@trailsillustrated Don’t take it as an insult, but the approach you’ve taken is a testament to how poor health education is in the US. I didn’t know anything about it either until I went out and researched it myself. One interesting thing I learned is that the greatest experts in the world on fat loss are bodybuilders; their careers depend on having as thin a layer of fat as possible so they can show off their muscle definition in competitions. They have figured out how to focus on losing fat and not the things you want to keep, like muscle.
On the most basic level, fat loss should be easy: just consume less calories per day than you burn. But the human body is sophisticated and that approach is too simplistic. One thing you need to do is get your metabolism working. There are two ways to get your metabolism going: exercising and eating. Yes, eating. Every time you eat, you jumpstart your metabolism. When you don’t eat, your body, evolved over millions of years to survive in tough situations, triggers a “starvation response.” When your body doesn’t receive enough fuel, it anticipates a long period of starvation and starts holding on to your fat stores more strongly than ever, instead catabolizing your muscles. However, you want to keep your muscles! Your muscles are burning calories when your sitting at your desk, when you are sleeping, etc. The more muscle you have, the more your body is working when you’re not moving. So, the goal is to eat enough to prevent your body’s starvation response so you can keep your muscles.
So how do you turn all of this into a weight-loss plan? First, you have to figure out how many calories you need to eat per day to stay at the same weight you are now. The most accurate way to calculate this figure is by learning your body fat percentage and plugging it into a formula. You’ll need skinfold calipers to ascertain your body fat percentage, but most people won’t bother with this so I’ll give you some broad numbers:
Maintenance
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Men: 2700–2900 calories
Women: 2000–2100 calories
Losing Weight
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Men: 2200–2700 calories
Women: 1400–1800 calories
These numbers are highly generalized, and you’ll see better results if you knew your own precise numbers. These numbers happen to correspond closely to my own figures; I currently need approximately 2749 calories for maintenance (because I’m considered “lightly active” in going to the gym 3 times/week), so I’m currently restricting myself to 2199 calories per day.
Now that I know I am limited to around 2200 calories a day, I roughly split that number into 5–6 meals, approximately 400 calories per meal. It is extremely important that you eat this many times a day, because each time you eat, you are jumpstarting your metabolism. Since you are eating so few calories, your body ends up burning almost all of it, with virtually none of it being converted to fat. With time and exercise, your body will burn your excess fat stores. It’s important to note that even when you reach your weight goal, you should still try to limit your calorie intake to your maintenance level so that you stay at your ideal weight.
Counting calories is tough, but doable. There are a number of websites that make counting calories easier than ever before. I happen to like fitday.com because they seem to have more of the foods I eat frequently. But you should definitely check out dailyburn.com and sparkpeople.com to see if they fit your eating habits better. You might have noticed that I said nothing about eating healthier and that’s because I don’t really need to. A person who is counting her calories starts paying attention to how full she getting from the 400 calories she is allowed in a meal. After a while, a person will get so sick of eating 4 chicken nuggets or half a burger that they start choosing healthier foods because they are much less calorie dense. A huge salad will hold you over until your next meal much better than a slice of pizza.
Diet is by far the most important factor on a person’s weight, but exercise is important too, if only because it is an additional boost your metabolism. You are forcing your body to burn calories when you do aerobic exercise like walking. Your heart is a muscle that can only be worked out by aerobic exercise and there is no one who does not want their heart to be strong. When you do weight training, you build the muscle your body needs to metabolize calories efficiently and constantly. Never forget: muscles burn calories when you are doing nothing, so it’s important to pack on at least some muscle so they can work for you.
I realize there is a lot of information to digest above, but it can condensed into the following general points:
-eat frequent but small meals
-avoid calorie-dense foods (like sweets, white flour and fried foods), so that you’ll feel fuller
-do weight training to build some muscle
-walk at least 30 minutes every single day
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