Why Your Calorie Intake Matters

It doesn’t matter which diet you are attempting to stick to, there’s something that will be common with them all – they’ll all give some mention to calories.

While diets come and go, the philosophy of counting calories has most definitely been here for the long-term. It’s here to stay as well; it’s scientifically proven to work and that’s the reason we are dedicating an entire chapter to it in this guide.

Unfortunately, counting calories isn’t basic addition and subtraction. There are other factors to take into account and through the remainder of this chapter we’ll talk about them all to help you along your way.

The problem with simply “counting calories”

We may have suggested that counting calories was almost foolproof, in the way in which it always works. However, there are still some problems with the approach.

For some people, counting calories becomes an obsession. They focus too much on the principal and they start to track every single item of food they take – only paying attention to whether they are burning more calories than they are eating. This might sound great in some respects and at the start, it’s probably the outcome that everyone wants.

In the long-term, it’s not completely viable though. Sure, you will lose weight, but you’ll also lose muscle through this approach. It means that you might reach your goal of becoming thin, but it’s debatable on whether or not you will actually “look good”.

As such, while calorie counting can work, it’s best to use alongside quality foods (not just paying attention to the number of calories) and a healthy exercise regime.

How many calories are you eating?

The first task you have is determining exactly how many calories you are eating. This isn’t about specifically tracking what goes into your mouth; a food journal will suffice here. Instead, it’s all about what food you are purchasing and what this means for your waistline.

The authorities have attempted to make it as easy as possible to eat food; every single piece you buy has nutritional values on it somewhere.

The thing that you really need to pay attention to is serving size and calories per serving. A common mistake is to just focus on the latter, and this can be doubled, tripled or even quadrupled if the manufacturer deems a serving size as particularly small.

There are some common “tricks” adopted here by the food industry. For example, sandwiches sometimes talk about a serving referring to a slice of bread, rather than two.

Elsewhere, pasta isn’t necessarily shown as a plateful, but you’ll actually find that it’s quite a small portion.

If you can get your numbers right here, then transcribe them into your food diary, you’ll have an accurate picture of your current state before you move onto your new calorie goals.

How many calories should you be eating?

We’re going to delve into a little mathematics for this section. A lot of people just see calories as a number, and don’t appreciate the real meaning behind it.

We are going to dispel this immediately and tell you that every pound of your body weight is the equivalent of 3,500 calories. In other words, if you were to drop your weekly calorie intake by that amount, you would lose one pound. In even more simple terms, that equates to 500 calories per day.

While everyone can pluck a number out of the air and say that they want to be eating ‘x’ calories, let’s bring a bit of reasoning to the table. Firstly, just by existing your body is going to be burning calories. This means that even without any real exercise, you will be burning calories. This is referred to scientifically as your Basal Metabolic Rate.

Your BMR is calculated through a formula which takes into account your age, weight and height. For females, it’s the following:

• 655 + (9.6 x your KG weight) + (1.8 x your CM height) – (4.7 x your age)

For men, you can calculate it like this:

• 66 + (13.7 x your KG weight) + (5 x your CM height) – (6.8 x your age)

You can use the BMR calculator here.

Immediately, this calculation provides you with your BMR. The math isn’t over jut yet though, and by taking advantage of another formula you can find out exactly how many calories your body will burn with certain activities.

This is called the Harris Benedict Equation and revolves around the amount of exercise you perform and the intensity you do it at:

• No exercise: BMR x 1.2
• Light exercise (around 1-3 days per week): BMR x 1.375
• Medium exercise (around 3-5 days per week): BMR x 1.55
• Heavy exercise (every day): BMR x 1.725
• Intense exercise (multiple exercise sessions per day): BMR x 1.9

You can use our Calorie Calculator here.

All of the above calculations will quickly show how many calories you are burning with your exercise. It’s from this point where you can create your goals and determine exactly how fewer calories you need to consume in a bid to lose weight.

You’ll know how many you need to survive based on your “living” requirements and the amount of exercise you perform, and you can quickly go from there.

In putting together these calculations, it’s really important not to push yourself too much. Slashing your calories in half just isn’t going to work – you will pretty much put your body into a state of shock. Instead, gradually decrease the amount you are consuming until you are happy with the number. It’s generally recommended not to cut your intake by more than 200 calories per day.