I still get asked this question frequently, so here's this again for reference.

Food and calories - how much do you need?

You’re getting to the gym, lifting heavy, using the hamster wheel and get on the scale often. But even so, the changes aren’t showing as quick as you want.

Shouldn’t something happen soon? You’re looking at the calendar – not long until the summer body of 2015 is going to be displayed!

After New Year’s, you’ve had a workout routine indicating you’re going to compete in the Olympic Games soon. You’ve read nutrition, which exercises burn the most fat the quickest, and you’re filling your dashboard with fitspo-pictures. Time to get fit!

But still… You’re often hungry, you’re feeling weaker than before and the results aren’t showing. If anything, the flab on your belly feels sloppier and you get more easily tired than earlier.

What is enough?

You know you’ll increase your bodyweight over time by being in a calorie surplus, and you’ll reduce it by having a calorie deficit. But do you know what a good deficiency or surplus is for you?

There is quite some confusion out there, and it seems the answer is always to eat more proteins and limit something else. Want to gain weight? Eat enough proteins, limit everything else. Lose weight? Eat as much proteins as possible, as little of anything else as possible. Maintenance? Do as you do now – loads of protein, very little of anything else.

Quite exaggerated, but it’s rare I see anyone even trying to find out how much they need before they’re going to build muscle, maintain or reduce fat percentage. Even so, there are many who will, completely without any criticism, accept a random calorie amount from a magazine, a website or something a girl-friend or «bro» who got ripped last summer did.

The war against your body

Which tactic should you use when you initiate a change of your diet, whether your goal is to increase muscle mass whilst maintaining your fat, reducing your fat mass and keeping muscle mass or just maintaining body weight? You have to suffer a bit to get fit?

Yes… and no. Breaking old habits and creating new might require a bit of accustoming. But there’s a difference between discomfort, and inconvenience and straight out misery. Being fit isn’t about suffering until you become perfect, it’s about mastery, about managing, to bear and being adapted to the everyday life and the life you live. Some of us could have some less fat on or bodies, some could need to get stronger. Some can, without any doubt, need to get more fat on their bodies. There is no set answer which will fit everyone, and some people feel the best with a low fat percentage, for various reasons, and some keep that level without really trying.

On the path of trying to find a way which will make you see the changes you want, it’s easy to get lost. And nothing is as confusion as the jungle nutrition is.

Carbohydrates, fat and proteins are energy giving nutrients

Most of you already know of the energy unit kilocalories, or kcal – 1000 calories. Simplified, a calorie is the energy required to increase the temperature of 1 g water under certain conditions.

It’s also a heavily loaded word. “A lot” of calories is negative, whilst “low calorie” and “few” calories are god, healthy, and something you should strive for. At least if you are to believe the many sources we get information about exercise and nutrition from.

 The same frustrating mentality is observed when talking about weight. The less weight the better, completely without regard of how the person on the scale feels or looks.

It is unfortunately way too common for people, especially girls, who try losing weight to start with a calorie amount which is too low and isn’t based on anything else but the fact that you need a calorie deficit without taking anything else into account than that your fat needs to be shed. Preferably yesterday.

 I meet these people every day, both in the gym, when I work as a personal trainer, people who ask me for advice and last but not least here on fitblr. It is a bit less common that guys fall into this category, but they’re totally there too.

What’s common for all of them is that they have no idea how much the body needs, and if someone gives them a piece of paper where it says 1200 kcal they’ll gladly accept that.

After that, they’ll get to the gym and hit the wall within a couple of weeks, without understanding why they suddenly can’t manage getting off the couch and why they can’t see the changes they want in the mirror. And when the food intake stabilizes, they don’t understand why they’re gaining weight. Is there even a reason to continue trying?

 Time to bust the calorie prison!

Too little food – a dead end

If individual needs aren’t taken into account, how much you move and exercise, you might end up with a plan which says, for instance, that you should eat between 1200 and 1400 kcal per day. Period.

There are several problems with this approach.

