How to count calories

If you insist on counting calories at least do it wisely. While I do not advocate “Rule-of-Thumb”
applications there is an interesting little exercise that can serve to guide you in your basic meal planning.
This one is provided by Nancy Clarke from her book; Sports Nutrition Guidebook (2003). This
particular text carries within its pages an incredible amount of information that would be of tremendous
value to any sports professional.

Most of my clients are afraid to eat real meals. They believe that eating, let’s say, a cheese sandwich
makes people fat. Eating diet foods, like rice cakes and carrots, feels safer. The problem is that
the self-created diets commonly allow too few calories and too limited a selection of (boring) foods.
The dieter ends up becoming too hungry. As a result he or she blows the diet and regains any lost
weight, plus more.

I calculate for my clients an appropriate calorie budget, so that they know how much is OK to
eat to maintain or lose weight. Just as you know how much money you can spend when you shop,
you might find it helpful to know how many calories you can spend when you eat. A calorie, or more
correctly, a kilocalorie, is a measure of energy. It is the amount of heat needed to raise one liter of
water by one degree Celsius. To get an accurate (ballpark) assessment of your caloric needs you can
apply the following formula;

• To estimate your resting metabolic rate—the amount of calories you need simply to breathe,
pump blood, and be alive—multiply your healthy weight by 10 calories per pound (or 22 calories
per kilogram). If you are significantly overweight, use an adjusted weight, a weight about halfway
between your desired weight and your current weight. That is, if you weigh 160 pounds but at
one time normally weighed 120 pounds, use 140 as your adjusted weight.
Example: Roberta weighed about 130 pounds but could healthfully weigh about 120 pounds.
Hence, she needed approximately 1,200 calories (120 x 10) simply to do nothing all day except
exist.

Table 5 — Resting Metabolic Rate
Here’s how a 150-pound man burns calories while resting in bed all day.

ORGAN                 CALORIES                    % OF RESTING MR
Brain                         365                                        21
Heart                         180                                        10
Kidney                       120                                         7
Liver                           560                                        32
Lungs                       160                                         9
Other Tissue           370                                         21

• Add more calories for daily activity apart from your purposeful exercise. If you are moderately
active throughout the day, add about 50 percent of your resting metabolic rate (RMR) If you are
sedentary, add 20 to 40 percent; if very active, add 64) to 80 percent of your RMR.
Example: Roberta was moderately active throughout the day with her two kids and her job. She
burned about 600 calories (50 percent x 1,200 calories) for activities of daily living. Her totals
were the following:
1,200 RMR + 600 cal daily activity
= 1,800 cal per day (without purposeful exercise)

• Add more calories for purposeful exercise. For example, when Roberta went to the health club,
she exercised aerobically for about 45 minutes and burned about 400 calories on the treadmill.
Hence, this was her total calorie need:
1,200 cal RMR + 600 cal daily activity + 400 cal purposeful exercise
= 2,200 total cal per day

• To lose weight, subtract 20 percent of your total calorie needs. Roberta deserved to eat about
2,200 calories per day to maintain her weight. Subtracting 20 percent of 2,200 calories (20 percent
x 2,200 = about 400 calories) left her with about 1,800 calories for her reducing diet.
In the past Roberta had tried to reduce on 1,000 to 1,200 calories per day. She was skeptical
about my proposed reducing plan of 1,800 calories. “If I can’t lose weight on 1,000 calories, why
would I lose weight on 1,800?” she questioned. I reminded her that when she cut back too much,
she’d get too hungry and blow her diet. She also lost muscle, slowed her metabolism, and consumed
too few of the nutrients she needed to protect her health and invest in top performance. I reminded
her that slow and steady weight loss stays off; quick weight loss rapidly reappears. A reasonable
weight-loss target is 0.5 to 1 pound (0.23 to 0.45 kilograms) a week for a person who weighs less than
150 pounds (68 kilograms); 1 to 2 pounds a week for heavier bodies.
The theory of “the less you eat, the more fat you will lose” contains little practical truth. Generally,
the less you eat, the more you blow your diet and overeat because of extreme hunger. For example,
if you knock off only 100 calories at the end of the day (the equivalent of two Oreos or a spoonful
of ice cream), you’ll theoretically lose 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of fat a year because 1 pound of
fat equals 3,500 calories. If you eat 500 fewer calories per day than you normally do, you should lose
1 pound per week. Now think of the number of times you’ve tried to knock off 1,000 calories per
day and have ended up gaining weight.
Remember, though, that weight loss is not always mathematical. Nature makes weight loss harder
for people who try to get below their set-point weight. If you have no excess fat to lose, nature will
cause your body to conserve energy. I’ve had thin clients who eat far less than they deserve yet maintain
weight.
Once you’ve established your total daily calories, divide them evenly throughout the day. Some
people like having six small meals: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. Others, like Roberta,
find that four meals per day work well for them.
I adhere to the philosophy that people should eat at least every four hours. That is, if you have
breakfast at 7:00, you’ll be hungry for lunch at 11:00. Yes, you could hold off until noon to eat, but
your body will be happier if you honor your hunger. Hunger, after all, is simply a request for fuel. By
eating lunch at 11:00, you’ll be hankering for a second lunch at 3:00. I call this afternoon meal a
second lunch, because if I were to call it a snack it would likely become cookies or chips. As a second
lunch, it becomes an apple with peanut butter, or soup and crackers, or cereal and a banana.
Roberta was initially skeptical of this four-meal plan; meals, after all, are “fattening.” She complained,
“I’m afraid I’ll get fat from eating so much at breakfast and two lunches.” I reminded her
that the purpose of the daytime meals is to ruin her appetite for dinner. By eating more during the
day, she would then be less hungry that evening, have more energy to exercise from 5:00 to 6:00
P.M., and be able to eat less (diet) at night.

If you hold the fear that meals are fattening, think again and remember these ideas:

• You won’t gain weight from eating a substantial breakfast or lunch. You’ll have more energy to
exercise and burn calories. Even if you were to eat too much at those meals, you could compensate
by eating less at night.

• If you skimp on daytime meals and develop a deep hunger, you’ll be likely to overeat at night
because of the strong physiological drive to eat.

• You’ll end up eating fewer calories, even though the breakfast and lunch and second lunch may
be larger than before. You’ll simply trade in the evening blown-diet calories for wholesome foods
earlier in the day.

• If you are not hungry at night, you can skimp at dinner and simply eat soup or salad. But don’t
have just soup or salad for lunch. It’s not enough.
Become familiar with the calorie content of the foods you commonly eat and then spend your
calories wisely. That is, include at least three of the five food groups at each meal and two kinds of
foods per snack. Too many dieters repetitively eat a single food, such as cottage cheese, for a meal.
This practice limits their intake of the variety of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients offered by a
range of foods. Calorie counting can be a helpful bridge to get you in touch with the ability of your
body to tell you how much is OK to eat so that you feel satisfied. You can (and should) quickly replace
calorie counting with listening to your body’s signals for hunger and satiety. Calorie counting
should not become an obsession.