How Many Calories Should I Eat A Day To Lose Weight And Stay Fit?

A calorie is a measure of food energy. One calorie is the energy amount that is needed for a one degree centigrade temperature raise of one gram of water. We have different caloric needs. However, we all need the calories from food in order to stay alive, be active and perform our daily activities.

How Many Calories Do I Need?

A lot of people are wondering ‘how many calories should I eat a day?’. One approach is to contact a nutritionist and get professional advice. In case you would like to determine your need even faster than that, you can use a calorie calculator. There are many such calculators available online. They estimate your daily calorie needs, based on the specific data you enter, eg. gender, age and so on. You can start following the recommendation and monitor how you feel for one week. After all, what these calculators provide is estimation; you can alter it to make sure you meet the needs of your body.

As a rough guideline, men generally need to eat around 2,000 to 2,500 calories and women 1,500 to 2,400 calories. However, this will be different by age group, weight, height, etc. Men that are 20 to 30 years old generally need up to 2,400 calories a day provided they don’t have too much physical activity. Women in the same age group typically need up to 2,000 calories a day, also provided they don’t exercise intensely. Men aged 31 to 50 need up to 2,300 calories a day, while women in the same age group up to 1,900 calories a day. Above the age of 50, men need up to 2,200 calories, while women up to 1,700 calories a day. If they have an more intense physical activity, both men and women will need more calories.

In the case of children, there is a similar gap between girls and boys in terms of caloric needs. In general children up to 3 years old need around 1,000 calories and the ones up to 8 years old, around 1,500 calories per day. The boys that are between 9 to 18 years old will need up to 3,000 calories a day, while the girls up to 2,200 calories a day.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

The basal metabolic rate or BMR is an important concept related to the daily calorie need. The BMR of an individual measures the amount of calories needed for the regular body processes, at your current weight level. A rough formula is to just multiply your body weight by 10. This means that if your weight is for example 140 lbs. then your BMR is 1400 calories per day. This rough formula does not take into account the physical activity, though. There are formulas that take this into account as well, eg. The Harris-Benedict or Katch-McArdle formulas.

How To Determine Your Activity Level

In order determine with greater accuracy your daily calories need, you do need to take into account your physical activity level. This means that you must understand if you are sedentary or active. To note, active can also mean lightly active, moderately active or extremely active.

Sedentary means that you virtually have no physical activity built into your lifestyle. You don’t do much at work and you also don’t exercise in your spare time. Then, if you regularly of for a minimal physical activity such as walking, then this means you are lightly active. In case you go for exercising or other physical activity that is more intense than walking, you are moderately active. And finally, if your work involves heavy physical activity or if you regularly do sports, you are extremely active.

One approach you can take in order to calibrate your diet with your need as per your physical activity level is to keep a two weeks diary. Record everything you eat and all the physical activity you do. You should try to keep the diet and physical activity schedule you typically have. Then monitor your weight. If you lost or gained weight, you can adjust your diet accordingly. In case you have roughly the same weight level, it means your diet is well suited to your activity level.

Calorie Rich Foods

These foods that are high in calories are usually rich in fats and carbs. They include for example butter, high fat cheese, mayonnaise, sweets, bread and so on. If you plan on losing weight, you should stay away from these foods as much as possible. You should double-check the calorie content of any food you plan to eat, as you may have surprises. For example, even some fruits are heavy in calories. Do you know how many calories there are in a banana? An average sized one contains 100 calories, so you need to eat them with care.

Negative Calorie Foods

These are the type of foods that need a lot of effort from your body in order to break them up and use them. Such foods burn actually more calories than they bring in, so they are ideal for those that plan on losing weight. Examples of such foods are: lettuce, spinach, celery, onions, broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, tangerines, cranberries, grapefruit, lemons, strawberries, apples.

More info about negative calorie foods can be found here:

Fat Burning Foods

There are certain foods that are believed to be beneficial for weight loss, either because they drive your metabolic rate up and help you burn more fat, or because they support the fat burning process in another way. Examples of such foods are: green tea, spinach, avocado, eggs, oily fishes, olives.

