More good reasons to exercise and eat

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-25-2004
More good reasons to exercise and eat
4
Tue, 07-11-2006 - 12:00pm

a well balanced diet!

Fact: Three pounds of muscle will up your metabolic rate up to 7%! For a person who normally burns 2000 calories, that's 140 calories per day extra. But, the same is true for if you lose muscle, so you definitely want to make sure you are eating enough to fuel your body and work on building (or at least maintaining) your muscles while you are trying to lose weight.

Fact: Drastically reducing your calorie intake can cause you to burn up to 720 fewer calories per day! If you drop more than 500 calories below your maintenance level, it can cause this drop. No wonder I wasn't losing! At the very least you shouldn't eat fewer than your bodys RMR or BMR. You can calculate that at www.caloriesperhour.com . It's just an estimate, but a good number to follow. Mine came out to be almost 1900 for my age, sex and height. Or, you can multipy your goal weight by 12, which comes out to almost 2200 for my goal weight. That's pretty much the range I've been following and I've been losing again :)!

Read these facts in an old copy of Fitness magazine, and although I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about weight loss and this type of thing, both of these facts were news to me, so I thought I'd share. The muscle thing really surprised me. I know it takes some work to really build three pounds of muscle, but the big thing about this one is to make sure and not lose it while you are losing weight because that can really stall your weight loss.

Staci


 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 02-06-2006
Wed, 07-12-2006 - 7:43am

Are you talking to me? LOL


OK first I agree with everything written there in theory. I believe that when you drop the calories too much you lose a lot of muscle mass and you lower your metabolism.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-25-2004
Wed, 07-12-2006 - 10:13am

My mother has the same problems as you do with calories. She used to be over 200 and is now down in the 130s, and while she was losing, she had to eat about 1000 calories a day to lose 1-2 lb a week. Now that she's down to the 130s (probably too small for her frame/size) she can only eat about 2000 calories a day to maintain. That may sound like a decent number, but she literally works out about 2 hours A DAY EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK! She does strength training and swimming and tae bo and walking. I think a lot of her problem is that she is now trying to maintain a weight that isn't quite what her body wants it to be (she's about 5'9" with a frame like me). Sorry, a little off point there.

Yeah, I figure those #s don't work for everyone, and it IS possible to be very healthy on a very low calorie diet. When I lost 40 lbs in 2 months, I was eating 1000 calories a day and not straying far from that number, except one day a week where I would have maybe 2000 calories a day. I ate 9+ servings of fruits and veggies (3x more than the average American), 4+ servings of dairy, lean proteins, and occasional treats. Basically I had everything in my diet that they say you need to be strong and healthy and not much of anything else. Obviously that plan didn't completely work for me because here I am again losing the same pounds, but that's because I couldn't stick with it and never learned to maintain.

Okay, I'm rambling now and I don't know if I really have a point, so I'll shut up :).

Staci


 


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-01-2006
Wed, 07-12-2006 - 9:52pm

Thanks, Staci!

I would so badly like to reduce this whole enterprise to a series of equations (control, control, control), and the factoid about muscle gain boosting your metabolism does make sense to me, based on my own experience.

But, also based on just my experience, I think the RMR and activity level numbers can be pretty suspect. Perhaps there are other factors that we either don't know about or can't easily discern that affect this rate. Or maybe my activity is too low/slow to register with the weight-loss gnomes. Anyway, for me it's a handy guideline, but not necessarily an absolute. Or I would have lost about 12 more pounds that I have so far, and be much less frustrated with the process!

BTW, you ARE so much more active than I am, and it really shows in your photos! If I stayed at 2200 calories a day, I would definitely NOT be so svelte in four weeks. Nice work!

Misha

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-25-2004
Wed, 07-12-2006 - 10:48pm

Thank you! :D

I think that actually has a lot to do with those RMR calculators. They base those on a person with a normal amount of muscle, but what about those who are more or less muscular? If you are more muscular, you will burn more calories (as the first point made with the 7% increase for 3 extra pounds of muscle), and if you are less muscular, you will burn less. Unfortunately, for most of us who have dieted and lost weight in the past, we tend to fall below the "average" amount of muscle because of muscle lost due to past weight loss attempts. Believe it or not, I used to lose weight much more quickly than I do now, and I didn't even have to exercise then. But, I think because of all of my previous attempts and super low cal diets (1000 calories a day), I've lost muscle mass and don't burn as many calories, now. I think I am lucky and still at or above the "average" amount of muscle mass for a person of my size, but it's still not what it used to be. The exercising is helping a ton with that, so hopefully I will be able to continue eating the 1800 or so calories a day and continue losing. I just couldn't bear to have to live forever on 1200 calories a day just to maintain my new weight like my mom does. Of course, it doesn't hurt to be 5'10" with a large frame, that alone means I burn more calories than most people do.

Staci

Staci


 


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