“How Many Calories Should I Eat?” Part 3

In the last two articles in this series (catch up on Part 1 & Part 2 if you haven’t read them yet!) we spent a lot of time doing math and figuring out the science behind exactly how much you need to eat to stay alive and fuel your daily activities; maybe a little boring, but do you think Tony Stark just guessed how much energy it would take to power the Iron Man armor? Of course not, and neither should you!

I know what you’re thinking, “So now that we have all this data, how do we actually use it to our advantage?” Well, here is what I recommend you do next if you are serious about getting your eating habits in control and marching forward down the road to becoming a real life super-hero!

Keep Track of What You Eat!

If you’re looking for a starting point, this is it. Now, I have extolled the virtues of food journaling already, so I won’t beat you about the head again with why it is such an important tool… but starting first thing tomorrow, I want you to start keeping track of every thing you put in your mouth (seriously, everything.) You see, most people have no idea how much they actually eat! So I want you to take 5-7 days and record absolutely everything, so that at the end of the exercise you can calculate what your average daily caloric intake actually is. Now (this is important, so listen up), even though it might be difficult I want to you to make sure when you are reviewing your journal that you aren’t judging yourself or rationalizing your choices.

It doesn’t matter if Monday is Milton in accounting’s birthday and that is why you had that giant slice of tasty chocolate cake or that your pet goldfish, Jaws, died and you that’s why you powered down an entire carton of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food to numb the pain. I am not discounting that life often seems like it is conspiring against your health goals, but at this point in our Heroes Transformation we are just trying to understand our bodies, habits and what we need to adjust to reach our goals. The slippery slope of justifications will just make it easier for you to revert back into bad habits! We need to approach this as scientifically as possible. So just gather the data, don’t judge it.

Yet.

“Just the facts ma’am” – Joe Friday

So now that we have even more data, how can we use it to steer us towards our goals?

Reduce How Much You Eat!

Personally, I don’t think it is healthy to plan to lose more than 1-2 pounds a week. Now I say “plan” because very often, at first, when you make significant changes to the quality of the food you are eating you might see a more drastic decrease that seems to contradict the BMR/HBF model. Once your body gets used to eating grilled chicken and vegetables instead of McNuggets and french fries everything will start to even out though.

So as we established earlier, if you burn 3,500 calories you will lose 1 pound (While some scientists will argue the exactness of the numbers involved, I think the generally accepted formula works fine…) So to lose 1 pound per week, you need to be eliminating approximately 500 calories per day. That can be accomplished by:

A)   Eating less

B)   Exercising more

C)    All of the above

In a perfect world the answer should be C. The caloric deficit per day should come from a combination of a decrease in what you eat and an increase in the amount of exercise you are doing, but for simplicity’s sake (we have to start somewhere!) lets just focus on eating less. This really isn’t going to be as hard as you think, I promise! First look for the easy stuff to cut out, like replacing liquid calories (one 12 oz can of Coke is 140 calories) with water, and then move onto some portion control.

Note – If you are on this program looking to put on some muscle mass, you are going to have to do two things. Repeatedly lift and put back down a lot of heavy things and eat a lot of high quality calories.

Please be aware though; if you aren’t exercising, and building muscle, your weight loss will be a combination of both fat and muscle. Skinny does not necessarily equal fit (In case you haven’t noticed, I really want you to exercise!)

Also, it is also very important to note you DO NOT want to try and drastically cut your weight by eating less than 1300-1400 calories a day! I can’t stress this enough; doing that causes your body to think it is starving and will hold on to every last calorie you take in and do it’s best to convert them into fat to store. This is your metabolism at work. I don’t want to fall too far down this rabbit hole, so in the interest of keeping this simple let me use an analogy to explain what this oft bandied around term, metabolism, means.

The human body is like an engine. It consumes fuel, converts it to energy for use and then eliminates the waste products. Fuel comes in various forms, be it oxygen, water, nutrients, minerals, etc. and is used for all sorts of things. Movement, breathing, thinking, repairing broken body parts, heating, cooling, etc… (pretty much everything you can think of really.) The way your body accomplishes this is through your metabolism.

A lot of things can affect your metabolism – age, genetics, work habits, exercise frequency and duration, food-type and amount, hormonal status, general health, and other factors. It is an ever-changing and evolving process!

Just like a modern engine (which are managed by multiple computers) your body’s processes are constantly being adjusted for maximum efficiency. So when you are taking in an inordinately low amount of calories your metabolic computer switches to “starvation mode” and beings to process these calories much differently than if you were adequately meeting your BMR needs. This is why I am a fan of eating 4-5 small meals a day! That way your metabolism doesn’t start getting scared that food will become scarce, and it won’t try to build up your fat stores for what it thinks is going to be impending famine.

So let’s not try to go all “Biggest Loser” and drop massive amounts of weight all at once. It isn’t healthy, and it doesn’t really work in the long run (the sad truth is a majority of the contestants on that show balloon right back up after it stops filming).

Now if you are used to eating dramatically more than you need to cutting down to 2,000 per day will probably make you hungrier, and grumpier, than a bear coming out of hibernation, so slowly decrease your caloric intake by a several hundred calories each week. Your stomach, just like your discipline and your muscles, needs to be trained. It needs to learn exactly how much it should be digesting on a daily basis. Which is way less than you’ve probably been giving it. As I have said multiple times, this entire process of living a healthier life is going to take time and you are going to constantly have to make adjustments to stay on track and accomplish your goals. Don’t try and change too much too fast and then break under the pressure. Just take it one step at a time!

Finally, don’t obsess over counting calories… at first it can really help while you are learning what you should, and shouldn’t, cram in your face holes but over time it can become an unhealthy distraction. Once you get portion control down, are eating quality foods and are on a solid exercise program stop worrying about the numbers.

So are you tired of math? Are you ready to start taking control of how much you eat? Let me know in the comments below! Also, be sure to follow us on Facebook or Twitter and be sure to Sign up for our free newsletter! (No spam, I promise!)