How Much to Move

While determining your estimated caloric needs, and tracking your current daily caloric intake, some will be amazed at how little food is necessary to maintain their current weight, some will feel the opposite; that the amount of food needed to maintain their current weight seems like a lot of food!

Truth is you’re all right; this reaction depends on your perception of a “normal” amount of food. Naturally skinny people don’t eat very much compared to naturally overweight individuals. Your perception is also skewed by your current conditions. By this I mean that after a long diet stint, maintenance calories seem ridiculously high, however after a few weeks, you adjust to it and it becomes “normal”.

Naturally skinny people also move more than their chubby counterparts, and I don’t specifically mean exercise either. Skinny people fidget, get up a lot, walk instead of driving, etc. They’re just wired that way. Being overweight can cause you to move less, however inactivity is also a major contributor to weight gain in its own right.

So if your maintenance caloric needs seem like they’ll leave you starving, remember this: The more you move the more room there is in your diet for additional food! So if 1200 calories seems cruel, add exercise into the equation to increase the amount of food you can eat while still losing weight!

As an active individual I often have to eat more food than I desire simply because I expend so many calories in daily activity. Needless to say, your favourite foods are high calorie, so exercise allows you to eat more of these without gaining weight. I will, in a future post, explain why you MUST eat these calorie dense foods in order to maintain the MOST effective fat loss possible. Think Pizza, Burgers & fries, Ice Cream, Cookies & Cheesecake, Oh My. ;)

For now, I leave you with another challenge. Track your daily activity levels & determine how many calories you burn during “regular” activities (walking the dog, taking the stairs, etc) as well as how many you burn during exercise & adjust your caloric targets accordingly.

If your daily activity level is only allowing you an extra jube jube per day (one jube not one bag) then adopting a more active lifestyle, including formal exercise is necessary in your body recomposition plan.

Stay tuned for explanation & analysis of your calorie counting experience, and a discussion about the different types of exercise and how they can impact on your rate of fat loss.