose to net 1200 for weightloss??

And no I don't have an eating disorder, I just don't realize how little I'm eating I guess?

Mine has been set at 1,200 since I joined (I have since lost 20kgs).

Reading a debate about calories and how many is right is interesting for me.

I re-educated myself around food two years ago with the help of an expert.

I lost 23 kilos in 6 months and went from 36% body fat to 13% body fat in a year.

I've learnt that, funnily enough, it really depends on WHAT you eat.

Calories are perhaps a bit of a distraction though they can help at a very very basic level. Often too basic, though. Obviously you need to burn more than you consume in order to create a calorie deficit and thus ask your body to find energy elsewhere. The problem is your body is cleverer than that, it evolved when we didn't have supermarkets or even shops on the high street. When 3 or more meals a day wasn't the norm. It evolved largely in a time when there wasn't a meal on the table every day. We had to hunt it, gather it and we might eat a big feed once a week, perhaps.

It also depends what you expend. If you're not exercising at all, the daily recommendations for calorie consumption might be about right, but obviously everyone is slightly different. Regardless, if you're exercising, you will need more as you are burning more! A typical hours gym workout or class (say, 30 mins work of some kind and 30 mins standing around) can consume somewhere between 400 and 800 calories, sometimes more for the very athletic.

Whether you exercise or not, you will often find you can genuinely actually eat much more than you might think, however it is very much down to the composition of what you eat and also it's quality.

The goal in any case is satiety - i.e you don't want or have to feel hungry but equally shouldn't feel like a stuffed pig after eating.

Unprocessed foods are always better than processed. If it grows from the ground or on an animal it will be better than something in a box from the supermarket.
Understand that sugar including too much natural sugar (e.g in 100% fruit juices) is bad and the right fats are in fact good).

If you starve yourself on low calories (under 1500 is not generally good, as I was warned by my nutrition adviser when I lost the weight!), of course eventually you will lose a little weight as your body will actually burn muscle tissue first and then fat reserves. More likely however, you will stress your body out, cause it to think it's being starved which short term makes it prone to fat retention (for when it needs it as it thinks you are going to starve) and then of course the inevitable binge-day when you can't bear being hungry or missing sweet things any longer.

I am no medical professional nor nutritionist so this is just my experience (and seemingly the advice of a large number of experts), but I am someone who was fat and unfit and is now healthy and lean. My advice, from experience;

Look at your three key macronutrients.

That is your fat intake, protein intake and carbohydrate.

You can set targets for these in % terms using myfitnesspal.

If you're aiming to induce fat loss you will need to restrict carbohydrate intake to something like 10% for 2-4 weeks depending on your body fat %, then increase slowly to say 15% then 20% then 25% over the following 8 weeks.

You may wish to aim for somewhere in the region of;
10% carb
40% protein
and 50% fat.

YES 50% fat. Eating fat does not make you fat. Just eat good fats - general rule; these come from foods that haven't been made by a human or a machine in a factory and like most things in life, are good in moderation. Stuff that grew from the ground (Avocado?) or on an animal (beef?) is fine.

Remember this.
Eating refined carbohydrates(anything containing sugars) and too much natural sugar (that glass of 100% pure orange juice you think is so healthy every day, or that smoothie you buy in the fancy green health bottle, or that low fat meal with the high sugar/carb count you didn't spot) makes you fat because your body doesn't need all that energy all in one go, it can't keep it in your bloodstream and so over time stores more and more of that spare energy AS FAT. Yes, your body converts carbohydrate to fat!

Also remember that all carbs are not bad. Restricting carbohydrates to say 10% of your intake for four weeks will certainly make a big difference to your body composition (the fat will drop off you) but as you become leaner you should absolutely re-introduce good carbohydrates; hell get up to 25%/30% a day, you only have to do one thing which is JERF (Just Eat Real Food) and not processed crap.

Personally I live by a 95/5 rule now. 95% of the time I am well behaved, I avoid alcohol, sugar and dairy. 5% of the time, I eat dirty, like eat cake and get drunk etc :-)

kriscroucher wrote: »

Reading a debate about calories and how many is right is interesting for me.

I re-educated myself around food two years ago with the help of an expert.

I lost 23 kilos in 6 months and went from 36% body fat to 13% body fat in a year.

I've learnt that, funnily enough, it really depends on WHAT you eat.

