I know some of you have just started, some of you are in the middle, and some, including myself, have been here for quite a while. One really important question that seems to come up, and that matters a lot if you are trying to lose or even maintain weight, is calories.
Today a close LS friend of mine wrote to me too, as she noticed that LS had recently changed their calorie numbers, which are based on activity level. I wanted to communicate to as many of you as possible about calories, because it really is so important for helping us all reach our goals., For me, and for a number of other people on Livestrong, the website "www.freedieting.com" is very useful.
This calorie calculator below, when filled in with your information, will tell you how many calories you need to MAINTAIN your current weight.
It bases the calorie number on your level of activity. So how do you know which level of activity to put yourself at? And why would you want to know the # of calories to MAINTAIN when what you want to do is LOSE? Well, most if not all agree, that a loss of 1 pound per week equals a calorie DEFICIT or MINUS of 3500 calories. 3500 in a week, divided by 7 days, comes to a deficit of 500 calories PER DAY.
Yet a deficit of 500 calories a day does NOT NECESSARILY MEAN you have to eat 500 calories less than the MAINTAIN number. It can be a combination of eating less and exercising more.
Say you figure out from Free Dieting that you should be able to eat 2500 calories, doing Little or No Exercise, to maintain the weight you are now. And you want to lose 2 pounds a week. Losing 2 pounds per week requires a 1000 calories per day Calorie Deficit.
So you start with your 2500 calories. And you decide that you will divide the calorie deficit into Diet and Exercise. You will eat 600 calories less, and you will burn 400 calories per day thru exercise. Then each day you ride your bicycle for 400 calories, and you instead of eating the 2500, you eat 1900.
But how do you know what Exercise Level is correct for you to get to the right calories? How do you know what activity level to set for yourself? Here is what you can do. If you can:
1. Weigh yourself on a certain date and time. Lets say February 1.
2. Then CAREFULLY and HONESTLY track everything you eat. Do this for say 2 weeks straight. Everything. Honestly. Measure It. Record your daily weights, same time of day, same scale, etc. for 2 weeks. Every day.
3. Then, when you are on Daily Plate, and you scroll down to the very bottom RIGHT, you can run a spreadsheet, from say, Feb. 1 thru Feb. 7 (one complete week)...You can find out your Average Calories Consumed per Day. And then you can look at your activity you did during that week.
4. Now try out different levels using the Free Dieting website. Try out what it says if you did Little or No Exercise, or the other Levels: Exercise 3x a week, 5x a week etc. Look at your average calories consumed each day. And look at how much weight you lost. Then you can see which level matched what happened during that week? And the next week? See how the numbers match the website.
Examples:
a) Lets say you set the Level at a 3x a week Exerciser. It says you should be able to eat 1800 calories to lose 2 pounds a week. But after 2 weeks, you did not lose 2 pounds a week, you only lost 1. Then you might want to adjust the Exercise Level on FreeDieting, to Little or No Exercise. It means that for now, your metabolism is slower than what they think it is.
OR
b) Based on the Free Dieting website, it looks like you should be able to eat 1600 a day to lose 1 pound a week. So a few weeks go by, and when you do your spreadsheet and see what happened, it turns out, you lose 3 pounds a week. This tells you that for whatever reason, your metabolism is faster than what you think...
In these cases, fiddle with the exercise levels. The Exercise Levels are just guidelines to help you figure out the right calorie amount, they are not absolutes.
I find it is MUCH easier not to think about eating back calories or whatever its called. With Free Dieting, I just pick an Exercise Level, see what they say I need to MAINTAIN, and adjust from there.
Right now it tells me that I should be able to eat 1708 per day to maintain my weight, if I exercise 5x a week. I do not think this is true. For me, its probably more like 1550. My main point here is that you cant take the numbers that Livestrong provides OR that Free Dieting provides as absolutes. You can however look at your own results, honestly track what you eat, and FIND OUT which numbers work the best for you. Hope this is helpful.
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