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So I track my calories on About.com's Calorie Counter. According to their site, they said I use about 1,500 calories a day. If I want to lose weight, that means I need to drop to about 1,200 a day if not lower...that seems REALLY low to me. Then I did the calorie study from the NROLFW book and found that I should be eating about 1,500 calories.
Which should I listen to? Is TNROLFW really a good guide to go by?
That's why I bought my GoWear Fit I'd try the 1500 first - if you don't lose enough weight on that, then go down. Pretty simple, these calories. Just make sure you are really, really counting accurately. Now THAT'S what is harder than you might think. Do you have a food scale?
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Moondust The older I get, the older old gets.
Which should I listen to? Is TNROLFW really a good guide to go by?
Pick one (I'd go with NROL because it is less restrictive). Do it consistently for a couple weeks. If you make progress, continue at that level. If not, lower calories. Rinse, repeat.
So I track my calories on About.com's Calorie Counter. According to their site, they said I use about 1,500 calories a day. If I want to lose weight, that means I need to drop to about 1,200 a day if not lower...that seems REALLY low to me. Then I did the calorie study from the NROLFW book and found that I should be eating about 1,500 calories.
Which should I listen to? Is TNROLFW really a good guide to go by?
Until you are weighing your food, you really don't have an accurate calorie count for yourself. There's a great video that Leigh put out about weighing food, and I should have it bookmarked, but don't. Hopefully, someone will pop in here with it. At any rate, get a food scale. Start weighing EVERYTHING you eat (in grams)...no measuring cups or spoons. Weigh everything. Do that for a couple of weeks to see exactly where your calories are landing and if you lose, gain, or maintain. Everyone is different, and you need to discover what your personal calorie needs are.
So I track my calories on About.com's Calorie Counter. According to their site, they said I use about 1,500 calories a day. If I want to lose weight, that means I need to drop to about 1,200 a day if not lower...that seems REALLY low to me. Then I did the calorie study from the NROLFW book and found that I should be eating about 1,500 calories.
Which should I listen to? Is TNROLFW really a good guide to go by?
To very directly answer this question, you should go by what your body is telling you. These guidelines are just that... What you actually need is going to vary from these most likely. Some people can eat above the recommendations and some need to eat below. Pick a number that you think will achieve your goal and go for it for 4 weeks. If you see your goals being realized you hit gold, if not... adjust. (Always allow at least 4 weeks before you make changes to make sure you are not going through some random water thing)
While I agree with Jane that buying a scale and weighing everything is probably the "quickest" way to troubleshoot when you are in some sort of plateau, it isn't the only way that you can succeed in fat loss. For some people that is a non-starter in fact. If weighing every single morsel is too anal retentive for you, then use the method you are using now to guage and adjust from there.
Measuring is really relative and as long as you are consistent in your measurements it really matters not if you are a tiny bit off on something or another. You will get into trouble with no weighing, if you are actually eating 1800 cals a day ('cause you are not weighing PB for example) and you need to drop by 300 cals but you are afraid to do it because you think you are eating at 1400 cals a day. Then you have to go through the pain of learning that you are really eating 1800 cals a day, etc...
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The BIGGER I get the smaller you look
Pick a number that you think will achieve your goal and go for it for 4 weeks. If you see your goals being realized you hit gold, if not... adjust. (Always allow at least 4 weeks before you make changes to make sure you are not going through some random water thing)
Measuring is really relative and as long as you are consistent in your measurements it really matters not if you are a tiny bit off on something or another.
I really agree with the first part of this post--I think too often, we get caught up in immediate scale change, and if it isn't in the right direction, we can get discouraged and change plans even though the plan might, in fact, be working.
but regarding measuring, I think jane really nailed it. sure, I think there are plenty of people who can lose lots of weight without ever measuring a gram. particularly folks that have a lot of weight to lose and are early on in their fat loss process. but the poster specifically mentions that the sites she has consulted tell her that for her body weight, to lose would require 1200-1500 calories, so I can only assume that she is a smaller person who is trying to lose the last 10 pounds or so. smaller people who are trying to get after the last few pounds often times have to get very precise with their measuring, as leigh points out in her video. and the smaller your body weight, the harder it is to do a deficit of, say, 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week. when I was 228 pounds, I could lose a pound a week eating 2500-3000 calories a day. so errors in intake have a smaller impact on the result. not to mention the fact that as you get smaller, sometimes the deficit has to be even smaller for the diet to be tolerable.
if I have a 300 pound male patient who wants to lose a pound a week (500 calorie deficit), all other variables being equal, that deficit is going to feel easier to him than my 130 pound female distance runner who needs to get to 120 before the season starts. if my male patient has a maintenance of 4000 and my female patient has a maintenance of 2000, the percentage deficit for him is so much less, so errors in measurement will matter less. for my female patient, she might have to get very very precise, because it is way harder to get optimal nutrition on 1500 calories compared to 3500 calories. and sometimes at low body weights, 500 calorie deficit is too large. so when you get into smaller deficits, like losing 2 pounds a month, measuring in grams becomes critical, at least until you get a sense of what your body really needs.
