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Step 2Find out about the basic needs of your body! yay!
Weight loss is different for everyone, as is proper nutrition! It is important to see just what your body needs every day to survive as a basis for your weight loss.
This is called your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate. The important thing to remember with BMR is that this is the minimum calorie requirement for you body to keep working - any physical activity will raise the amount of calories you need.
This is the easiest way I have found to calculate it:
BMR per day = 1C x body weight (lb)/2.2 x 24 (C = calories)
Here's an example, and I'll use my weight.
BMR per day = 1C x 120/2.2 x 24
= 1C x 1309.9
= 1309.9 Calories
This is useful information - many people who try to diet drastically cut the amount of calories they consume below a safe level. This is extremely unsafe and can lead to other complications which I will not go into here. :P
However, once you know this, you can move on to the recommended amount of calories you should consume per day.
This is called your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate. The important thing to remember with BMR is that this is the minimum calorie requirement for you body to keep working - any physical activity will raise the amount of calories you need.
This is the easiest way I have found to calculate it:
BMR per day = 1C x body weight (lb)/2.2 x 24 (C = calories)
Here's an example, and I'll use my weight.
BMR per day = 1C x 120/2.2 x 24
= 1C x 1309.9
= 1309.9 Calories
This is useful information - many people who try to diet drastically cut the amount of calories they consume below a safe level. This is extremely unsafe and can lead to other complications which I will not go into here. :P
However, once you know this, you can move on to the recommended amount of calories you should consume per day.
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I'm not doing any real fasting, but I'm eating a lot of nutrient rich and calorie poor foods, like cabbage soup. I'm obese, so my BMR is almost at 2,000 calories, and the high fiber food I'm eating any given day is almost certainly not that much, try to eat 2,000 calories of squash, and chicken stock, it's not easy. And I'm exercising as well, but I daresay I'm not doing anything unhealthy.
It's not entirely sustainable, but you can't expect a person to eat the same way for maintaining weight as they do for losing weight. I don't think you have to explicitly count calories every day, you can ballpark it, and when I fall short of my BMR I am not worried. My guidelines are these for while I have excessive body fat: if I don't feel faint, and I make bowel movements every day or every other day, I am eating properly. I'll certainly eat more than my BMR when I reach a healthy body fat percentage, but I don't see the point just now.