More about fat burning foods here:

Empty Calorie Foods

These are foods that can be quite heavy in calories, while providing no nutrients to your body. They do not bring you any benefits when you include them into your diet. They do however add a lot of calories to your daily intake. The best approach is to avoid them, as they typically have a negative effect on our health. The people trying to lose weight should definitely take them out completely from their menus. Such foods include: sweets, soft drinks, many types of fast food and so on.

More about empty calorie foods:

In order to lose weight, you should in principle bring in fewer calories than your body consumes. This does not mean that you should lower your calorie intake to the extreme. This would probably result in weight loss short term, but it could severely affect your health and eventually block the weight loss process, as well.

A good approach is to determine your current caloric need in order to maintain your weight, as described above. Then, you can devise a plan so that your daily calorie intake is below your need, by a few hundred calories. You should not try to go for a dramatic drop in your daily calorie level. It is more important to have consistency over a longer period of time, rather than take a too radical approach.

In order to make sure you stay daily below a certain calorie level, you need to have knowledge on the calorie content in different foods. There are a lot of tables with such data available everywhere. It is not very convenient though to check the table out several times a day. Some people are fine with this approach, but some prefer more simplicity. You can also do such calculations for a short period of time until you get a feel on what is the caloric content of different foods portions. After that, you can just make rough estimations and quit making calculations for every meal. You need to find a way that works for you and that you can apply consistently, until you get results.

You also need to take into account that your body adjusts your metabolic rate in response to your diet. If you for example reduce your calorie intake, this will lead in the beginning to weight loss. However, your body adjusts gradually to the new circumstances, lowering your metabolic rate in order to match your new diet. Therefore, you are very likely to hit a plateau in your weight loss efforts. There is a solution to this, though – exercise!

Exercising raises your metabolic rate and helps prevent reaching a weight loss plateau. If you reduce your calorie intake and raise your physical activity level at the same time, this creates a synergy that greatly boosts the success of your weight loss efforts. In terms of exercise, you can start at the intensity point you are prepared for. You should not push your body unreasonably, but rather build-up the intensity in time. Consistency is vital, as in the case of every diet. Typically you need to do a lot of cardio exercises like running, swimming and so on. However, weight training for example also has a fat burning effect, as it drives-up your metabolic rate for several hours after you finish exercising.

For best results you need to continuously monitor and adjust both the calorie intake and the workout plan. Your metabolic rate is continuously changing in response to what you do and you need to manage this process well in order to lose weight. A personal trainer can provide support in developing the right exercise plan for you. This is a service you can benefit from at most gyms, but it is not a compulsory step you need to take.

Calorie Intake And Diets

If you are trying to lose weight, you have probably already researched a few diets. There are a lot of them and we are bombarded with more and more each day. However, a great care is needed when choosing a diet, as what works for someone does not necessarily work for us, as well.

The various diets have very different approaches to weight loss. Some of them promote an extremely low calorie intake for a certain period of time. For example, in the second phase of the HCG diet plan, you need to keep a roughly 500 calorie diet per day. The diet proponents claim that the hormone you need to take while on diet, i.e. HCG helps suppress appetite, so that you don’t starve. But it is still an example of an extreme calorie reduction.

There are other diets that do not focus on calorie reduction, but on the food selection instead. For example, if you follow the Atkins diet, you will take out the carbs from your diet. It is true that a lot of the high carbs foods are also very heavy in calories and you just take them out of your diet. But you can eat quite a bit more than in the case of a diet that restricts your calorie intake dramatically.

Another way to look at foods is not only in terms of the calorie content, but also in terms of glycemic index, i.e. GI. This is a measure of how foods affect blood sugar. The one with high GI drive a steep increase in blood sugar and this leads to weigh gain. The ones with low GI help keep a stable sugar level in the blood and facilitate weight loss. Even if you keep a diet and you are allowed to eat carbs for example, it is much more beneficial to consume low GI carbs. They will keep you full for longer and reduce cravings. Cut out pasta, fast foods plus sweets and increase your intake of veggies, some fruits, brown rice, quinoa and so on.