regarding the "anal" behavior that some might find overwhelming. honestly, it isn't an all or nothing thing. like jane said, you just do it for a period of time to get an honest appraisal of what your body needs. tracking doesn't have to be forever for all people. but the OP specifically is struggling with a fat loss goal, so my guess is that she has already tried the intuitive method of eyeballing her food and it really isn't working for her.
yes, i only have about 10 lbs to lose. I am at 125 right now and looking to be at 115. It's been a struggle between knowing if i'm losing water weight or actual weight. I am a bit impatient so I'm working on that side of things.
i was just curious to the "1 pound = 3,500 calories". from what i read from NROWLFW, that was almost made out to be a myth...did i read incorrectly? should i still make sure to lose 3,500 calories a week?
How tall are you or what is you bf%? Without knowing for sure I am going to guess and say that you probably should target about .25lbs a week at the most at your weight. This is due to the fact that the closer you get to a lower bf% the easier it is to drop muscle instead of fat in your quest for teh lean.
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The BIGGER I get the smaller you look
A better approach would be to do a deficit that is a % of your actual maintenance & not try to aim for a 3500kcal for 1 week.
This may be too much for you when maintenance is less than 2000 kcal and/or when you are working out hard & would like to keep doing so.
For *me* the maximum AVERAGE deficit I ever could tolerate was 20%. Am stressing average as it's easy to go as low as 1000kcal on 1 day but that needs to be balanced by higher calorie days if I want to feed my workouts. Many have found they can't sustain a large deficit when starting on NROL or NROLW. It's simply too intense.
For a smaller person who works out intensely, an average deficit of 10% re to actual maintenance may already be more than enough!
Most people aiming for bigger deficits scale waaaaaaay back on activity. But for someone who only needs to lose 10lbs that's over-reaction.. besides, lifting/cardio is too much fun to cut it out
Until you are weighing your food, you really don't have an accurate calorie count for yourself. There's a great video that Leigh put out about weighing food, and I should have it bookmarked, but don't. Hopefully, someone will pop in here with it. At any rate, get a food scale. Start weighing EVERYTHING you eat (in grams)...no measuring cups or spoons. Weigh everything. Do that for a couple of weeks to see exactly where your calories are landing and if you lose, gain, or maintain. Everyone is different, and you need to discover what your personal calorie needs are.
i was just curious to the "1 pound = 3,500 calories". from what i read from NROWLFW, that was almost made out to be a myth...did i read incorrectly? should i still make sure to lose 3,500 calories a week?
To lose a pound of fat, you do indeed have to deficit your calories by 3,500. But there is no way to exactly know how much fat you have lost except by measuring body fat %. Water is much heavier than fat and will influence the scale a lot more. And you are likely to also lose some muscle along with the fat. Another thing that I just realized this very minute - to lose a pound of muscle, you only have to deficit your calories by 2,043 (or maybe it is only 1750, but it's definitely less than a pound of fat)!! That is why it's so important to make your body think it has to hold on to all its muscle and get the needed calories from fat.
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Moondust The older I get, the older old gets.
Thought the one you mentioned was allll about peanut butter.. but maybe oats also played a role in it.
Anyway, if you eat more or less the same foods most days, then the margin of error will be the same each time & the only thing needed would be to scale back a bit.. not necessarily start weighing every little thing you put into your mouth.
It is how *I* do it though.. weighing or counting everything. When I count I'll have weighed said item another time so I know how much they weigh on average.
Just watched the video. Wow, that was sort of an eye opener haha.
But what about all the people that are measuring that way and are still achieving fat loss? Who's to say that the serving size of 1/2 cup isn't right and that 40g is the estimation, rather than the other way around?
A lot of people are eating at a large enough deficit that they will still lose with a 10% or even 20% error in measuring of that kind of stuff. I don't eat at a large deficit, so that kind of measuring would probably do me in! I leave my food scale at home (although I guess I could carry it around), so I try to overestimate the calories in anything I have to estimate. If I have to measure with a spoon or cup, I measure on the small side. Another good trick is to add at least 10% to the calories of any not-very-healthy item you eat (like cookies or choco).
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Moondust The older I get, the older old gets.
Welcome to the boards. I am not a big fan of the scale or counting. But I think for some people a scale to weigh food plays a very important role it plays in helping with the "lifestyle". If you are weighing food at every mean, you are constantly thinking about what you eat and how much- to my mind, that is MUCH more important.
