How do I lose my opu?

February 12, 2006 4:49 AM

So I've decided to get rid of my beer belly. But I have a few questions about counting calories.

I am 25 years old, female, 5'9", and I jog about 3.5K 3 times a week. I am currently working on upping that to 5k 4 times a week, as my New Year's resolution was to run my very first race. I have also started a very basic weight lifting regime 3x a week.

I weigh 147 lbs which I know gives me an average BMI, but there are... how you say... lumpy spots on my body. Beer gut and thighs mostly. I used to be CRAZY skinny, like 120 lbs as a teen, and most of my family is very tall and slender, so I've got genetics on my side. I have never, ever dieted before, which is where my question comes in.

I've decided to lose weigh via the healthy and time-honored method of increasing activity while decreasing my calories, so I signed up on SparkPeople and have spent the last week entering everything I've consumed to get an idea of how much I regularly eat in a day, which turns out to be anywhere from 2000-2200 cals. In addition, I have used several online calorie calculators to get an estimate of how much I need in a day to maintain my current weight, and they all said roughly the same amount, which I though seemed pretty high. Is that really an average number and can those things be trusted?

SparkPeople recommends I eat 1200-1500 cals a day to safely lose weight, which makes sense, but here's my question... when counting calories, how specific do you have to be? I cook a lot at home — tonight I had chicken breast with lime juice and fresh ginger root, topped with white pepper. Do I count the white pepper? Earlier today, my husband was eating Triskets with Laughing Cow cheese and I had ONE cracker. Should I count it? I don't have a kitchen scale for measuring out cuts of meat or ounces of veggies. Should I get one, or just guess how much I consumed?

Further complicating matters is the fact that we live in Korea and I have trouble reading the labels on some of the food we buy — if it even has labels. Half the time we buy veggies, fresh fish and black rice off old ladies in the street market, and SparkPeople does not have nutritional information for kimchi, pickled radishes or most of my other Korean favorites.

So, successful weight-losers — how strict, and how close to under 1500 calories a day, do I need to be? Advice is very welcome. I don't want to lose pounds — I'm more interested in trimming the fatty parts of my body. And once I do, how can I continue to watch my calories without having to be tied to a caloric calculator all damn day?

posted by Brittanie to Health & Fitness (28 answers total)

Your body needs a certain number of calories to keep you alive. Everybody's body is different, and the number can flucuate with time depending on your level of exercise and general level of fitness.

I pound of fat is equivalent to 3500 calories. If you want to know precisely how many calories your body needs, you can track your input (the precise number of calories you consume each day), track your output (the estimated number of calories you burn through your running and exercse - hint: that's a much smaller number than you probably suspect), figure out whether you're gaining weight or losing weight, and do the calculation.

But for you, that's probably overkill. The calorie count listed on a box of food is always just an estimate anyway. So I suggest balancing two principles:

1) If you want to be successful in your diet, you must track every single bit of food or drink that crosses your lips.

2) However, you long as you don't abuse the system, you can estimate. Personally, I round everything to the nearest 50 calories. You might also round everything to the nearest 100 calories. This means that, some days you'll get less food than you'd budgeted for in your diet, and some days you'll get more, but assuming that calorie counts are distributed randomly and evenly, you'll wind up with exactly the right number of calories over time, and you won't have to count every single calorie.
posted by gd779 at 5:34 AM on February 12, 2006

Oh, and bear in mind that most of your "weight" is water weight. So if you're weighing yourself occassionally (or even every day) you may notice that even if you've been following your diet, you may suddenly gain weight. But it's not that you've gained weight, it's that your level of water weight happens to be different at the moment. You can smooth that out if you're aware of it.

All of this is described in much greater detail in the hacker's diet.
posted by gd779 at 5:38 AM on February 12, 2006

I have a major problem with my weight, so I probably don't have quite the same "relationship" with food that you do, but I found that when I wrote down all of those "one cracker here, a tootsie roll there" etc. things for a week, it came to over 1000 calories. The point being, it can add up. Maybe try just noting when you've had a little extra (I know in Weight Watchers meetings they call them BLT's - "Bites, Licks, and Tastes") for a week or so without trying to figure out the specific calorie content to see if, compounded, it might make a difference. I know I used to eat absent-mindedly very often, and the sense of awareness that writing everything down brings really helps with the long-term habits too.
posted by ferociouskitty at 5:59 AM on February 12, 2006

I agree that you should count (or estimate) everything. People fail because they don't count "that one cracker," that half a cookie, that spoonful of ice cream. All those little things that you don't count add up. And size != number of calories. Sometimes I hear people say, "I only ate half a cookie." Turns out, the whole cookie is 300 calories -- so they just ate 150 calories (of the 1200 they're allowing themselves per day).

