090819 A Fat-Loss Program for Beginners 2 of 5
By Nick Nilsson Author of Metabolic Surge – Rapid Fat Loss
STEP 2 – FOOD QUANTITY for Fat Loss
Now that you’ve looked at WHAT you’re eating, it’s time to turn your attention to HOW MUCH you’re eating. Even the highest quality, nutritious food can make you fat if you eat too much of it. So to lose fat effectively, you basically have to eat less food.
There are many, MANY methods and formulas for figuring this out but, bottom line, ALL of them are really just “best-guesses” – even the scientific formulas that work out your requirements to the single calorie are just guesses. These guesses are based on plenty of data, mind you, and they can be very helpful in determining a good starting point. But if a formula says you need X number of calories and you eat that and you still aren’t losing fat, obviously that number isn’t the number for you.
Here’s a very simple rule of thumb for estimating a STARTING POINT for determining your caloric intake to lose fat: take your weight in pounds and multiply it by 10. For example, if you weigh 175 pounds, that would give you a starting point of 1750 calories per day.
Go back to that week-long list of foods that you wrote down (from the previous point) and plug those foods into the database on this site (it has a HUGE number of foods that you can track):
Add up your calories for the whole week, divide that by 7 (to get your average caloric intake per day) and see how it compares to number you get from the simple formula I described above.
If it’s higher, you need to eat less food. If it’s lower and you find you’re STILL not losing fat, you may need to eat even less than that.
I would NOT recommend going below 1000 calories per day for food intake at the VERY lowest. When you start getting that low, you run into problems because your body isn’t getting enough energy and nutrients from the small amount of food you’re eating. This is doubly true when you’re exercising as well. Your body will react by slowing your metabolism and burning up lean tissue (like your muscle mass). This will put a stop to fat loss and can be dangerous!
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