Calorie Counting
or Low Calorie Dieting

Controlling Your Calorie Intake

By keeping up with your daily calorie intake (i.e. calorie counting), you can take control of how many calories you eat. This will help you shift the balance in favor of weight loss. A food journal is just a place you write all of this down. It can be as simple as a small notebook or as sophisticated as a software program on a hand held PDA.

You might be surprised by how many calories are in different foods. Energy density defines how many calories are in a certain amount of food. Low calorie foods are less energy dense than high calorie foods. When we eat a meal, we tend to eat the same volume of food at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

By calorie counting, you eat the same amount of food, but you eat low energy density rather than high energy density foods. This will cause you to take in fewer calories. You can find out how many calories are in foods by looking at the food labels on packages, on restaurants’ web sites, or in their brochures. There are also several web sites that have references for the amounts of calories in foods.

There is a collection of people who have lost 30 pounds and kept it off for at least one year. It is called the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR).One thing these people did was become aware of foods’ calorie values. They also ate certain types of foods in moderation rather than completely cutting them out of their diets. They were able to include their favorite foods rather than having to fight temptation. By calorie counting, you are in control of what you get to eat.

How Many Calories Should I Eat?

For women, use: Resting Energy Expenditure (REE) = 655 + 9.5x(weight in kg) + 1.9x(height in cm) – 4.7x(age in years) For men, use: Resting Energy Expenditure (REE) = 66 + 13.8x(weight in kg) + 5x(height in cm) – 6.8x(age in years) You then need to take your REE and multiply it by your activity factor. Your activity factor (AF) = 1.3 for a sedentary lifestyle, 1.5 for some regular exercise, or 1.7 for regular activity or a physically demanding job. Your body’s daily calorie need = REE x AF

The more active you are, the more calories your body will burn. There are other factors too. Men of the same size will lose more weight than women. (Sorry ladies) Younger people use more calories than older people. Our bodies’ metabolic rates decline about 2% every 10 years. In addition, calorie counting at a younger age will help develop healthy habits for later in life. (Do not use the above information for children. Caloric intake for your child should be discussed with your pediatrician.)

Having a negative calorie balance of 500 to 1000 calories per day should cause you to lose about 1 to 2 pounds per week. This means subtract 500 to 1000 from the daily calories you calculated above, and this should be your target staring point of how many calories to eat each day. At this rate, weight loss is easier to sustain. In fact after one year, people on moderate calorie reduction lost just as much weight as people on very low calorie diets.

For example, a person who needs 2000 calories per day can eat 1000 to 1500 calories per day. After one year, they will have lost 52-104 pounds. Of course, everyone is different. You may need to make adjustments to your daily calorie goal to get a 1-2 pound weight loss each week.

For tips on calorie counting, click here.

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