I've been successful losing weight by calorie counting. My wife has too. We both count the little bit of skim milk we put in our coffee.
posted by grumblebee at 6:04 AM on February 12, 2006

2000 calories is what most experts say is normal for healthy average weight woman to eat every day. So yes: If you want to lose weight healthily, you should eat about 1500 calories a day. Like gd779 said: if you cut 500 calories a day, you'll lose a pound of fat a week. If you are more interested in how your body looks, I would suggest adding other forms of exercise as well.

Tracking everything I ate was the one thing that helped me most losing 100 pounds. I think you should count every cracker, also because it helps to see how often you eat those things. I recommend a good kitchen scale, indeed. (I was sometimes shocked at my portion sizes). I don't count herbs and spices that I sprinkle over my food, though.

I also ate quite a few things that those weightloss programs don't know about. I tried to find out the calories online, or I guessed it. You get better at that, over time. Kimchi is just fermented vegetables, right? So, just fill in the unfermented vegetables, and some salt. But really: those vegetables are probably not a problem, non-starchy vegetables are all low in calories and you should not restrict them.

I could not always find out everything (added fat can be difficult, if you fry things), and that's okay, but I did always make a good effort to find out, and I did not eat those foods too often. I don't track my food anymore, but I still know somewhere in the back of my head approximately how many calories I have eaten each day, and that helps me stay on track.
posted by davar at 6:29 AM on February 12, 2006

First of all, echoing the above sentiments.

You asked if 2000-2200 sounds reasonable -- yes, that sounds reasonable, considering how active you are. I also think the 1200-1500 recommendation is borderline bad in your case. You would be treading the line between healthy weight loss and starvation at that level. Starvation is bad because it does things like: make you tired (no exercise), make your body store fat, make your body metabolize muscle, etc. It also takes more willpower, making it more likely you'll cave in and eat a bunch of crap.

I would shoot for a calorie defecit of 500kcal per day. That would be 3500 per week, or 1lb of body fat, ideally. If you determine your basal metabolic rate is 2200kcal / day, and you do a 5k run, for another 300kcal, then you burned a total of 2500kcal that day. My recommendation is to consume 2000kcal of food that day, to achieve the 500 calorie defecit. I did exactly this to lose 25lb last summer.
posted by knave at 6:36 AM on February 12, 2006

I was in kind of a similar boat to you a few years ago, only male and 29. Used to be super skinny and got older, slowed down, and started to become a skinny dude with a gut. I had to start running to get rid of the ill effects of Philadelphia.

All I can say is, once I started getting out and doing stuff every day, it was all good. Exercising regularly raises your basal metabolic rate, so you just kinda burn more calories as part of the day. I never really altered my diet at all, although I've been trying to eat less fast food.
posted by ph00dz at 6:47 AM on February 12, 2006

i don't know, this counting seems like affording way too much focus to food. how about just two SMALL meals a day, say half of what you usually eat?

you will quickly learn if that is too little for you, considering the amount of exercise you say you do. i don't drive a car and walk 2-5 miles each and every day, i have to!

that's what i did to loose 20 lbs, and it worked great. it took about 9 months. no obsession with food, and only mild backsliding during PMS days, which i beat back with activity and HALF a small candybar. yes, it takes discipline. after a while it feels normal and not like privation at all. i think we are accustomed to eating WAY TOO MUCH, and our idea of the right amount needs adjustment.

once you start losing the weight, you will love the way your clothes fit, and how much easier it is to move around without the extra bulk.
posted by subatomiczoo at 7:19 AM on February 12, 2006

How specific do you have to be? It depends on what the food is. Like was mentioned above, "only one cookie" can be 100-150 calories. A tablespoon of oil is 130 calories. So you ignore the details and suddenly you're not losing weight and you get disappointed. OTOH, most vegetables are very low in calories. If a whole head of lettuce is 50 calories, there's no point in being specific.

