Caloric Intake Question
missaudrey0275
Posts: 6 Member
I am trying to understand caloric intake as it relates to losing weight. For example, on average, if a woman is supposed to have no less than 1200 calories a day, if she's trying to lose weight, how many calories would she need to burn if she eats all 1200 calories?
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There is no one amount of calories a woman is supposed to eat. It's going to depend on her activity level, goals, and current weight.
If a woman was burning 1,450 calories a day (through all her activity, including sleeping, work, and intentional exercise) and ate 1,200, she would lose 1/2 a pound a week. If she was burning 1,700 total a day (again, including all activity) and eating 1,200, she would lose a pound a week.
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It depends on the desired rate of loss. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories, so to lose 1lb/week, she’d need to burn 1700 calories/day (500/day, 3500/week deficit). That’s not 1700 calories from exercise, that’s 1700 total, the majority of which will be the calories you burn just being alive (BMR) and another big chunk will just be going about your daily life. MFP will do all that math for you. You put in your stats and activity level and it’ll give you a calorie goal per day.0
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That's a great question, because when most people think about dieting the first thing they think about is calories in vs calories out. This is important because at the end of the day you do have to have a calorie deficit in order to actually lose weight, but in order to change body composition (lose fat/gain muscle) you have to concentrate more on the macros of the food you're eating. This way your end result will be fat loss and not just overall weight loss, which can include muscle loss and that's never something you want since the more muscle you have the higher your resting metabolism is.
To answer your question, when I set up a client for a weight loss, which is actually a fat loss, plan I first want to establish how many calories they are already eating. The reason for this is throughout a fat loss program calories have to be stepped down over time in order for results to keep happening. If a client comes to me and is already eating 1200 calories, like you gave in your example, and they're starting to see thier results slowing, then there's only two things that person can do when thier calories are that low. They can either do more cardio or eat less calories. Less calories isn't ideal and neither is 3 hours of cardio for a person with a "normal" life, so that's why it's important to develop a healthy metabolism before trying to lose fat so you have room to keep making progress. Plus when you're eating that low of calories everyday it's hard to have the energy to keep doing the workouts you need to do to keep seeing progress and hunger cravings can become a real problem because you just don't have enough energy to function. This is usually the point when fitness isn't fun anymore and most people quit and rebound just to start over again say next New year's.
Fitness is simple yet complex when it comes to fat loss once you learn how to eat in a way that works with your body instead of against it.
I hope that helps! If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me I'd love to help!!!☺️7 -
janejellyroll wrote: »There is no one amount of calories a woman is supposed to eat. It's going to depend on her activity level, goals, and current weight.
If a woman was burning 1,450 calories a day (through all her activity, including sleeping, work, and intentional exercise) and ate 1,200, she would lose 1/2 a pound a week. If she was burning 1,700 total a day (again, including all activity) and eating 1,200, she would lose a pound a week.
Gotcha0 -
missaudrey0275 wrote: »I am trying to understand caloric intake as it relates to losing weight. For example, on average, if a woman is supposed to have no less than 1200 calories a day, if she's trying to lose weight, how many calories would she need to burn if she eats all 1200 calories?
Uhhhh....1200 calories is a weight loss target...you're already burning off way more than that being alive and going about your day to day.
Like my weight loss calorie target is 2300 to lose about 1 Lb per week...because I "burn" on average 2800 calories per day...about 1800 of that is just me being alive. The other 1,000 is a combination of my day to day stuff and a little exercise.1 -
@janejellyroll For some reason my full response didn't go through, but I used the 1200 for a woman because over time I've seen it used to illustrate how much should intake daily. I'm new to calorie counting so I've been using that as an example.0
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@rj0150684 Thank you for your response. It was very helpful.1
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missaudrey0275 wrote: »@janejellyroll For some reason my full response didn't go through, but I used the 1200 for a woman because over time I've seen it used to illustrate how much should intake daily. I'm new to calorie counting so I've been using that as an example.
1,200 is the *lowest* that is recommended for women. Some people mistakenly assume this means it is what women should eat to lose weight, but the truth is that women can often lose weight eating more than this and 1,200 isn't enough for many people.
If you put your stats and goals into MFP, it will recommend a calorie goal for you.3 -
missaudrey0275 wrote: »@janejellyroll For some reason my full response didn't go through, but I used the 1200 for a woman because over time I've seen it used to illustrate how much should intake daily. I'm new to calorie counting so I've been using that as an example.
1200 calories per day is an aggressive weight loss target for women...not a maintenance level of calories.