To conclude, the optimum calorie intake for you depends on your gender, weight, physical activity level and on your particular combinations of other factors that impact caloric need. There are calorie calculators and food calorie content tables available, to help you take control over your diet. However, you don’t need to spend all day with calculations. Developing a basic knowledge, gaining some experience and applying common sense will take you a long way. The best approach is to contact a nutritionist for professional advice. After that you can develop your own approach to keeping a healthy diet, with the right calorie intake level for you.

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The HCG Diet Plan – Benefits, Dangers And Side Effects WARNING !!!

HCG diet was created by the British doctor A.T. Simeons, author of the book ‘Pounds & Inches’. In his book, the doctor exposes in detail the theory behind this very popular diet.

What makes HCG diet stand out from the other weight loss programs, is the fact that it makes use of HCG, i.e. Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin. This is a special type of hormone, usually found in women at pregnancy. In pregnant women, the role of the hormone is to support the body in the fat burning process, when fat is broken down and used to feed the baby.

The HCG Diet Plan

There are three main phases in the HCG diet plan:

1. The Loading Phase. This is a preparatory phase and it starts in an atypical way for a diet. More specifically, you are free to eat whatever you want. However, this will only last for two days. The following phase will be much stricter and the initial stage is designed only to prepare the body for it.

2. The Maintenance Phase. This is the phase in which you will really start to see results, provided that you follow the rules. For typically three weeks, a 500 calorie per day diet will be followed. This is a very low calorie level and a lot of people get scared at the thought of extreme hunger. However, Dr. Simeons argues that there is no starvation involved. HCG will help dieters conquer their food cravings and go through this phase without any struggling.

3. The Stabilization Phase. Like in other diets, this is a transition phase, in which you progressively switch from a very low calorie level to a higher one. It is designed to allow a come-back to a regular diet, without the dangers of putting-on weight.

HCG Diet Foods

A benefit of HCG diet is the fact that you have quite a freedom in terms of what foods you are allowed to eat. Due to the low calorie limit, you will not be able to eat a lot in the second phase of the diet, for example. However, being able to enjoy a variety of foods makes things a little easier.

Below you can find a few examples of foods that you can enjoy during the strictest phase of the diet, i.e. the second one:

  • Beverages: water, coffee, milk, tea
  • Vegetables: lettuces, spinach, asparagus, chicory, cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage
  • Meat / fish: chicken breast, shrimp, veal, crab
  • Seasonings: salt, pepper, vinegar, basil, garlic, parsley
  • Fruits: oranges, apples, strawberries, grapefruits

This is just a part of the food list you can follow. There is enough variety to prevent getting bored during the three weeks.

HCG Drops vs. HCG Injections

As mentioned, HCG plays a key role in this diet, as it suppresses the appetite and it allows you to maintain such a low calorie intake.

The next question to answer is how do you get the HCG into your body. Initially people used injections and this is still a format that can be used today, for those that prefer it. You can inject the HCG deep into muscles if you know how to do it. Otherwise, a lot of people go to a HCG clinic in order to have this done. If you add the cost of the mixing kits, of syringes, solutions and HCG clinic fees, the expenses can be quite on the high side.

Read more about HCG Injections and their safety here: http://www.oprah.com/health/Are-HCG-Injections-a-Good-Way-to-Lose-Weight

Many dieters prefer therefore a more convenient and cheaper format – the HCG drops. You don’t need to deal with needles and worry about the administration, like in the case of injections. You can put the drops under your tongue and be done with it.

You need to be careful when you purchase your HCG drops, though. Due to the fact that the HCG diet has grown to be quite popular, selling HCG products such as drops is a profitable business. This attracted also a lot of companies which offer drops of questionable quality. Always double-check how reliable the producer is and don’t make your choice based only on price. The cheapest products are not always supplied by legit companies.

Homeopathic HCG Products

Those keeping the diet will have to make a choice between following the original diet as indicated by Dr. Simeons or going the homeopathic way. This choice is triggered by the availability of homeopathic HCG drops. There are quite some debates on whether the homeopathic version of HCG diet is effective or not.

