Then there are the other questions that you wonder about as you look through yet another diet plan. Queries that start out sensible but then get more bizarre as you become more anxious...
- How many calories for how much weight?
- How many calories a day/week/hour?
- How many calories in that cream bun/piece of cheese/chocolate bar?
- If I go up and down stairs while I’m eating it, will it still count?
- If nobody sees me eating it, does it still count?
- Do the calories really fall out of a broken biscuit?
- Will I burn more calories eating a salad than there are in it?
- If so, can I have a cake afterwards?
The trouble is, once we get hung up on calories (or joules or points for that matter) it’s easy to panic about how many we’re supposed to have. Maybe as a teenager you spent far too much time obsessing over the calories in every bite you took, then the rest of the time eating all the ‘wrong’ things to cheer yourself up? Join the club. Then as you got a bit older, you found that when buying clothes the retailers seemed to be mislabelling the sizes, or the manufacturers were cutting the material more skimpily to save money? Yes, I found that too - surely it wasn’t that I was gradually getting bigger...
I looked at calorie requirements - the standard one that gets put on food packaging is 2000 kcal for women and 2500 kcal for men. But that’s not the whole story. Our bodies are marvellous things and we ARE all different; so body shape, genes, age and metabolism do affect how many calories we need. However, our lifestyle is the most important thing that influences how many calories we should have - things like how active/mobile/sedentary we are, how much muscle/fat we’ve got, what type of work we do, what our eating patterns are and so on.
Confusing isn’t it? But it doesn’t have to be...
Help is just the click of your mouse away. Over the years I’ve worked out how to save calories without losing out on the pleasure of eating, by experimenting in my own kitchen and trying out the results on family and friends. It was fun, and together with some research led me to write the new ebook Eat Lean, Not Mean. As they say in loads of adverts, I’ve done the hard work so you don’t have to!
Eat Lean, not Mean will help you find out how many calories to lose weight and it shows you how to:
- Calculate how many calories you personally need each day
- Lose weight without denying yourself
- Eat more healthily without really noticing
- Make your favourite meals less fattening
- Eat out without the guilt
- Cook easy, delicious meals at home - even if you think you can’t cook!
- Save calories
- Feel full for longer
This book has a big advantage over some of the other books you may have read - it’s not a diet plan! So there are no banned foods, just plenty of hints, tips and advice on how to change the way you eat. Small changes can make big differences - on the scales!
If you want to know how many calories to lose weight, why not try Eat Lean, Not Mean and enjoy a new you without the struggle or restrictions of a diet.