Purely cosmetically and aesthetic, things aren’t progressing as you wish. You’re eating yourself up internally, loosing fat free mass all whilst not being close to looking like the fitspo-pictures. What’s happening? Do you have to eat even less? Are you not good enough?

With that, it’s not been said you’ll never be hungry. Feeling hungry is a complex mechanism which is both depending on hormonal and psychological causes. Being hungry is not the same as starving yourself, and it is not the same as needing food.

For some, especially overweight people, that’s often the issue. Not enough exercise, too much food. Nothing happens. On the other side of the scale, you’ll find those who haven’t really gotten a lot of neither fat nor muscle. Previously inactive girls and boys with a quite normal amount of fat, but very little muscle mass who want to get fit, defined, toned and ripped without having anything else to show underneath their skin than a skeleton.

How little is too little?

Basal metabolism, an absolute minimum

The body has a fundamental need for energy, which is called BMR, or basic metabolic rate. This is the energy you spend during 24 hours by just saying alive in temperature neutral surroundings, at complete rest – lying flat out in a bed, without any movement whatsoever.

BMR contains:

Your heart beats, your kidneys filtrate about 180 litres of fluids every day, your lungs makes sure the gas exchange happens – in short, there’s quite a lot going on, even if you aren’t consciously doing anything at all your body requires energy just to function.

Basal metabolic rate can by estimated by using a calculator which takes into account your height, weight, age and gender.

The body is a living organism which, whether you actively do something or not, has many energy consuming organs and activity.

Calorie counting, making sense of it

I would propose a change in the paradigm. Calorie counting isn’t about getting as few as possible of them, based on a completely random low number. Calorie counting is so that you can quantify something which soon gets quite abstract and incomprehensible, so that you can make adjustments which are beneficial towards your goals.

How much you feel, or believe, you eat, is not a good indicator of how much food you’re getting. On one end of the scale, those who want to lose weight will often believe they eat less than they actually do, whilst those who want to increase their weight believe they eat more than they do. This is often due to what you choose to eat. 200 kcal from vegetables looks like a lot of food, even though the amount of calories is quite low.

With more energy dense food, 200 kcal is nothing. The girl, who had 20 grams of butter on her cracker bread, only ate a cracker bread. But the fitness girl with the salad consumed a way larger volume which made her feel she ate a lot, even though the amount of calories was low.

Those who need less, are inclined to eat a bit too much and those who need more are partial to eat a bit too little.

What does being in balance mean? One day you slept in a bit, and didn’t eat much. The next day was a Saturday, and you ate quite a bit more. If you’ve kept your weight the last months, you’re in an energy balance, even if you aren’t in balance from day to day. The body is very flexible, and the fat tissue saves and releases energy all the time.

Normal people don’t count calories. They eat when they want food. Appetite, or hunger which it’s more often called, depends on completely different factors than a real need for energy.

Some have a well regulated appetite, and keep their weight. Some days they eat more, some days they eat less. And it’s adjusted by activity and intake. Others again, eat a bit too much, move a bit too little, and have a slightly less well-adjusted control of intake compared to their consumption, which again leads to the weight and amount of fat creeps up more easily.

A tiny extra point I’d like to make. It’s easy to become extreme, and dissociate oneself from everything one has done before. It’s not unusual to loathe what one used to be and what one has been when one wishes for a change. You think you were lazy, lacked self-control and were pathetic since you didn’t work out and just ate junk food. Let me just be clear about this one thing – having less fat on your body, does not make you a better person! Being thin or starving yourself will not automatically fix all your other problems!

There is a difference between having excess fat tissue on your body, and being fat. One describes the body’s state; the other one defines you as the body’s state. An opposite example; most would call a fitness athlete on stage fit, even though he or she is most likely in their worst shape ever. Frail, light, dehydrated, weak and tired… but very little fat on their body!