From a scientific point of view, if you intend to follow Dr. Simeons’ diet by the book, then you need to use products developed accordingly, i.e. containing the HCG hormone. From clinical results point of view, there are also reports that present positive results of those who used just the homeopathic version. However, opponents to this homeopathic wave argue it is just a Placebo effect. The proponents of the approach argue that they get similar results, without having to intervene in the hormonal balance of the body.

In the end, the ones that want to stick to the original approach will buy the classic HCG products. Those more inclined to experiment will give the homeopathic products a try and see how they work for them.

Like with any diet, some people may experience side effects. It is advisable to be careful, monitor the progress and seek medical advice whenever you feel something is not right.

HCG diet is a low calorie diet and some common side effects found in such diets are light-headedness, headaches, irritability and light water retention. HCG should facilitate the transition to the low calorie intake. Most dieters reported that the side effects disappeared after a few days. However, if the side effects are persistent, you need to consult with your doctor over the best course of action.

Those who chose to use injections may develop redness and swelling in the injected area. This happens usually only in the cases in which the injections were not properly administrated, though. Make sure you know how to administer the injections properly or get qualified professional help. In case you want to totally eliminate this risk, you can use drops instead.

Another element to take into account is that HCG is a hormone and the hormonal system is a very sensitive one. Although there were generally no reports of severe hormonal problems, there were cases of OHSS, i.e. ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome. Among the symptoms ofOHSS, patients reported stomach and pelvic pain, swelling and shortness of air.

Whenever you experience something that does not feel right, you should seek medical advice right away. It is actually advisable to keep the whole diet under medical supervision. Have blood tests done and a complete medical evaluation before starting the diet and stay in-touch with your doctor while keeping it.

HCG Diet And Exercise

Dr. Simeons recommends only moderate exercising while on HCG diet. This includes for example walking, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, light biking and so on.

Some people are confused with the fact that intense exercising is not encouraged. It all has to do with the fact that this is a low calorie diet overall and in particular, a low carb one. In order to observe the caloric restriction, you will not be able to eat a lot of carbs.

While performing high intensity exercising, the body needs carbs as a source of energy. When you keep a regular diet, your body is using the carbs you eat to produce energy and then it stores the excess glucose as glycogen in the muscles and in the liver. When you start exercising intensely, your body turns to these glycogen stores and starts using them.

However, because on HCG diet you have a low carbs intake, the glycogen reserves are almost inexistent. Therefore, you will start to feel bad if you force your body into intense exercising.

Dr. Simeons argues that HCG drives metabolic rate up and that it also facilitates the break-up and use of fat to produce energy. This is good news, as typically when you lose weight, your body starts to break-up part of your muscles in order to use the amino acids as a source of energy. This leads in time to a lower metabolic rate and weight loss becomes more challenging, while weight gain is often experienced. This is not the case with HCG diet though. You will be able to keep most of your muscle mass intact and achieve your weight loss objectives while doing only light exercises.

It is important to respect the body and not force it to keep a strict diet and go through an intense workout program at the same time.

Vegetarians and HCG Diet

Normally protein is part of the daily menu of HCG dieters and the main sources of proteins are meat and fish. In this context, it seems that vegetarians would not be able to keep the diet. This is not quite the case though, as in most cases there are alternative solutions. It depends on what type of vegetarian you are though.

Pescentarians are the ones who avoid meat, but are allowed to eat fish. This is the easy case, as it shouldn’t be any real problem to follow the diet.

Lacto-ovo-vegetarians are the ones that don’t eat both meat and fish. However, they do eat eggs and dairy products. It is still possible to follow the HCG diet, getting your protein from fat-free cottage cheese, fat-free milk and egg whites, which are all on the HCG diet food list.

Vegans are the ones avoiding all animal products. You can still use soy as a source of proteins and maybe vegan protein powder shakes. However, in this case it seems extremely challenging to get good results with HCG diet.

Who Can Get The Best Results With HCG Diet?

