Dietary Intake – Eating Less than you use
Okay, you should know your BMR now from the previous page.
3500 calories is equivalent to 1lb
9000 is 1kg in weight
This is when converted to body weight.
So if you were to use 2500 calories a day for your BMR, and sat on your ass all day, and then ate only 1500 calories a day, then in 9 days you would have lost 1kg. (Thats 1000 calories a day deficit for 9 days = 9000kcal = 1kg)
Easy huh? You can eat KFC, you can eat McDonalds, you can eat chocolate, and STILL lose weight!
Now the only problem is that by eating fattier foods you wont get as much food compared to other foods.
1g Carbs = 4 kcal
1g Protien = 4 kcal
1g Fat = 9kcal
Oh dear, now you’re seeing the problem 🙂
So if you were to eat say 3 weetbix for breakfast with milk
3 weetbix = 201 kcal
1 cup low fat milk = 100 kcal
Thats say 300 kcal for breakfast .. well thats not so bad. Pretty filling as well and it should kickstart your metabolism up so you end up burning more overall for the whole day.
Alternativly you could eat
2 regular slices toast = 120kcal
2 poached eggs = 100kcal
1 glass milk = 100 kcal
Thats only 320 kcal also, and its pretty filling and yummy.
So its not overly hard to live on a calorie controlled diet at all.
In fact if you take todays standerd foods, most of them are great until you hit things like mayonaise (200 kcal a tablespoon) or cakes (about 350-500 kcal a slice).
So you can actually eat a pretty filling diet, and still throw in the odd chunky sized chocolate bar (200kcal) and lose weight easily.
In fact some days ive had a salad (17kcal a cup) for lunch and ended up having so many spare calories i had KFC for dinner and STILL lost weight! , Be aware KFC advertise different calories on their site to what they actually contain. 2 pieces of KFC only contain 240kcal if you choose a drumstick and wing 🙂
Okay if this is sounding a bit hard to keep up with, try signing up at fitday and entering your food every day as you eat it.
It will tell you how much of what you are eating exactly and also spit out some fantastic graphs to track everything from nutriants to weight loss goals.
Okay, one more key thing to remember.
Girls, you MUST eat over 1200 kcal a day.
Guys, make it 1800 or more please!
If its 1 or 2 days below its not going to matter, but if you regularly eat under this amount your metabolism is going to go into starvation mode. This will cause everything to slow down and your body to suck in all the food it can.
You will not lose any weight whilst your body is in starvation mode! If you find you stop loosing weight try upping the calories a bit.
TAKE A MULTIVITAMIN!
I cannot stress how important this is with a restricted intake. Particularly females. Calcium and Iron intake will probably be low, this will leave you tired and grumpy and unwilling to stick with it.
March 20th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
So true! I am on a 1200 calorie plan, and work out 5-6 days a week. Keeping a food diary,and spending the calories like it is money helps. The part about taking a vitamin..so true..Also, drinking the correct amount of water helps. Great website! A plethora of helpful information!
August 18th, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Thanks a lot for your website. It’s very helpful