It feels like you’re distancing yourself from something you want to end. Control something you used to lack control of. Just don’t swap an inexpedient strategy of mastery with another. Both comfort eating and forced starvation are equally pathological, but with a different result… common for both of them, is that there sits an unhappy man/woman at the table, no longer enjoying one of the best things life can offer.

Everyday activity and total energy consumption

The biggest differences in energy consumption are seen through everyday activity and what’s called spontaneous activity for people of the same body size and body composition.

All movements you do throughout the day costs energy. Some people are more restless than others, and with an increased food intake they also increase their spontaneous activity. That’s a big unknown in the calorie equation. Everything from gesticulation, fumbling and ticks with your foot counts as spontaneous activity which costs energy. Studies in controlled environments show there’s a huge difference between people’s spontaneous activities and thus the use of energy.

Then what happens if you eat too little? As I’ve mentioned before, a series of unfortunate metabolic processes and behavioural adaptations happen when the food intake is too low. Earlier there’s been talk of your body going into energy saving mode and that you’ll ruin your metabolism.

That’s an exaggeration, and in reality that’s not exactly what happens until things have been pushed very far. It’s also important to make sure who you’re talking about. Severely overweight people with a lot of fat on their body will have a larger margin of error before these adaptations occur, as compared to someone with very little fat on their body. We aren’t talking about a complete stop of energy transactions, but we’ll take a somewhat closer look at what happens:

If the energy intake is too low compared to the consumption over time, a series of physiological and behavioural adaptations, depending on how big a deficit you have and how long it lasts, will occur.

This is a very simplified model, but it works in showing that a too low intake will have consequences.

Even more simplified: The less you eat, the less energy your body will use

This is crucial so that your body won’t spend too much energy during periods with a deficit. This could potentially be fatal during periods with less of a surplus than the times we are living in.

Then what should you do?

Are you destined to end up in a situation where your deficit is getting nullified by a reduced intake? Hardly. This is where an adapted intake enters the picture, and helps you both function and keep your deficit over a longer period of time.

If you start out too low, you’re destined to fail. Not because you lack willpower, or because you’re too weak, but because your plan wasn’t very well thought through and in accordance with actually being able to keep your diet over time.

When you then start eating normal, you’ll have reduced your body’s need for energy, reduced metabolic activity, possibly reduced fat free mass, and before your diet you need less before you start gaining weight. That’s why it’s not entirely smart to increase too quickly. If you’re reading this, and you’re eating 1500 kcal and suddenly increase to 3000, which was what you needed to maintain based on your height, weight, age and activity, before your diet, you might now increase your weight even if what you eat was your theoretical maintenance amount.

Intake is on a scale which goes from too little to balance to too much This is both from day to day, week to week, month to month. Your body will gradually adapt to the changes you do, and this goes both ways. The key to a sustained progress is to make adjustments your body can cope with without getting overexploited.

Start right, it’s easy

It’s not as hard as it sounds, but it requires you to spend a few minutes finding your right starting point.

In this case it means making an estimate of how much energy you need. This formula will vary in preciseness for underweight, overweight and over- or underestimate BMR with +-20 %. The most important is not to get a precise number; it’s to get an estimate we can make adjustments from.

You’re making a budget so that you have a clear view of your expenses. Now you have a pretty good idea on how to cover the bills your body writes every day.

We can go through the process together:

Start here: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

I’ll use my friend as an example. He’s a personal trainer and in great shape:

Male, 26 years, 90 kg.

This gives a basal metabolic rate of 2022 kcal.

This doesn’t take into account his body composition, and is thus imprecise, but it gives you a clue.

By using the Harris-Benedict-formula we add an activity factor. An estimate on how much energy goes to activity based on how active you are.

He exercises between 3 and 5 times per week, and is otherwise in a moderate activity. So we’re putting the activity factor to 1.55.

2022 x 1,55 = 3134 kcal to maintain his bodyweight on the activity levels he is at the moment. This doesn’t mean he needs 3134 kcal every day to be in balance. Both his expenses and intake will vary, but if he gets this amount of calories over time, he can expect his weight to be more or less stable.

