how many calories in a day?

[davemchine]

I'd kill for chinese food right now. Ok, I'll take everyone's advice and not sweat it for now. Hopefully the weight will start coming off soon. With a 385 calorie dinner and no snack I can tell you I'm waiting for the loss. I'm flippen hungry. Is that an eggroll I smell...?

Dave

[Lux Interior]

That's the worst part of dieting. The hunger is constant and always tapping you on the shoulder, but the loss of weight/mass is slow and gradual.

[Jem]

[quote davemchine]I'd kill for chinese food right now. Ok, I'll take everyone's advice and not sweat it for now. Hopefully the weight will start coming off soon. With a 385 calorie dinner and no snack I can tell you I'm waiting for the loss. I'm flippen hungry. Is that an eggroll I smell...?

Dave
Pinion has it perfectly. Also... keep in mind that as we get older, muscle will quickly convert BACK to fat if we start slacking off again after being on a good exercise regimen.

The best advice I've seen is to go for gradual weightloss while maintaining a regular exercise routine.

Sometimes if you "shock" your system by quickly cutting out fats (in an attempt to accelerate weight loss) your body actually tends to hold on to the fat it has.

If you keep a small amount of fat in your diet, eats lots of fruits vegetables and protein, reduce your starch based carbohydrates, and continue exercising you should gradually lose weight and increase muscle mass... even if you don't significantly decrease your caloric intake below 2000. But think of this as happening over 4 to 6 months... not 4 to 6 weeks.

If you feel like you are starving, you will probably go "off the reservation" sooner or later. Better to feel full of things that are good for you, than to binge later on things that are not. Good luck!

[michaelb]

It is possible that your calorie deficit is actually too high each day, so keep that in mind. It is more important to pick a target that you can maintain for the long term, then to do a crash diet where you try to lose weight fast (and then go off in the near future).

Do you use a calorie counting program, so that you get "credit" for the days you work out? This means you should be able to eat more on the days you work out. Most diet programs will account for this. So that would give you another 225 calories to eat on the days your work out (an incentive to work out every day).

You are only burning 225 calories each time, so that suggests you are doing something not that strenuous (like walking) or are only working out for 30 minutes or so. Extending your workouts to 45 minutes or an hour, can make a huge difference. Once you are there and sweating and need to shower, etc, going that little bit further is not that much actual additional time in the overall picture.

Good luck and keep it up.

[rz]

I have been exercising regularly for about 2 months now, but haven't changed my diet at all. I too have noticed that I haven't lost any weight, but my pants definitely feel looser, and I can actually see a difference in my abdominal region. For me, I don't care what the scale says. I have a 36" waist now and am hoping to get back to a 34" waist. It's not likely I'll get back to a 32" waist, but if I start to diet, who knows?

[davemchine]

michaelb, you nailed it in regards to the workout. I'm going to the gym on my lunch hour and am excercising 30 minutes. I'm transitioning from the bike to the eliptical machine since it burns more calories but I'm pretty out of shape.

I get the message about slow weight loss but everyone is correct, I want it NOW! heh. I'm in a contest and in 6 more weeks the "biggest loser" takes home $160 of which $20 was my entry fee. I'll settle for having just lost some weight but it would be nice to be a contender.

Dave

[michaelb]

Lunch can be tight for time. Right now you are doing 2 hours a week of exercise. I think for major weight loss for this period, you would want to triple or quadruple that at least.

On the weekends it would be great if you could find something to do that took hours, hiking, biking, basketball, etc, even long walks, so that you could do 2 hours a day on Sat or Sun, or something long like 5-6 hours of hiking, etc. That could really help overall. You mention that you are out of shape, so we need to keep this reasonable, but think about something you could do like that.

[mattkime]

If you want to win the competition just starve.

If you want to get healthier, just keep at it, although you should probably fix your hunger problem. Smaller portions more frequently?

[CharlieStango]

Lifting weights will take the pounds off a lot quicker than cardio. The best is to workout with weights and finish with 20-30 min cardio.Try drinking 100% unsweetened green tea, it help burn fat and helps you feel less hungry.