Calories are perhaps a bit of a distraction though they can help at a very very basic level. Often too basic, though. Obviously you need to burn more than you consume in order to create a calorie deficit and thus ask your body to find energy elsewhere. The problem is your body is cleverer than that, it evolved when we didn't have supermarkets or even shops on the high street. When 3 or more meals a day wasn't the norm. It evolved largely in a time when there wasn't a meal on the table every day. We had to hunt it, gather it and we might eat a big feed once a week, perhaps.

It also depends what you expend. If you're not exercising at all, the daily recommendations for calorie consumption might be about right, but obviously everyone is slightly different. Regardless, if you're exercising, you will need more as you are burning more! A typical hours gym workout or class (say, 30 mins work of some kind and 30 mins standing around) can consume somewhere between 400 and 800 calories, sometimes more for the very athletic.

Whether you exercise or not, you will often find you can genuinely actually eat much more than you might think, however it is very much down to the composition of what you eat and also it's quality.

The goal in any case is satiety - i.e you don't want or have to feel hungry but equally shouldn't feel like a stuffed pig after eating.

Unprocessed foods are always better than processed. If it grows from the ground or on an animal it will be better than something in a box from the supermarket.
Understand that sugar including too much natural sugar (e.g in 100% fruit juices) is bad and the right fats are in fact good).

If you starve yourself on low calories (under 1500 is not generally good, as I was warned by my nutrition adviser when I lost the weight!), of course eventually you will lose a little weight as your body will actually burn muscle tissue first and then fat reserves. More likely however, you will stress your body out, cause it to think it's being starved which short term makes it prone to fat retention (for when it needs it as it thinks you are going to starve) and then of course the inevitable binge-day when you can't bear being hungry or missing sweet things any longer.

I am no medical professional nor nutritionist so this is just my experience (and seemingly the advice of a large number of experts), but I am someone who was fat and unfit and is now healthy and lean. My advice, from experience;

Look at your three key macronutrients.

That is your fat intake, protein intake and carbohydrate.

You can set targets for these in % terms using myfitnesspal.

If you're aiming to induce fat loss you will need to restrict carbohydrate intake to something like 10% for 2-4 weeks depending on your body fat %, then increase slowly to say 15% then 20% then 25% over the following 8 weeks.

You may wish to aim for somewhere in the region of;
10% carb
40% protein
and 50% fat.

YES 50% fat. Eating fat does not make you fat. Just eat good fats - general rule; these come from foods that haven't been made by a human or a machine in a factory and like most things in life, are good in moderation. Stuff that grew from the ground (Avocado?) or on an animal (beef?) is fine.

Remember this.
Eating refined carbohydrates(anything containing sugars) and too much natural sugar (that glass of 100% pure orange juice you think is so healthy every day, or that smoothie you buy in the fancy green health bottle, or that low fat meal with the high sugar/carb count you didn't spot) makes you fat because your body doesn't need all that energy all in one go, it can't keep it in your bloodstream and so over time stores more and more of that spare energy AS FAT. Yes, your body converts carbohydrate to fat!

Also remember that all carbs are not bad. Restricting carbohydrates to say 10% of your intake for four weeks will certainly make a big difference to your body composition (the fat will drop off you) but as you become leaner you should absolutely re-introduce good carbohydrates; hell get up to 25%/30% a day, you only have to do one thing which is JERF (Just Eat Real Food) and not processed crap.

Personally I live by a 95/5 rule now. 95% of the time I am well behaved, I avoid alcohol, sugar and dairy. 5% of the time, I eat dirty, like eat cake and get drunk etc :-)

Congrats on the weight loss, but most of your advice is low carb dogma.

OP, you're a 23 year old guy, right? How much do you weigh now? 2200 calories seems just fine for a man of your age, but it depends on your weight.

Most people really have no perspective on calorie counts, so they've heard random numbers but don't understand the context. Case in point: I was at a dinner party where two people, a man and a woman, were telling me about their new 1200 calorie diets. I was sitting there trying not to yell "I've watched you eat more than 1200 calories since I've been here!" They had no idea what 1200 calories looks like, but they heard that number somewhere and decided that's what you're supposed to eat when you lose weight.

Have you figured out your BMR? I would start there. Try using this: http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/

Put your stats in here. Does it compare to MFP? This will give you a baseline to start and this calculator for me seems to be the closest to my actual BMR and TDEE. I too use a fitness tracker so with all this said this said, I had to tweak MFP and calculate a reason able deficit for weight loss. MFP pal over estimated and I was eating too much and not loosing.

I eat less than 1200 but this is because I am a already pretty lean for my age, height and current weight. I spent two months on this before I was able to start loosing weight. I have seen some not eating enough and starving at the end of the day and some that have over estimated and can't loose.

Hope this helps some.