Calorie intake! How many should you be eating? And what's with all the calculators?

How many calories does our bodies require in a day? How many calories are too much or too little? These are questions I never worried about until recently, believe it or not. For many years I struggled with my thyroid. I was often never hungry. I hardly ate, and I gained lots of weight due to the combination of my hypothyroid, insulin resistance, and unknown (at the time) allergies to wheat. If you have read my past posts, you know that I have these issues and that I never thought I would be able to lose weight. In fact, every day I have to convince myself over and over again that I will be able to lose weight and that I won’t suddenly digress like waking up from a dream. Recently I discovered that I may not be eating enough calories. I don’t starve myself- I eat when I’m hungry, but I’m eating a lot of fruits and vegetables that don’t have many calories. On average, I’m probably eating 1500 calories a day. Not eating enough can have negative effects, I have started to learn.

 

If you are not eating enough calories, your body enters into “starvation mode” and starts saving and storing to fat instead of burning up the extra fat cells. I have read many different sources on this- including weight watchers- also discusses the starvation phenomenon and is careful to tell you to be sure to eat all of your points. The weight watchers calculator, interestingly enough, based on my height, weight, age, activity level, and amount of pounds I want to lose recommends that I have 40 points (which is about 2000 calories I figured out; each point is 50 calories to the best of my knowledge) with extra 35 bonus points to use throughout the week. And this logic seems counter intuitive to me; I always thought that if one ate less calories, and exercised, that was the key to losing weight. That would allow the body to burn up extra fat stores.  Never did I think that not eating enough would be a factor.  Free dieting.com provides a calculator that will tell you the recommended number of calories a day, based on three different schools of thought. http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

 

In general, the maintenance or basal metabolic rate is the lowest amount of calories that one could take in a day to just provide basic maintenance for your body. This means if you were in bed, all day, this is the lowest amount that would be recommended. All websites mentioning this and material I’ve read also warn readers that not eating enough calories will actually have adverse affects. Another handy website is the BMR calculator http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator There are many such calculators, and every one of them tells me something different. I have seen that I need to eat anywhere from 2000 to 3000 calories. So which one is correct?

 

All of these methods are subjective, in my opinion.  I think that the only thing that is clear for sure, is that reducing intake of 500 calories a day if one is trying to lose weight is a good start. Reducing calorie intake of 500 a day plus exercise is widely agreed to increase weight loss results. These different methods of calculation take into consideration age, weight, height, activity level, sometimes even pant size, your BMI (which can also be calculated by various sites), or your body fat percentage. I’ve calculated it several times with several different methods with all different results. The original Harris Benedict equation was created in 1919. It is known to be inaccurate for individuals who are very muscular or very fat (great!). It takes the weight, height, and age, with that solution being multiplied by a number that includes an estimate for the level of exercise. The Katch McArdle equation takes weight, height,  body fat, and activity level into consideration. Supposedly it is more accurate because it takes into account lean muscle mass (but how can you really know how accurate that number is?) but the biggest problem is clearly defining the activity level. Mifflin St. Jeor is the last type. It is said to be the most accurate and is also based on weight, height, age, and activity level. As far as I can tell, the activity level is more updated than the Harris Benedict- that being the main difference- since the Mifflin St. Jeor was updated in 1990. The one thing that none of these calculators can possible know is: What is my metabolic rate? If I do sprints for a half hour do I burn the same amount of calories as someone else? The same weight and age as me even? I doubt it, unless that person also has Hashimoto’s disease and recovering from insulin resistance, etc., etc. We all know that my metabolism has not been working for a very long time, and we also all know that my body does not respond to things the same as normal people’s bodies do. It is safe to assume that none of these are going to be 100% accurate- but, they will give you a place to start. If you are looking a guesstimate of how many calories you should be eating a day, this is a good way. All three calculators do agree that even for “extreme weight loss” the lowest amount of calories a day I should be eating is about 2100. So I’ll go for that and see what happens (I’ll let you know). This great article again at http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm mentions that people who drop their calorie intake per day by lower than 1000 calories typically have a “yo-yo” affect and gain all of their weight back again. Again, it (like many articles) mentions the “starvation mode” so I’m going to pay close attention to that from now on.

 

 

So, if you read my previous posts you know that I felt like I made a complete ass out of myself at the gym- worrying that my current trainer was going to leave. Well, yesterday was his last day! Talk about intuition! I wish I would have trusted myself and gone with my gut, but now I trainer-less again, although I am handling it better than last time. I learned a lot from the second trainer, and the last three workouts were really enjoyable. I felt that he was really starting to know me and come up with workouts that were good for me and that I enjoyed. I started with him in the middle of January; we went a month training together (although it intersects two months) and in that time I lost 9 pounds. I also lost inches around various extremities including 2 inches of my legs, thighs, hips, and shoulder area to name a few. I also lost 2.5% of body fat, which makes me happy.  I am nervous now because the trainers they have available (two at the moment) are both pretty young. They look like they are in their early 20’s and the past two trainers I have had were very experienced and knew what they were talking about. Beyond that, they both knew how to talk to me, reach me, challenge me, and well, deal with me. As I have admitted before, I am very emotional at the gym because it such a hard thing mentally for me to accomplish. I push myself every day so having the mental support of a trainer is important to me. How are two young guys going to understand my struggle? How are they going to understand that I am not just some slob who couldn’t put down the fork? I don’t want someone’s pity. I’ve been through a lot the last ten years and am finally moving forward. It took a lot of help from a lot of different people, books, professionals, and a hell of a lot of determination to fix myself and I’m still struggling. I don’t have a session scheduled with anyone for next week yet although I plan on giving both of them a chance. I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

Since we are on the topic eating, I would just like to take a moment to beg you: don’t judge a book by their cover. I never over ate or stuffed myself. That’s not why I’m overweight. In fact, I am not eating enough- but by the look of me, you might think, what is wrong with her, why can’t she just cut down her calorie intake? It’s so simple? Why don’t fat people just eat less? It’s more complicated than that. There are many health issues that could affect people’s ability to lose weight, such as mine. In general, jump starting your metabolism is a very difficult thing to do. Is Chris Christie a good politician or is all people can say about him is that he’s fat? Is that all you got? Come up with something better than that, please. I have no idea if he’s a good politician because the press are focused on his weight. Thanks as always for reading my blog! Be happy, be healthy, have energy and LIVE!