Are you eating ENOUGH to loose weight?

Don’t let the title send you into a panic…. let me explain! As you know- I love sites like www.myfitnesspal.com or www.sparkpeople.com They play such an important role in helping us stay accountable to our healthy lifestyle by providing a way to track and manage your calories and exercise. BUT they can also be a little misleading as a tool for individual specific or customized weight loss. They use a system of averages and calculations to determine your calorie deficit. That may not really be the number of calories YOU need to eat (or NOT eat) in order to loose weight for the long term. The basic guidelines below are usually ones guiding the calculations.

The American College of Sports Medicine Identifies a desireable weight loss program as one that meets the following criteria:

• Provides intake not lower than 1200 Cal/Day for normal adults and allows a proper distribution of foods to meet nutritional requirements.
• Provides negative caloric balance (not to exceed 500-1000 cal/day), resulting in gradual weight loss.
• Includes an exercise program that promotes a daily caloric expenditure of more than 300 cal.
• **ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription. 6th Edition;2000; pg 215-216

A few months ago, I did a test at the gym that determined my BMR (or RMR) and has completely changed the way I look at calorie counting. Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is an estimate of how many calories you’d burn if you were to do nothing but rest for 24 hours. It represents the minimum amount of energy needed to keep your body functioning, including breathing and keeping your heart beating. Your BMR does not include the calories you burn from normal daily activities or exercise.

So what does this mean and why is it important to your healthy lifestyle journey? Let me see if I can lay it out below.  This is a snapshot of my Current Goals from My Fitness Pal’s goals tool. It is based on the BMR Test that I did on their site and the goals I selected.

So here are the basics: I am 5’9 1/2″ish… Have already lost the majority of the weight I need to loose- and am in the 20% body fat range (healthy normal) I just want to loose about 10-15 more- I can really only reasonably loose a little less than 1 lb a week. In the BMR tool there is a choice about your daily lifestyle (is it very active, lightly active, etc.) I am set at “lightly active” so my “activity deficit” is about 520 calories a day. (Using the BMR tool on MFP- my numbers were very similar to the test I did at the gym- so I will use these numbers to demonstrate.)

• Based on my height, age, current weight- My BMR is 1500. (Actually 1493- but I allowed for that extra 7 calories) that is the MINIMUM I need to maintain my body functions and metabolism!
• My activity level (The amount of activity I do on an average day- that is the “lightly active” setting mentioned above) adds about another 500 calories per day.
• So just to maintain my current weight and my body functions I could eat approx 2000 calories a day and not gain weight

With me so far? It is important to realize a few things:

• Your body NEEDS calories to survive. Food is FUEL. According to these numbers the MINIMUM number of calories I should get is 1500. If I go below that number, I risk putting my body into starvation mode and throwing my metabolism off and my body could go into “starvation mode.” (Starvation mode is one of the most common factors in dieting plateaus!) 
• If you are exercising- you need to consider your exercise into this calculation as well.

I am very active exercise wise- (training for a half-marathon and strength training 2-3 times a week) So I burn a lot of calories. I track all my calories in MFP. MFP is different than Sparkpeople in that it adds your activity calories right into your daily log so that you can see it and have the option to “eat” them. (I eat ALL my activity/exercise calories!! _I’ll talk about that in a second.)

Down from 170 when I started eating based on my BMR

One lb is worth 3500 calories. If I want to loose 1 lb a week, I need to have a deficit of 3500 calories a week. You see in the chart above… If my body naturally burns 2020 calories a day (my BMR plus my activity calories) and I should NEVER eat less than my BMR (remember those are the calories my body needs to function and survive!) then the fewest calories I should eat are those 1500 calories- then my deficit comes from my “average activity” calories per day. 520 Calories! This will give me my 3500 per week to loose a lb a week. (2020- 1500=520… 520 calories X 7 days= 3640 calorie per week deficit- little over 1 pound a week.)

So let’s talk exercise calories! I EAT them… as often as possible.  As often as I can. So let’s do some more math! (Who knew? Me and Math!?) I should eat that minimum of 1500 calories per day. Today I exercise and burn 360 calories. If I only eat 1500 calories- then my total caloric intake for the day is LESS than 1500 calories! It is only 1,140 calories. This is FEWER calories than my body needs to function- to survive! (Short term extreme caloric deficit may work- but remember that long term extreme caloric deficits cause a starvation mode and metabolism changes) So I need to eat my exercise calories in order to allow my body to function properly… especially since I am exercising- my body need FUEL! (Remember- food is Fuel!)

If you look at my food log  on My Fitness Pall (I am lala362 and I think it is open for everyone to view) I eat A LOT some days! Over 2100 calories as often as not. (Rest days are hard for me because I try to keep it to the 1500 on those days and that seems like so little after eating my exercise calories most days!)

I started doing this for real a little 2 months ago. When I did the test at the gym- I hadn’t really been loosing in a while and I was trying to do the 1200 plus my exercise calories. 1200 was the number of calories the MFP program automatically set for me! - Sparkpeople set the same thing. I was eating only about 1200 a day after exercise and I was NOT loosing anything. Though I am so close to my weight goal and my body fat is so low already that I should not really be loosing more than 1lb a week, the system will allow you to enter up to 2 lbs a week as your goal.

In the first week I started doing this- I lost almost 4 lbs. I just added about 300 calories a day really… from 1200 to 1500 and eating all my exercise calories in both plans- but it made a big difference so far. I have been doing this about two months. I lost about 7 lbs so far and have been trying to only maintain for the past month or so. I have not gained any weight as I have been focused on just staying here right now.

I think it is important to consider these principles in your heatlhy eating plan (I don’t believe in “diets”) and not just blindly go for 1200 calories a day just because one of these programs tells you that’s the number of calories you should eat. I had two friends who I also talked to about this. They were both STUCK and not loosing any weight. One of them is exerciing a lot and one is not yet. Since they both added more calories into their plans- they have started to see the scale start to move again too!  One has since played with it a little… lowering her calories some weeks to help jump the loss again- but going back up to help her body sustain the amount of exercise she does.

You have to make it work for you. You have to do the research and understand the concepts- not just let a site set things up and not understand why. I also think you need to make your eating fit your lifestyle and if you need to eat out one night- just enjoy it… this has to be something you can sustain for a lifetime- not just a few weeks each January!

If you have been loosing weight pretty steadily- but have been finding yourself at a plateau- it may be that you are not eating enough! Seems a bit counter-intuitive- but I hope I have helped explain some of the reasons why above. If you have questions- please feel free to ask!

You can calculate your BMR at Myfitnesspal.com under their Tools Tab… then use the calories it shows you to set up your Goals… use the customize goals button and set up your BMR calories instead of the site pre-determined calories. Below are also some additional links to give you more information on BMR/RMR.

• http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/bmr-formula.php
• http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=56254
• http://preventdisease.com/healthtools/articles/bmr.shtml
• http://ezinearticles.com/?Basal-Metabolic-Rate—What-You-Can-Do-To-Boost-Your-Metabolism?&id=1288908

Have you ever calculated your BMR before?

Have you ever hit a weight loss plateau?

Do you try to stick to an extreme low caloric intake diet?

Are you willing to try to up your calories and see what happens?