Amber Tries: Calories Counting
Part I: Useless Preamble
Before I begin, allow me to tell you a story about an encounter I had with a certain Personal Development, Health and Physical Education teacher.
For the 'health' component of this fancily-titled class, we had to learn about maintaining a healthy weight. For the exam, we were given a diagram, and asked to fill in the blanks with 'food intake' and 'exercise'. I demonstrate below:
Now, anyone with even the most basic knowledge of physics would put 'exercise' at the bottom of the see-saw, which would suggest it is weightier and therefore larger, right?
Oh no. Not our PE department. I was told I got the question wrong, and when I tried to explain to my teacher how our world operates, she looked at me blankly and said, 'but it says so on my marking sheet'.
That, incidentally, is also the response I got as to why they deemed a point on a graph exactly halfway between 50 and 55 to be 51.
So that's the kind of sophisticated introduction I had to the world of calories counting.
Part II: Method
As the years passed, the trauma of PE classes healed. I am now able to look at calories counting with fresh eyes. At its core, weight loss is just a game of maths: less in, more out. 7500 is the magic number here: that's how much calories deficit you need to achieve in order to lose 1kg of weight.
As my ultimate goal for this series isn't truly weight loss, I am comfortable to leave the testing window to be one week. The point of the experiment is to see how counting calories would affect my daily life, rather than reporting on whether I managed to lose weight, which would have no precedental value to anyone who is not my body type (midget).
In order to count calories, one needs to first work out one's basal metabolic rate: the amount of calories one burns without lifting a finger. The all-knowing internet tells me my basal metabolic rate is a mere 1137 calories per day. Because I have a desk job, I'm only able to add maybe 300-400 calories to take int account the fact that I'm not an invalid.
The common wisdom is that an average woman needs about 2000 calories a day to maintain her weight, but in my case, the figure drops to about 1500. If I want to lose any weight, I will have to do it slowly, because frankly I just don't have that many calories to cut. Going below 1200 calories per day is not recommended, and going anything below 1000 would be unhealthy.
In that light, I've decided to limit myself to 1200 a day.
Throughout the week, I will be tracking my calories intake with MyFitnessPal, which has a pretty decent database of foods as well as a handy scan-the-bar-code function; and I will track my calories out using my Fitbit.
Part III: Amber Tries
Day with Exercise
For breakfast, I had a yogurt, some muesli and honey. Pretty healthy, one would think; and relatively light.
Lunch was an avocado and two slices of pumpkin toast: another 450 cal.
I was completely on track to a pretty decent calories deficit right up until dinner: I was so hungry not only did I wolf down 250 cal worth of real food; I also had about 500 cal worth of junk food (which consisted of 2 lindor balls and some chips). I feel completely guilty and regretful, especially when I don't even like lindor balls.
Thanks to my exercise, although I consumed around 1700 cal, I still ended up just short of my 1200 net calories goal. I still wish I hadn't had any junk food though.
Day Without Exercise
I didn't exercise today, and I really struggled to stay under 1200 cal - in fact, I didn't.
My stature means I don't burn enough calories by simply going about my day-to-day business. If I wanted anything even remotely 'naughty' - and I'm not talking about chocolates, chips and alcohol here; I'm talking about a hearty meal which might be a tad on the rich side - I need to exercise vigorously for at least 45 minutes.
In addition, if you are trying to lose weight through controlling calories, simply achieving a slight calories deficit through exercising will have next to no effect. It takes a 7500 cal total deficit to lose just one kilogram; so if you want to lose a kg per week, you will need an over 1000 calories deficit per day. For me, it would be impossible to stay healthy and lose weight that quickly; and even for an average sized woman, that kind of weight loss speed would entail a pretty meagre and arguably unhealthy diet - remember that a simple breakfast of yogurt, honey and muesli comes at around 500 cal.
Eating Out
Eating out poses the biggest challenge to calories counting. While the MyFitnessPal app has a pretty impressive database of packaged food, you simply cannot guess how much of what has been put onto your plate by a restaurant chef.
The only way to roughly guess is to deconstruct your meal into what you believe would be its components and log all the ingredients individually (which as you can imagine is a real pain); but then you remember, there's probably a lot more butter and oil in a restaurant dish that you'd ever imagine.
Part IV: Summary
When I tried veganism, I thought nothing could feel more limiting. Turns out, I was wrong. Calories counting wasn't just restrictive, it made me feel defeated. I was shocked to see how many calories are in meals which one might otherwise believe to be quite light.
While I truly believe calories counting is the only fool-proof way to lose weight (it is just mathematics, after all), I wouldn't recommend it for people who have no trouble maintaining a healthy weight by not counting their calories: it will drive you mad.
Part V: Coming Next Week
Amber Tries: macro-focused eating.
Before I begin, allow me to tell you a story about an encounter I had with a certain Personal Development, Health and Physical Education teacher.