In order to get the best results, a diet should be chosen not only based on what is trendy or most effective for other people. It should be a diet that suits your lifestyle to some degree. This doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be stretch, but implementing it must be feasible, if you are to succeed. If dieting is a permanent struggle, you will be very tempted to cheat and the results will be less than great.

HCG diet is a low calorie diet and it also implies that your carbs consumption will be very limited. If you are currently eating a lot of carbs, you may consider lowering progressively the carbs share in your diet. This will make it easier for your body to adjust to HCG diet. Such step is not compulsory at all, but some people find it useful to take this approach.

Another element to consider is exercising. Dr. Simeons recommends only light exercising. Therefore, if you are currently going for very intense workouts, you need to consider the way to adjust this for the period in which you plan to follow the diet.

Make a thorough review on HCG diet in order to understand how it fits your lifestyle and what adjustments you need to make. You can start with Dr. Simeons’ book ‘Pounds & Inches’. If you still need to consult additional resources, you will find plenty of materials online.

The HCG Diet Plan Resources Online:

Any diet involves a certain level of stress for your body. It is not the best idea to plan your HCG diet during the most stressful period of the year, after going through a prolonged illness and so on. Getting enough rest also has positive effects on any diet.

In terms of products, using injections or drops depends on your personal preference. However, you need to be very careful in choosing a reputable company that produces quality products.

As a final consideration, getting medical support is key in order to make sure you are safe and to maximize results. The best way is to start by a complete medical examination including blood tests and to stay in-touch with your doctor throughout the dieting process.

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Gluten Free Diet 101: Losing Weight With Gluten Free Foods and Recipes

Keeping A Gluten Free Diet

What Is Gluten?

Many people believe that gluten is a grain or a protein. However, gluten is a several peptides composite from the prolamin family of proteins. Gluten can be found normally in a lot of foods, so it is quite a challenge to follow a gluten-free diet. That is why especially lately, a whole industry has developed to serve the needs of those who suffer from gluten sensitivity.

What Is Gluten Sensitivity?

Gluten sensitivity is quite widely spread, with different degrees of intensity. In United States it is estimated that approximately one in ten people suffers from some form of gluten sensitivity. In principle those with sensitivity experience either an allergic reaction (a histamine response) or intolerance (an autoimmune effect).

Gluten allergy has symptoms that are similar to other forms of allergy: watery eyes, sneezing, sniffing and so on. The best approach is to contact a doctor in order to confirm what are you allergic at.

In gluten intolerance, antibodies attack small intestine, killing the intestine wall microvilli. As a result digestion becomes harder and toxins can pass into the bloodstream easier, while vital nutrients less and less.

Celiac disease is the toughest form of gluten intolerance. Its incidence in United States is estimated at one in 133 people, although a lot of them don’t realize they have the disease.

What Are The Symptoms Of Gluten Intolerance?

Most symptoms are gastrointestinal: diarrhea alternating with constipation, flatulence, bloating, cramping. However, the most serious impact is malnutrition, as a result of microvilli extinction and of small intestine inflammation. There are a lot of different malnutrition symptoms that make gluten intolerance sometimes hard to identify as the root cause. Continue reading the article here…

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How to Lose Belly Fat Fast: The Best Way Is Here

Most of us desire a flat stomach, and we often ask the question “how can I lose belly fat?” Unfortunately there is no magic procedure and most of the time what is needed is in fact a change in life style. It is vital to remember that losing excess belly fat is not just important because of appearance, but belly fat can in fact be very damaging to our health and can lead to various illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease.

Dieting – The Way to Lose Belly Fat Using Calorie Restriction

Dieting is one of the best ways to lose weight around your stomach, this does not mean starving yourself or eating foods you dislike, it just means making a few changes to the food you usually eat. It is recommended to eat five to six mini meals a day rather than three large and main meals. This is because it will suffice your hunger appetite throughout the day and it will also result in you eating less food as your portions will be smaller. In addition to this, by eating little and often you in fact boost your metabolism because the body burns more energy. Continue reading the article here…

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