A woman's BMR on average is 1300-1400 calories...those are the calories that are burned merely existing. You burn more calories going about your day to day stuff and exercise.
My wife is short, but fairly active and maintains on around 2200 calories. Should lose roughly 2 Lbs per week eating 1200 calories but would be miserable. She usually cuts weight on 1700-1800 calories at about 1 Lb per week.1 -
Enter YOUR statistics (height, current weight, current activity level and desired rate of weight loss) into My Fitness Pal and it will give you an estimate of your daily calorie intake needed to meet YOUR weight loss goals. There is no "One Size Fits All" approach to counting calories just as all women are not made the same size, shape, age or energy level.0
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Keep in mind your body burns calories all time, to keep you breathing and thinking and digesting and getting up off the couch etc. You don't have to exercise to lose weight (although it can make it easier and it's just generally good for you).
If you put your stats and goal into MFP it will give you a calorie goal. That goal does not include exercise, just the calories your body burns living your normal life.4 -
I should also add that this is my second time around losing weight. I lost about 30 pounds (probably more than that) three years ago simply running everyday and cutting out a lot of the foods that were bad for me: bread, pasta, soda, etc...I didn't look at calories or even look at the scale, save for one time when I was down 20 pounds. At one point I saw that I was getting too thin so I allowed myself to eat more but couldn't stop, which made me gain most of the weight back. This second time around is a bit challenging because I'm more aware of what affects the outcome of my weight loss. If I can get a better understanding of calorie intake, it will help a great deal. Thank you for the responses thus far.0
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@whitney91smith Yes, this helped a great deal. I must admit, I probably haven't been eating as many calories as I should only because I didn't understand, but these responses are helping. I'm pretty sure I'll have more questions lol. Thank you for offering to help.1
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To give you an example using my own numbers, I'm 5'8" and around 200-ish pounds right now. Just living my day-to-day life without exercise, I burn about 2200-2300 calories. That number will be different for everyone depending on their stats and lifestyle, but you can get an estimate of yours with any online TDEE calculator.
at 1700-1800 calories/day, I lose about a pound a week or 5 pounds a month. I could drop that and lose faster, but personally I am a little paranoid about muscle loss and I'm fairly comfortable at 1700 calories so why push it? Anything below 1400 calories and I start to feel like beating someone over the head with a sandwich.
If I add exercise to the equation, my total daily energy expenditure - the calories I burn in a day - goes up. So let's say I add in a 45 min walk every day. It's nice out and I'm trying to do that more often. My calories burned now goes from 2200 up to more like 2500 a day. If I want to maintain the same rate of loss, I'd boost my calories eaten by the same amount. Or I could choose not to boost my intake and lose weight a little fast (about a half a pound a week extra in this case).
So I can eat 1700 calories and not burn anything extra through exercise to lose weight because my body is already taking care of me. A smaller woman than me would likely have a lower TDEE, so she would have to either eat less or exercise more to see the same results. The trick is to find your own personal numbers - usually by trying out a calculator like MFP or a TDEE calculator and then adjusting as you go since those are just estimates. Once you get a handle on it, it's pretty easy to adjust. You just have to look at the big picture and learn to tune out all of the water weight fluctuations you're going to have.6 -
Read this thread:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1235566/so-youre-new-here/p1
And the other stickied Most Helpful Threads in the Getting Started section.3 -
whitney91smith wrote: »To answer your question, when I set up a client for a weight loss, which is actually a fat loss, plan I first want to establish how many calories they are already eating. The reason for this is throughout a fat loss program calories have to be stepped down over time in order for results to keep happening. If a client comes to me and is already eating 1200 calories, like you gave in your example, and they're starting to see thier results slowing, then there's only two things that person can do when thier calories are that low. They can either do more cardio or eat less calories. Less calories isn't ideal and neither is 3 hours of cardio for a person with a "normal" life, so that's why it's important to develop a healthy metabolism before trying to lose fat so you have room to keep making progress. Plus when you're eating that low of calories everyday it's hard to have the energy to keep doing the workouts you need to do to keep seeing progress and hunger cravings can become a real problem because you just don't have enough energy to function. This is usually the point when fitness isn't fun anymore and most people quit and rebound just to start over again say next New year's.
Why do calories have to be "stepped" down over time in order to continue to see results? Does a pound of fat weigh more on a diet?
What if I told you that the client eating 1200 calories a day either is eating more than they realize or is just not being patient?
What makes a metabolism healthy? If you can metabolize food and burn it for energy isn't that healthy?4 -
No problem @missaudrey0275 , always happy to help!0
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