- Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:54 pm
#16378
So you've been following the FDA recommendations to the letter--eating 2000 calories a day and not a calories more, and spreading those calories among complex carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats in a balanced way. Why aren't you losing weight? In fact, you might even be gaining weight! So, what's going on?
What's going on is that everyone is different. Even though the FDA recommends 2000 calories a day for a healthy adult to maintain their weight, a muscular man who is 6'4" and has long arms and legs is certainly burning more calories, even when sitting still, than a small-framed woman who is only 5' tall.
The number of calories you burn at rest can be very different even from someone who is the same height and weight as you. It's hard to tell exactly how much of your body is fat and how much is muscle without professional testing, and body composition can be quite different even between individuals of the same height and weight. A woman who is 5'4" and weighs 160 lbs might be overweight if she has very low muscle mass, and a woman of the same height and weight who is a professional athlete might be keeping herself at a very low body fat percentage, and be in fantastic shape. The athlete is likely burning more calories when at rest than the non-athlete.
Activity level needs to be taken into account when you are trying to figure out how many calories to eat in a day, as well. Many people tend to both underestimate the calories they eat, and overestimate the calories they expend through exercise. If you think that working extra-hard at the gym means that you can chow down at McDonald's and it will all balance out, think again! A half-hour jog for one person may burn a lot more calories than it does for another person. If you've only burned 300 calories at the gym, a 1000 calorie fast food meal is still adding 700 extra calories to your food intake that day!
The moral of the story is that weight loss is individual. Experiment with food and activity levels that fit into your lifestyle until you find a combination that you can commit to, and that will result in steady, healthy weight loss.
What's going on is that everyone is different. Even though the FDA recommends 2000 calories a day for a healthy adult to maintain their weight, a muscular man who is 6'4" and has long arms and legs is certainly burning more calories, even when sitting still, than a small-framed woman who is only 5' tall.
The number of calories you burn at rest can be very different even from someone who is the same height and weight as you. It's hard to tell exactly how much of your body is fat and how much is muscle without professional testing, and body composition can be quite different even between individuals of the same height and weight. A woman who is 5'4" and weighs 160 lbs might be overweight if she has very low muscle mass, and a woman of the same height and weight who is a professional athlete might be keeping herself at a very low body fat percentage, and be in fantastic shape. The athlete is likely burning more calories when at rest than the non-athlete.
Activity level needs to be taken into account when you are trying to figure out how many calories to eat in a day, as well. Many people tend to both underestimate the calories they eat, and overestimate the calories they expend through exercise. If you think that working extra-hard at the gym means that you can chow down at McDonald's and it will all balance out, think again! A half-hour jog for one person may burn a lot more calories than it does for another person. If you've only burned 300 calories at the gym, a 1000 calorie fast food meal is still adding 700 extra calories to your food intake that day!
The moral of the story is that weight loss is individual. Experiment with food and activity levels that fit into your lifestyle until you find a combination that you can commit to, and that will result in steady, healthy weight loss.
