Lets take the way I was eating, in this case, 500 meals a day. subtract 150 calories just digesting my food and that leaves 350 calories for my body to burn or store.
Now let's factor in my activity level. I'm a stay home mom who sits at the computer a good part of the day. Even a heavy dose of housework wouldn't burn a surplus of 350 calories. I might burn about another 150 calories doing what it is I do between meals, so lets add that to the equation.
350 surplus calories, minus 150 homemaker calories = 200 surplus calories.
Keep in mind, thats just one meal. Multiply that by 3 meals a day and you have 600 surplus calories per day. But what about my exercise sessions? I consistently burn at least 400 or more calories in a workout session (if I use weights) so we want to add that to the equation.
600 surplus calories, minus 400 workout calories still leaves me with 200 surplus calories.
Not eye popping, but still, over the weeks and months those suprlus calories add up.
Now stay with me. Here's the good part. Lets say you split your lovely meal in half and eat half now and half later. Now lets say you do that with all three meals. Even if you eat 6 meals at 250 calories each--not that this is what you would do, but it works for this illustration--and you have a workout each day in which you burn 400 calories, here's the way your caloric equation would look:
Meal #1 - 250 calories
digestion, subtract 150 calories = 100 surplus calories
Homemaking duties, subtract 150 calories = a deficit of -50 calories
Meal #2, another 250 calories, subtracting the same elements and you have another deficit, only now it has grown to -100 calories. Do this four or five times a day and you have enough deficit to lose a pound a week. Now add 3-5 workout sessions a week and you have enough negative calories to lose 2 or more pounds a week.
You gotta love new math!
2 comments:
That's great and small meals are a good idea. However you subtracted the calories it takes to digest a meal, but not any of the other calories it takes just for your body to work. You need to look up your BMR (Basil Metabolic Rate). These are calories that your body burns at rest, even sleeping, for an entire day. This would include the calories for digesting.
For instance, a women of 5' 4" age 52 at 200 pounds has a BMR of 1581.40 calories. That's how many calories you need to consume to stay where you are at right now without any changes. So if you are eating only 1500 calories a day and exercising burning 400 calories that's a total of 1100 calories a day. 481 less than what your body needs and you should lose weight.
The small meals are still a good idea. They keep you from being hungry and therefore from binging or overeating. It also helps to maintain your blood surgar level better.
Thanks. I didn't know that about BMI. But I have been eating between 1400 & 1500 calories and still gaining. My doctor thinks it's my liver. As if life isn't humiliating enough, now I might have a fatty liver. Oh, the shame.
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