As another data point, Weight Watchers is a very well-regarded program that works for people. Their points program essentially rounds all calorie counts to the nearest 50. (But you still have to count everything, even things that are zero points.)
posted by smackfu at 7:36 AM on February 12, 2006

subatomiczoo: You may be right that it's overkill for Brittanie to count everything. She seems to be eating pretty good already. Most Americans eat much more than 2000 calories a day. However: for me, your approach would not have worked as well. What helped me most were all the eye openers. I never knew how many calories there were in my 'healthy' sandwich with cheese and tomato. And I knew a milkshake was not that healthy, but I never thought there were 500 calories in one. That's an entire meal for me! Now that I know how many calories there are in those things, I often rather just eat something else that fills me up with fewer calories. It also works the other way: I found out that strawberries have very few calories, so I could make delicious low calorie smoothies. So: I really changed my eating habits, instead of just eating less of all the unhealthy crap I was eating.

I don't feel obsessed with food at all at the moment. I think I was more obsessed with food when I felt terrible if we did not have potato chips in the house. Knowledge is power.
posted by davar at 7:59 AM on February 12, 2006

The reason most diets fail is because people consistantly underestimate the amount of calories they take in.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:10 AM on February 12, 2006

I second smackfu's suggestion about Weight Watchers. Their program makes it a lot easier to track food intake (it's easier to count 24 points in a day than 2000 calories, for example, even though the end result is the same menu). And you can do their online program, so you don't have to go to meetings if that part doesn't appeal to you. They also have different approaches, where you can count everything you eat, or simply choose from a pre-"approved" list of foods. Check it out.

Regardless, once you get used to whichever system you use, it will get easier. And yes, you need to count every calorie.

One suggestion might be to make a reference list of the typical things you might eat in a day or week, and get the calorie counts sorted out beforehand. Then you can mix and match your meals and snacks, without having to recalculate every time.

So get the calories for a tablespoon of olive oil calculated, and then you can estimate how much you use in your recipe, and add or subtract calories appropriately. Get the calories for a serving of crackers calculated (careful - on the box, a serving might be 1 cracker or 20), and then add or subtract based on what you actually eat.

It will get easier, don't worry!
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:28 AM on February 12, 2006

I went from a max of 242 pounds to 167 pounds without counting a single calorie or following a prescripted diet. First, I severely restricted eating out and quit drinking sodas altogether. I found a few healthy meals that I could eat in a few convenient restaurants. I cut way down on meat. I haven't bought butter in 2 years - cook with olive oil. I manage my weight now by managing my shopping. I have a pretty regular shopping list of things I buy every week. Lots of protein and non starch vegetables, some whole grains, nuts and healthy oils. Also on my weekly shopping list: one bar of extra dark chocolate and a small sack of almonds or walnuts. Even if I eat the walnuts and chocolate all in one sitting (which I never have), I won't be having any more of those foods until the following week. Instead of sodas, drink 100% fruit juice diluted with water (1 part juice, 2 parts water). I splurge on a small carton of ice cream every month or so.

In addition to the healthier eating, I moved to a city (Vienna, Austria), where I walk extensively and have to climb 100 stairs to get to my apartment. I have gotten into rock climbing, weight lifting, bicycling, snowboarding and hiking. Find some sports that you enjoy (instead of sports that you have to force yourself to do).

Good luck!
posted by syzygy at 8:31 AM on February 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

I've never been fat, really, but I have had a wicked little beer belly that's been tough to get rid of. I've tried the calorie counting thing as well as various other diets. Every single one of them I got excited about at first, but lost interest after only a few weeks.

I ran across another post on Metafilter that mentioned Shovelgloving, and on further reading I found the No S Diet by the same person. I've been doing it for a month now (No S along with Shovelgloving) and I have seen more results with this than anything else. Quite remarkable. What's more remarkable, though, is the fact that I'm sticking with these routines. They're pretty easy, straightforward, and not overly harsh to scare one away after only a week of doing it. It's designedfor long term (as in: your whole life) results.

I'd reccomend checking it out.
posted by nitsuj at 8:44 AM on February 12, 2006

You could use a rule of thumb - if something is under 25 calories or so, don't worry about counting it. Unless you eat 10 of them! Don't drive yourself crazy about this. Count your calories as closely as you can, be honest with yourself about how many calories things have, and be consistent.