If he decides to do some fat moderation, how big of a deficit should he have?

Continue easy, it’s right

If the deficit comes from more activity or less food isn’t very important, as long as it’s a need for energy which is covered by the body’s energy storage and that it is of a proper size.

Then what is a proper deficit?

That depends on the body of the person having the deficit. In extreme cases people have managed several months without food, but in those cases there’s been a lot of fat tissue available and they’ve had medical supervision.

In a deficit it’s proposed that fat tissue can cover between 60 and 70 per kg body fat before a further deficit must be covered by fat free mass. We don’t want that. In practical life that means that the more fat you have, the more of a deficit you can have, whilst the less fat you have the smaller a deficit you can have. Before you grab your flab and think you’ve got loads of fat, we’re now talking about the actual kgs of fat, not your subjective idea of how fat you are.

Most of you, me included, don’t know with 100 % accuracy how much body fat we’ve got. But in this case too, an estimate is more than good enough if you haven’t got fat callipers, or you’ve got an inBody, DXA (which I previously called DEXA, sorry old habit), or underwater weighing available.

My friend’s previous inBody said he had 12% body fat at 90 kg, but we’ll have to assume the real number is closer to 15%. His fat tissue will then be able to cover about 900 kcal every day, before he starts tearing down fat free mass.

It’s smart to set your deficit to half of what your fat tissue can handle. In this case, to make it simple, we’re setting it to 500 kcal. My friend is thus getting 3100 kcal – 500, or 2600 kcal per day. Whether the deficit comes from a reduction in amounts of fat of carbohydrates is of less importance.

If you start with a moderate deficit, you’ll have several possibilities later. Both an increase in activity or reduction of intake depending on what you want.

The first period after you’ve reduced your food intake, it’s typical to see a decrease in weight which isn’t fat tissue

You’ve got less food in stomach/intestines, the glycogen storages typically decrease a bit, and the first weight loss comes from this before one starts seeing a real gradually decrease of fat tissue on the body.

What’s important is remembering this, so that you won’t panic because one loses 1-3 kg the first week before the weight loss reaches a “plateau”. It’s perfectly normal.

It’s also difficult to know how you react on a given deficit. It’s certain the mentioned negative effects will kick in if the deficit is too large, but how much you downgrade spontaneous and metabolic activity on a moderate deficit is hard to guess. Yes, I’m saying guess because it mainly ends up in guesswork anyhow.

Just using weight as a way of measuring progress, is also typically unsmart as it doesn’t tell you anything about what happens with your body except that there’s less mass in it.

If you’re getting on the scales, don’t do it so often that you can’t see a decrease in fat tissue.

For girls it’s a bit more complicated, as monthly cycles in hormonal levels can make it so that weight fluctuates without that being any indicator of neither an increase nor decrease in the amount of fat tissue. Take that into account, and have other targets than weight.

With my example deficit of 500 kcal, the week deficit is 3500 kcal, which theoretically will give a fat decrease of 0.5 kg per week. For this to work, though, the deficit will have to be exclusively from fat tissue and no other inflicting factors, and that’s just not how things work.

Guidelines for objectively measuring progress 

Patience and adjustments

Don’t do everything at once – start with moderate changes.

If you go bang on from the start, with hour-long cardio sessions whilst reducing your food intake too much, then what do you do when you come in balance on a lower calorie amount than what you started on?

Respect the process, and let the changes happen in a decent tempo.

If you’ve reduced the intake or increased consumption with a moderate amount and not seeing any results on any of the objective ways of measuring progress, start making small adjustments. Adding half an hour of walking every day can be a good low strain alternative to one hour extra spinning three days per week. Seek the adjustments which are the easiest to accomplish and are the easiest to maintain as you’re coming further with your progress.

Food choices and the diet’s composition

Since you now know about how much energy you need during a day, you’ve now got a fantastic opportunity to put together a sensible diet. Think of it as getting pocket money you can spend on whatever you want! If you run and buy sweets for all your money, the happiness will be short lived.

