Well, I'm trying to limit myself to 1,200 calories a day. On a usual day with my new diet (as of last week) it goes something like this:
Coffee with fat free creamer for breakfast
fruit or granola bar at 12 or 2pm
A sandwich after class of a lean meat, lettuce and light mayo and cheese
some type of protein for dinner with a vegetable, occasionally a pasta and water only
and if I'm starving around 8pm I'll have another granola bar
What do you guys think?
Also, I've read that you need to burn more calories than you consume to lose weight... does that mean I have to burn 1,200 calories every day?!
thanks!
Hi, I am sorry I didn't post earlier- but anyway I looked at your stats etc, and determined your daily caloric needs for your height and weight.
Your daily caloric needs factoring in your activity level using the harris benedict equation is 1810 calories a day. This is how many calories you burn each day just by existing and going about your daily life.
This is for maintenance. I calculated this using a sedentary activity level, as most people are sedentary for most of the day (desk job etc.) Your needs would increase the more active you are each and every day.
Even if you work out 3-4 times a week, unless you have a highly active job I would still use this equation, only increasing your caloric needs if you worked out for an hour at a time for 5 days/week.
To lose weight I recommend a calorie deficit of no more than 500 calories, so your daily calories to lose weight would be about 1300/day of quality, nutrient dense calories.
This is what they mean about burning more calories than you consume. So in the beginning don't worry about the numbers too much, just stay over 1300 and under 1800 to lose weight.
To be honest, your diet needs work- it can be summed up as Too many carbs and not enough lean protein.
Start eating breakfast- with lean protein and a healthy fat. example: one whole egg + five eggwhites in an omelet with vegetables. Plus a few almonds
Your fruit snack sounds fine as long as it is not canned fruit in syrup.
lunch: fish, chicken, eggs,or a lean meat on a salad with olive oil and vinegar.
Dinner: fish, chicken, eggs or lean beef with sweet potato and vegetables. Pasta isn't great- in fact it can seriously derail fat loss due to portion sizes, it's ability to stimulate appetite further, and the fact you are creating a surplus of glycogen in the body which must be burned off before you begin to burn fat.
Ditch the granola bars- it's basically junk food/candy.
When you are hungry at night, feed your cravings with stuff like a small handful of seeds or nuts, a cup of cottage cheese, a couple ounces of other kinds of cheese, or a protein shake.
One thing that I have had great success with is cutting out wheat and most other grains. No bread, no pasta, no crackers, cookies, basically anything with wheat is off the list. I don't have oatmeal and I very rarely have brown rice. For carbs I have sweet potato, squash, vegetables, fruits, occasionally some popcorn (unbuttered). I do use 1 % cottage cheese and skim milk, and if cheese is around I'll have some. I eat a lot of chicken, tuna, turkey and eggs/eggwhites. I sometimes have lean beef but not much.
Hope this isn't too overwhelming all at once
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