If you're not sure about how many calories something has, just use your best guess. It's better than not counting the calories at all.
posted by kdern at 9:23 AM on February 12, 2006

I've lost close to 80 pounds now (256 to 178). I wasn't super precise. If I ate one cracker, for example, I wouldn't count it. I'm using SparkPeople, too (to complement WeightWatchers as WW doesn't have anything built in to monitor things like calcium and vitamin intake), and when I make a recipe, I add in all the ingredients by making a new food grouping, adding up the whole recipe, and then when I add it to my daily tally, dividing it by the number of servings I ate. So, if a recipe made 4 servings and I had one, I'd say .25 servings of that grouping.

But as far as counting every thing that passes into your mouth, well, I think there are a couple of easy things you can do. The easiest is to note that SparkPeople gives you a range, and then stick to the bottom of that range if you're nibbling, comfortable with the fact that the sorts of things you nibble won't put you over. The other thing you can do is just estimate them and add them to your tally. Or you can be super anal and precise and add them in. Frankly, I'd lean towards the first option.

Anyway, as far as other general advice, what worked for me was realizing that just becuase I was on a diet didn't mean I couldn't eat really good tasting food. I read some of the WW boards and I can't believe the boring, artificial crap that some of the people eat. I make really good food, and still manage to keep it low calorie by being wise and limiting portions and watching fat. the other thing that helped me was switching my exercise up. I started out with a walk-run program, and now I'm up to being able to run 5km, but becuase I get bored easily, I also swim now, and am looking into joining a martial arts club. If you enjoy running, that's great-- just find an exercise that you think is fun and do that, whether it is racquetball or rugby or running, and your exercise will be a pleasure.

I think ultimately the idea is to make sure you are making changes that you're going to be able to do for life. That does NOT mean eating lettuce and rice cakes. Find healthy foods you enjoy eating. Find exercise you enjoy doing. And treat yourself now and then. If you completely deny yourself something you are more likely to cheat one day.
posted by synecdoche at 9:26 AM on February 12, 2006

Why don't you just eat 1/4 less of what you normally eat? You seem to have done the calorie counting already, so all you need now is a simple strategy.

If you have your chicken breast with lime juice and fresh ginger root, topped with white pepper dinner, leave 1/4 on your plate. Eat 3/4ths of the cracker. (Yes, I realize that sounds silly.)

For me, at least, a plan with less emphasis on counting and tracking would be the most successful.
posted by trixie_bee at 9:57 AM on February 12, 2006

I wanted to lose aboout 15 poounds last year and did it by eating about 20% less of everything and walking to work 2 miles each day. I already ate healthy foods, didn't drink soda etc. so there wasn't a lot of fat to trim from my diet but that worked well.

Adding weight training to your running will really help your lose weight and tone up and will make you a faster runner. Working out to develop your upper body does wonders for making your thighs look slimmer!
posted by fshgrl at 10:28 AM on February 12, 2006

Background: I've been on a low-calorie diet for four weeks now; I started at 1220 calories daily but have raised it to 1400 calories daily because I lost too much weight too quickly (12 pounds in 19 days) and I was always hungry, sometimes painfully so. My goal is 40 pounds in six months. I'n not particularly active, but I walk everywhere and am on my feet at work about half the day. I'm a foodie, and my high-calorie, high-fat, delicious diet averaged about 3000 calories a day (and I was maintaining my weight at 3k per day).

You don't have to count every calorie. Every Triscuit counts, yes. Herbs and spices do not, because the quantities used are trace. And a small kitchen scale is very helpful.

I would also suggest that you weigh yourself at the same time every day: in the morning after you wake up and urinate. And then don't worry about your daily weight -- use a running five-day average as your 'current' weight.

I would also suggest that you have outlets to cheat, but that these outlets are prescribed. For example, every two weeks you can have whateverthefuck you want for lunch, and/or whatever has been left on the lunchroom table at work is fair game, but only once a week and only one sample (leftover pizza from a meeting, morning doughnuts, whatever). This keeps me from going mental from the idea that I can't go for ribs for six months.

