This woman was out of her mind. Out of her mind.
She was a model, in N.Y.C., when I met her: a friend of a friend. Four of us spent a long spring day and night together. And all this woman talked about, all day, was how she had to diet so she could get work. And all she did, all day, was eat everything in sight.
Around that time, I’d been wanting to lose a little weight, too. And my big (read: unreal) plan consisted of getting up, seeing how big my stomach looked, and trying not to eat. By the end of the day, I’d be so hungry I’d devour everything. Which was about as screwy a weight loss plan as my model friend’s (but not as annoying to others).
The day after the day I spent with her, something clicked in me and everything changed. I resolved to lose weight scientifically.
How I lost 25 pounds that’s stayed off forever
My plan was to write down every single morsel of food I ingested and its calorie count. I set a semi-educated daily caloric budget of 1,200 a day.
I stopped waking up and looking at my stomach. I didn’t weigh myself. I knew that if I stuck to my caloric budget it was inevitable that I’d lose weight. My whole focus was writing down the calories I consumed so I could stick to a 1,200 calorie a day quota.
I should say I have a small frame, am 5’4’’, and was in my early 20s. I now know that 1,200 calories was low, and I wouldn’t go so low if I knew then what I know now. But, that’s what I did.
I was like a machine about it. I was resolved.
I knew about whole and healthy foods and some about calories. I had a little calories book and, luckily, a good eye for the weight of portions.
Not all calories are the same
The idea was not to eat any “empty” calories. In other words, I wanted the biggest nutritional bang for my caloric buck, that is, the most nutrition I could get for the fewest calories. I ate poached or boiled eggs for breakfast and a dry piece of grainy toast. Maybe a piece of cantaloupe, a peach, or some strawberries (the three least caloric fruits).
I ate celery and carrots for snacks. Whole cucumbers. Another peach. I ate small portions of white meat chicken with salad and just lemon for dressing or lemon and olive oil. I ate tuna in water. Forget the mayo. I ate steamed vegetables and vegetable juices.
I was crazy strict (which I wouldn’t be now, but I was then).
And I kept a little spiral bound notebook filled with lists of every morsel I ate every day, and its calorie count.
And after a couple of months of that, my clothes fit differently.
I did it for a year. Maybe I let up a little toward the end, I can’t remember exactly, because I must have reached my target weight sooner than a year. I went from 137 to 112 or so.
But the thing that was so remarkable about the experience was that it changed the way I ate from then on.
It trained me to recognize empty calories for the rest of my life without even trying! Bottled blue cheese dressing? Never, it’s a disaster nutritionally. Chips? Didn’t even want them. A massive muffin? No way. Spaghetti Alfredo, are you kidding me? Out to eat, I’d order grilled fish, salad with dressing on the side, and a plain potato. If I was at someone’s house, and the food was rich, I’d eat small portions. For something sweet, I’d eat fruit or a square of dark chocolate.
It’s a couple decades later and I’m still thin even though I eat more now. I eat rich dishes — of course I do — but a lot less of them, and less frequently. My daily “bread and butter” consists of whole foods: proteins, vegetables and fruits, moderate amounts of carbs. I don’t count calories anymore, because I learned so much about which foods are high in calories – and portion control — that I just know when I’m looking at something that isn’t going to do me any good.
If you want to lose weight, you have to educate yourself about food
No matter who you are, and what other factors are at play, if you want to lose weight, you need to educate yourself about food. That includes knowing the major food groups (which we’ll explore in my next post) and the calories in various foods.
You don’t have to keep a food diary like I did (although I highly recommend it). But before you start checking out the calories in different foods, you need to learn how many calories you burn in a day at your activity level.
Once you know this number, you’ll have the key.
Let me explain.
What are calories?
Calories are a measure of energy. To gain one pound of weight, you need to eat 3,500 calories. Don’t start mentally screaming that you burn off X number of calories spinning, or whatever, so that the 3,500 calories thing can’t apply to you.
How many calories you burn off through activity is an essential part of the equation we’re figuring out here – but it doesn’t change the fact that it takes 3,500 calories to gain a pound of body fat.
Conversely, if you cut out 3,500 calories of food eaten (over a week let’s say) – or burn 3,500 more calories through physical exercise — you’ll lose a pound a week.
But this whole thing works best if you know (approximately) how many calories you burn at your actual activity level!
Here’s how to find that number.
Step 1: Determining your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
Every person burns (uses) a different number of calories per day to maintain their current weight. This depends on their weight, height, age, sex, and level of activity.
To find this number, start by determining the number of calories you’d burn if you did almost nothing but breath, etc. This is called your Basal Metabolic Rate, aka, your BMR.
To find your BMR, go to this site and fill in four things: your weight, height, age, and sex. There’s no registering. It’s very simple. And you’ll get your BMR.
Write that number down.
Step 2: Determining your Actual Metabolic Rate (AMR)
Okay. So, your BMR is the number of calories you’d burn if you were almost completely inactive.
But what you really need to figure out is the average number of calories you burn at your actual level of activity. This is sometimes known as your Active Metabolic Rate.
Since people are more active on some days than others, we figure out how active you are in an average week.
Stay with me. (This requires a tiny bit of math — one number multiplied by another — but you only have to do it once.)
To get your number, open your calculator, and multiply your BMR by one of the following numbers (under the Activity Calculator below), depending on which activity profile fits you.
The resulting number will be the actual number of calories you burn a day. In other words, it’ll be the number of calories you can eat everyday without gaining OR losing weight. (Caveat: this won’t apply exactly if you have the muscle mass of a body builder – or are massively obese. But, it absolutely does apple to most people.)
Activity Calculator
1.If you are sedentary (little or no exercise): Multiply your BMR x 1.2
2. If you are lightly active – defined as light exercise or sports 1-3 days per week: Multiply your BMR x 1.375
3. If you are moderately active – defined as moderate exercise or sports 3-5 days per week: Multiply your BMR x 1.55
4. If you are very active – defined as hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week: Multiply your BMR x 1.725
5. If you are extra active, defined as very hard exercise or sports and physical job: Multiply your BMR x 1.9
(If you are into this and want to go really nuts, go to this site. Once there, scroll down to where it says “Enter Your Details,” and you’ll be able to enter how many minutes you spend doing more than a couple hundred human activities. I think it’s overkill, but it’s kind of fun just to see how many calories an average person burns per minute driving, washing dishes, or taking the stairs.)
Reviewing how to determine the number of calories you use in a day to maintain your weight
Here’s this process using a fictional woman: She’s 38 years old, female, 140 pounds, and 5’5”.
We go to this site (as we did earlier above) and fill in her weight, height, age, and sex. Hit calculate and her Basal Metabolic Rate comes up as 1,316. (This is the number of calories she’d use up if she were doing almost nothing but breathing, etc.)
She is moderately active, so we multiply her BMR (1,316) by 1.55 — a number we find in the Activity Calculator list above. (Don’t forget to put the decimal point in your calculator.)
This results in 2,038 calories. Viola!
This is the approximate number of calories she uses in a day to maintain her weight of 140 pounds. If she eats more than that number, she’ll gain weight. If she eats less, she’ll lose. (Caveat #2: Don’t think you can cut your calories in half and lose weight: It might work for a short period, but it will eventually slow your metabolism way down so that less food lasts longer.)
Next we’ll explore some fairly painless ways to cut out empty calories and lose weight!