[Robert M]

Dave,

The answer isn’t necessarily in the number of calories you eat in a given day. It’s a combination of several factors.... The number of calories, the type of calories and the type of exercise. Consider... I weighed well over 200 pounds in the middle of June. I’m now 158 pounds and have maintained this weight since the end of August. My waist line used to be nearly 37”. Now it’s 33”. the weight loss shows in my face more than anywhere else. I’m nearly 36 years old and people say I look between 29 and 30 or so now. Here’s how I did it....

1. A change in diet.

a. Breakfast. I never ate much of anything for breakfast other than just a cup of coffee and an english muffin. So, I didn’t change my morning food intake. I still have just coffee and a munchie of some kind, i.e. English muffin with a pat off butter or a bagel with a reasonable amount of cream cheese.

b. Lunch. Lunch is a different matter entirely. Instead of a big honking sandwich or chinese food with chips, I switched to 14 to 16 ounces of salad with no dressing and a can of Slim-fast. Most of the salads I see at the store ar 12 ounce. So, I eat one full bag and about 1/4 to half of another. The next day, I eat a full bag and finish off the one I opened previously. I just make sure I have enough bags of salad to last me the entire week. I avoidd iceberg salads. Instead, I stick to those filled with nicely colored lettuces, i.e. romaine, butter, radiccio, etc. I sometimes eat a few slices of roast beef or a couple of snack sticks of Cracker Barrel 2% cheddar cheese.

c. Dinner is pretty much anything I want and tends to be high in protein and reasonable in carbs. Sometimes it’s a burger or two. Other times, lots o’ chicken, i.e. buy a roast chicken at the supermarket.

On the “Robert M” plan, will I go for a shake once in a while? Absolutely, but not often and not during the salad meal. Every once in a while, I’ll swap dinner and lunch. It all depends. On the weekend, I may eat both. It all depends on what I’m doing during the day.

BTW, I’m not a veggie kind of person and tend to avoid them at all costs, so not only did this change in diet put ample veggies into my diet but it offers a crap-load of fiber, too. I also increased the amount of water i drank as well. I carry around a 2 liter jug and instead of drinking soda or that much more coffee, I just take a swig whenever I’m thirsty. I usually finish about 3/4 of the jug by the end of the day.

Do I know how many calories I consume in a day? No. I don’t count them to that degree. I just make sure the type of food I eat is worth it in calories and not too extreme. Same goes for the size of my meals. Lunch tends to be very low-calorie since a honking bag of salad is very filling, ultra-low calorie and the vast majority of the meal. The act of digesting the salad burns off the majority if not all of the calories it contains.

Which reminds me... Counting calories takes you only so far. You have to watch the fat and cholesterol content as well as the sugars. For example... Nuts tend to be higher in fat and calorie than other snacks but they’re better for you than a bag of potato chips. Some foods might be low-fat but the fat they have could be saturated fat, which is worse than unsaturated. An item may be low-fat but high in cholesterol. Other items may be low-fat, low-cholesterol but high carb and the majority of the carbs could be sugar of which too much will result in increased weight. You get the idea.

2. Exercise

I am at the gym regularly, usually work out a minimum of three times per week, sometimes four depending on my schedule. Of the three times, I attend a very intense cardio boxing class for an hour and burn a tremendous number of calories in it. My fourth session is approximately 20 to 30 minutes of jogging on a treadmill, weight lifting for thirty minutes and fifteen minutes or more working the heavy bag. For what it’s worth, during this session just the time on the treadmill burns over 200 calories. Combine that with the rest and it may not be as intense as the boxing class but it definitely gets the job done.

One thing is for certain my system has worked well for me and my doctor is ecstatic about what I’ve managed to do since June. Heck, my cholesterol is down to 180 or so and, unlike the rest of my family, I didn’t need to take meds to get the job done. Believe me, that alone is a significant accomplishment since high cholesterol runs in my family.

Drop me a PM and I’ll give you more details.

Robert