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2006/04/02, 08:08 PM
Hi! In the April issue of Women's Health there is a formula that helps determine how many calories you need per day in order to lose weight -AND it takes into account exercising too. I've somewhat shortened it, but here is the gist of it:
1.) Multiply your weight in lbs by 11 to get your basic calorie needs (how much your body burns just by existing)**mine is 153 x 11 = 1,683
2.) Multiply the above # by 1.6 to estimate your resting metabolic rate (rate of calorie burn when you factor in your daily activities)
**mine is 1683 x 1.6 = 2,692
3.) The next step is trickier b/c you have to know how many calories you burn in a workout. The magazine gives a way to estimate it, but I have a HR monitor so I KNOW I burn 600 calories per workout which equals 2400 per week/342 calories per day.
**so my calories per day burned through exercise is 342
4.) Now you add your BMR plus the calories burned through exercise to get your daily calorie needs.
***mine 2692 + 342 = 3,034 per day. (that's to maintain)
5.) to lose 1lb per week, take 500 from that #, and to lose 2lbs per week take 1000 from that #.
SO, following this formula that means I need 2034 calories per day to lose 2lbs per week.
Can this be right? If so, I haven't been eating NEARLY enough calories. I am eating 1500-1600 per day. Could this be the reason for my plateau? I'm not sure if it would be wise, to all of a sudden up my intake by 400 calories per day! What do you experienced people think? Thanks a lot. :)
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2006/04/03, 08:50 AM
To me it sounds about right...my FT profile suggests that I eat a max of 2000 calories per day to loose weight..but its how you spend those calories is whats important...eating enough protein/carbs/fat.
I believe that if you dont vary your calories from week to week,your metabolism starts to burn at a steady rate as it gets use to the same intake of calories per day.IN order to keep your metabolism burning at a higher rate,I vary my calories from day to day..some days higher,some days lower.
Your body has this wonderful little thermostat inside of it. It regulates everything you do. If you feed it lots of food, it turns the thermostat up and burns it as efficiently as possible. Your body became more efficient and was able to burn off much of the excess amount of calories.
When you go on a "diet" where you dramatically decrease the amount of calories that you consume, your body thinks "Oh-oh, we're going to starve to death here" and immediately turns the thermostat down to conserve energy. After all, your body will do whatever it has to do to ensure that you stay alive. It doesn't know that you don't want to carry those extra pounds around.
But if you change the amount of food it gets every day, it doesn't have time to adjust itself! Which means on that day that you eat high, it tries to adjust by turning up your thermostat, but it is unable to turn it down for the low calories the next day. What you are doing, in essence, is keeping your body guessing. It doesn't have time to adjust the thermostat down, before it needs to turn it back up. What eventually happens is your body will never again feel as though it is going to starve to death, and it will never again try to shut down the thermostat, so you will continue to lose at a more rapid loss. This also means fewer plateaus.
Try upping your calories +200 for the first week and see what happens...and go from there..
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2006/04/06, 01:43 PM
Hi Mysticgraces! Thanks for the well-thought out response. It definitely makes sense. I think I will try what you suggested! Wish me luck! I've been plateaued for 3 weeks now and it's VERY frustrating! I've lost 18lbs so far, but I still have 17 more that I should lose! Thanks again!
Christy
p.s. Are your pictures from the Sears virtual model? LOL I've used that before! Cute!
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