For the 'health' component of this fancily-titled class, we had to learn about maintaining a healthy weight. For the exam, we were given a diagram, and asked to fill in the blanks with 'food intake' and 'exercise'. I demonstrate below:
Oh no. Not our PE department. I was told I got the question wrong, and when I tried to explain to my teacher how our world operates, she looked at me blankly and said, 'but it says so on my marking sheet'.
That, incidentally, is also the response I got as to why they deemed a point on a graph exactly halfway between 50 and 55 to be 51.
So that's the kind of sophisticated introduction I had to the world of calories counting.
Part II: Method
As the years passed, the trauma of PE classes healed. I am now able to look at calories counting with fresh eyes. At its core, weight loss is just a game of maths: less in, more out. 7500 is the magic number here: that's how much calories deficit you need to achieve in order to lose 1kg of weight.
As my ultimate goal for this series isn't truly weight loss, I am comfortable to leave the testing window to be one week. The point of the experiment is to see how counting calories would affect my daily life, rather than reporting on whether I managed to lose weight, which would have no precedental value to anyone who is not my body type (midget).
In order to count calories, one needs to first work out one's basal metabolic rate: the amount of calories one burns without lifting a finger. The all-knowing internet tells me my basal metabolic rate is a mere 1137 calories per day. Because I have a desk job, I'm only able to add maybe 300-400 calories to take int account the fact that I'm not an invalid.
The common wisdom is that an average woman needs about 2000 calories a day to maintain her weight, but in my case, the figure drops to about 1500. If I want to lose any weight, I will have to do it slowly, because frankly I just don't have that many calories to cut. Going below 1200 calories per day is not recommended, and going anything below 1000 would be unhealthy.
In that light, I've decided to limit myself to 1200 a day.
Throughout the week, I will be tracking my calories intake with MyFitnessPal, which has a pretty decent database of foods as well as a handy scan-the-bar-code function; and I will track my calories out using my Fitbit.
Part III: Amber Tries
Day with Exercise
For breakfast, I had a yogurt, some muesli and honey. Pretty healthy, one would think; and relatively light.
This, my friends, is a whopping 530 calories - almost half of my 1200 daily intake allowance.
- Greek Style yogurt, 200g: 258 cal
- Honey, 1 tbsp: 60 cal
- Granola chunks, 40g: 212 cal
Lunch was an avocado and two slices of pumpkin toast: another 450 cal.
- Avocado, 1 mediumL 234 cal
- 2 slices pumpkin and sunflower seeds bread: 216 cal
In order to have anything at all to eat for dinner, I exercised. 45 minutes of jumping around earned me less than 300 cal, and a day of walking earned me another couple hundred.
I was completely on track to a pretty decent calories deficit right up until dinner: I was so hungry not only did I wolf down 250 cal worth of real food; I also had about 500 cal worth of junk food (which consisted of 2 lindor balls and some chips). I feel completely guilty and regretful, especially when I don't even like lindor balls.
Thanks to my exercise, although I consumed around 1700 cal, I still ended up just short of my 1200 net calories goal. I still wish I hadn't had any junk food though.
Day Without Exercise
I didn't exercise today, and I really struggled to stay under 1200 cal - in fact, I didn't.
My stature means I don't burn enough calories by simply going about my day-to-day business. If I wanted anything even remotely 'naughty' - and I'm not talking about chocolates, chips and alcohol here; I'm talking about a hearty meal which might be a tad on the rich side - I need to exercise vigorously for at least 45 minutes.
In addition, if you are trying to lose weight through controlling calories, simply achieving a slight calories deficit through exercising will have next to no effect. It takes a 7500 cal total deficit to lose just one kilogram; so if you want to lose a kg per week, you will need an over 1000 calories deficit per day. For me, it would be impossible to stay healthy and lose weight that quickly; and even for an average sized woman, that kind of weight loss speed would entail a pretty meagre and arguably unhealthy diet - remember that a simple breakfast of yogurt, honey and muesli comes at around 500 cal.
Eating Out
Eating out poses the biggest challenge to calories counting. While the MyFitnessPal app has a pretty impressive database of packaged food, you simply cannot guess how much of what has been put onto your plate by a restaurant chef.
The only way to roughly guess is to deconstruct your meal into what you believe would be its components and log all the ingredients individually (which as you can imagine is a real pain); but then you remember, there's probably a lot more butter and oil in a restaurant dish that you'd ever imagine.
Part IV: Summary
When I tried veganism, I thought nothing could feel more limiting. Turns out, I was wrong. Calories counting wasn't just restrictive, it made me feel defeated. I was shocked to see how many calories are in meals which one might otherwise believe to be quite light.
While I truly believe calories counting is the only fool-proof way to lose weight (it is just mathematics, after all), I wouldn't recommend it for people who have no trouble maintaining a healthy weight by not counting their calories: it will drive you mad.
Part V: Coming Next Week
Amber Tries: macro-focused eating.
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