I eat a lot of foods that aren't in my calorie counter, so I etimate based on other entries in the database. I scramble eggs without oil, so I use the count for boiled eggs rather than scrambled eggs. When I make my own soup, I count up the calories in the ingredients and then pre-portion the soup to calculate the calories per serving.
posted by solid-one-love at 11:39 AM on February 12, 2006

At the beginning of last summer I started cycling. I was bored, my job was ruining me (teleresearch, yech!) and I needed something to keep me busy off-shift. I was having lots of fun at it; I started riding 50K a day and got myself a nice road bike to enjoy it even more. It had the added benefit of whipping me into shape very quickly. I lost 25 pounds doing something I enjoyed.

However, my point isn't that you should take up cycling. I think you should anyway because it's a great way to burn calories but more to the point, I found this article very helpful:

The Healthy Diet for Cyclists (or Anybody)

When I got heavier into cycling I did a little research on how to maintain my body and improve my endurance/performance. I've more-or-less stuck to that diet plan and found it exceedingly practical, even during the off-season when I never get a chance to ride. It'll give you a good understanding of what you need, how to get it, and how not to go overboard in restricting 'bad' foods.

I eat plenty more meat than the author would recommend but it's not hindering me at all. I hope that helps.
posted by Evstar at 12:02 PM on February 12, 2006

I lost about 40 pounds when I was 27, and managed to keep it off for several years (I gained about 20 back and I'm getting rid of that now)...

If you're like me, moderation or vague estimates don't work because you subconciously start to game them. The devil on my shoulder has a really good defense attorney too. So accuracy is key. I think the weight watchers program is probably a good way to go too.

One other note: It's a lot easier to do this with store bought, processed foods in set servings, which is probably a bad thing. On the other hand, fresh vegetables are pretty low cal and easy to count, so make sure you balance the convenience of exact counts with some fresh stuff.
posted by condour75 at 12:18 PM on February 12, 2006

I second the Shovelglove guy's "No S" scheme. He calls it a diet, but it's really just a mnemonic: no sweets, no snacks, no seconds, except sometimes on days beginning with S - Saturdays, Sundays, and special days, which means major holidays and birthdays of people close to you.

Meals are one plate of food each, with no desserty things, and you don't have anything between meals. There's enough leeway so you can adapt this scheme very easily to your own requirements. Obviously it works best if your own habits are already pretty good. But if they are, these small changes will be sustainable without driving yourself crazy to count calories.

If, as you suspect, a cracker or a taste of something here and there is what's making the difference, "no snacks" is probably what'll make the biggest difference for you. (For me it was "no seconds".) With the extra running and weight training you're doing, this should get you on track.
posted by tangerine at 2:07 PM on February 12, 2006

For the record, white peppercorns have no real caloric value. You don't need to count them, spices, or herbs (other than perhaps parsely and cilantro if you want to be really picky).

The good news is that you'll get pretty good at cooking with these ingredients other than, say, oil.
posted by ontic at 2:22 PM on February 12, 2006

Mustard and salsa too. Close enough to zero calories.
posted by smackfu at 2:30 PM on February 12, 2006

It takes incredible willpower for a person your size to eat only 1200 calories a day. You'll be hungry all the time and you won't feel good.

I'd suggest picking a more realistic goal, like 1500 or 1800 calories. Avoid sweets, seconds, and snacks. Good luck!
posted by ikkyu2 at 2:35 PM on February 12, 2006

Response by poster: No one gets best answer today because ALL the answers are helpful. I'm looking forward to putting some of your advice to work.
posted by Brittanie at 3:09 PM on February 12, 2006

just want to second the Hacker's Diet, plus EatWatch on my treo. i've lost about 40 pounds since mid-october 2005.

i just completely stopped snacking, and started eating only one large meal per day (lunch). also i tried to cut out bread and butter as much as possible. for a while there i was -1200 calories per day but i've settled in at about -750 calories/day. no extra excersise, just basketball 2 times a week.
posted by joeblough at 12:22 AM on February 13, 2006

if you want to jumpstart things... try a little fast 1 week..... no cooked foods - all raw - tapering to 1 day of no food ... just juice/liquids then back up to any raw food by day 7.

my girlfriend found it to be a quick way to fire up your metabolism - and burn some extra body fat.

wieghtlifting will really help as well - heavy/hard. bam.
posted by specialk420 at 5:53 PM on February 13, 2006