There are several good websites where you can check the nutrient contents on food, and where you can put together meals. Cover your need for proteins, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, get enough fibres and don’t think much more about it. Neither carbohydrates nor fat should be avoided, but both should be a natural part of your diet from good raw materials.

How you’re feeling on your way towards your goal is important so that you will actually reach it. A sensible choice of food makes sure you cover your need for nutrients and makes you feel better. To put it a bit extreme, you can reduce the amount of fat on your body by just eating chocolate as long as you’re in a deficit, but the process will probably be a bit harder than if you base yourself on food with a lower energy density and eat food from most of the food groups.

Yes please, both!

With a sensible choice of food, the intention is not to become too full of dogmas, knowing what’s important, what’s of absolute- and what’s of relative importance.

You don’t have to cut all sugar nor limit your food choices to just food which is “clean”, everything is about balance, moderation and adaptation.

For a severely overweight, inactive person who bases the majority of the diet on processed food, a change to more raw materials can be sensible.

For a more normal weight, active person, who just want to burn some fat to reveal some more muscle, having a somewhat free choice of food can be important. I talk to healthy people daily who have been advised to completely cut all dairy products, grain and/or fruit. It’s completely unnecessary.

The energy balance decides whether you have to use the storage of excess energy or fat. Not whether someone’s claimed the food is «clean» or «boss food». It’s easier to end up in a surplus with energy dense food, but it’s also possible to enjoy your favourite food in moderate amounts whilst getting in the best shape of your lifetime.

See knowledge, and find out why should do what you do and just what you should do.

Don’t put your diet together based on something you’ve heard, read or believe but don’t actually know why you do. Improving your body composition and reducing the amount of fat on your body is a consequence of doing things on a way which is sensible and you enjoy, which fits you and your everyday life, where you’ve both got control and flexibility.

To change lifestyle and a body you’ve spent your entire life shaping, isn’t a stressing sprint towards the finishing line, it’s an organic process which requires you to respect the organism you wish you change.

As a starter, you have to give it needs in order to function.

What if I eat too little?

If you’ve eaten too little and exercised too much over a period of time, you can expect your body has adjusted to a reduced intake through the mechanisms I’ve mentioned earlier.

In all practicality this means you use less energy on a given body weight than what you would have expected if you earlier were in energy balance.

If you’ve been too low, and here I’m assuming it’s not a dangerously low level you’ve been on or have been on for an extended period – steadily increase your caloric intake. This can contain a 200 kcal increase per day, as a start to get your body used to the increase and adjust to the increase in energy so that the metabolic process increases and you won’t panic by the sudden increase in weight and by feeling bloated and huge.

In a stressed and malnourished body, it can easily lead to slightly uncomfortable things f you suddenly increase your food intake by a lot.

The stomach and bowels aren’t used to a normal food volume, which in itself can lead to uncomfortableness and a sensation of being bloated.

If you’ve got problems with food intake besides intentionally having eaten too little to reduce weight – seek professional help.

Lack of knowledge can be fixed by seeking it from good sources, but if the problems are severe and symptoms of food being used as a control and mastery mechanism beyond the norm means you should seek competent personnel who have experience and competence with your approach to the problem. Going to your doctor or talking to support groups for people with eating disorders will probably be a good idea. In Norway, that would be www.iks.no. Having an eating disorder can be so many things, something IKS’ definition shows:

“You’ve got an eating disorder when thoughts, emotions and actions concerning food, body and weight affect your life quality and functioning in everyday life.”

What can I expect when I start eating enough? Will I put on weight?

If you steadily increase and spend time rebuilding yourself after a too low intake, you’ll, from experience, experience:

Does food give you happiness and the ability to function in everyday life, or are the thoughts, the feelings and your actions towards food, body and weight obstructive for your ability to function and life quality.

Take control in a good and correct way.

I don’t know what this will contain for you, but giving your body what it needs is a huge leap in the right direction.