For me I play a weight change game, I weigh myself every morning and night (about the same time and under the same conditions) and guess my weight. By thinking about what I did food wise in the day, and exercise wise of the week, I am usually dead on.
Weighing myself and guessing my weight is my "crutch" to help me think about what I am eating during the day. (It is easier for men to guess weight I think because we do not have the wide fluctuations that some women have.) ANYway guess the weight correctly is not important, itr is just me way of focussing on food.
All in all, if you are not losing fat, eat less exercise more, - and make sure you take a break from training and also from deficit eating as well.
Another thing I do when i am "training" os post here more often. It also puts me in the "put up" or "shut up" position. SO now because I have just come back from a month of holiday I need to shut up since I am a big pig now. oink oink!
Hope this helps - good luck
cheers
peter
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Peter
After all, diamonds are a girl's best friend…
Just watched the video. Wow, that was sort of an eye opener haha.
But what about all the people that are measuring that way and are still achieving fat loss? Who's to say that the serving size of 1/2 cup isn't right and that 40g is the estimation, rather than the other way around?
All of this comes back to what I was saying before. You can lose fat just fine without all the weighing IF you are consistent in your inconsistencies. It is a relative thing NOT an exact thing. You cannot be exact anyway even with measuring.
If you measure your oats with a cup every single day and adjust the quantity to match what your body is telling you (if it ain't losing, you gotta go to .5 cups) then all is good. Just if you are not measuring more exactly then don't freak out when you calculate that your daily intake has to be 900 cals to lose weight. Just go with the feel and don't worry about exact numbers.
Measuring brings you closer to exactness and knowing is all BUT it isn't the only way or even the best way for some people. Some people do better the other way.
Whichever way you chose is fine so long as you can commit to the decision you make and are ready to adjust if you need to when you need to troubleshoot.
As for me. It is digital scale all the way. I LOVE the minutia and dirty little details.
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The BIGGER I get the smaller you look
One opinion: weighing in grams is the JPF orthodoxy. There are other fitness and dieting Web sites with other orthodoxies. And there are many, many different approaches to losing fat. If weighing food works for you, great. If following an estimating program like The Zone works, great. Weight Watchers points? Atkins? Protein Power? Cool. Whatever it is, what's important is making sure you are progressing every few weeks. If not, time to try a different approach.
So I track my calories on About.com's Calorie Counter. According to their site, they said I use about 1,500 calories a day. ?
The site is incorrect. It is highly, highly unlikely your total daily energy expenditure is that low. Most people's RMR's alone fall within that range. Even the most sedentary of people will have some energy expenditure through physical activity on top of their RMR.
The best way to get your total daily energy expenditure is through doubly labeled water, but that is only available in research institutions so you won't have access to that technique. You can try the Sensewear Armband (also known as the Bodybugg), which has been shown to be accurate to within +/-300 calories in most people when compared to doubly labeled water.
All other ways of estimating total daily energy expenditure (like physical activity records) are very, VERY rough.
Yeah, my friends and family mocked me back when I measured my elimination rates for deuterium and oxygen-18, so I went back to estimating calorie burn with a formula, which is far less expensive to boot.
Susie, for a mostly sedentary (working a pc, driving, tv, reading, etc.) woman, 1500 may very well be at or near maintenance levels, even with a program like NROL4W, which only really gets you moving more for an hour or so per day.
The about.com and NROL4W formulas aren't that far off from each other, the difference is that NROL4W wants you to go with a maintenance level of cals for 4 weeks before lower it to lose fat.
The reason is that we don't really know our maint level of cals (doubly labeled water and GWF methods aside), so we estimate to start. Lou and Cassandra want you to be at or at least near maintenance when you begin because they want you to have plenty of energy to give the lifting a chance. Too severe a deficit may be too much for such a program, so you start higher and move down after four weeks if you aren't seeing progress in the downward direction.
The reason is that we don't really know our maint level of cals (doubly labeled water and GWF methods aside), so we estimate to start. Lou and Cassandra want you to be at or at least near maintenance when you begin because they want you to have plenty of energy to give the lifting a chance. Too severe a deficit may be too much for such a program, so you start higher and move down after four weeks if you aren't seeing progress in the downward direction.
LD
Great comment. Let me just add to that if you are thinking "long term" improvements (by that I mean both body and lifestyle improvements) 4 weeks is nothing. I know when you are getting started you just want to see something fast, but in the long run those first weeks are not much time. As LD says, you do not want to be in too much a deficit (reason being you will feel like crap- may give up- and will hamper your progress).
cheers
peter
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Peter
After all, diamonds are a girl's best friend…
Am I just not getting the whole calorie thing?
I'd try the 1500 first - if you don't lose enough weight on that, then go down. Pretty simple, these calories. Just make sure you are really, really counting accurately. Now THAT'S what is harder than you might think. Do you have a food scale?
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