This thread needs a mission, so:
Track Your Calories & Learn MoreEven if you're not trying to lose or gain weight, it can be helpful to understand how calories work and to keep an eye on what you're consuming. Your mission is to learn the basics and see how your daily habits compare.
You can use a
total daily energy expenditure calculator to figure out the number of calories you need to consume in a day to maintain your weight. Yes, weight maintenance is mostly a math problem. If you eat more calories than that, you'll gain weight, and if you eat less than that, you'll lose weight. What exactly those calories come from isn't as big of an issue.
For about every 3500 calories you're over (cumulatively through the days,weeks), you gain about a pound, and vice-versa (under = losing). You should also count the calories burned during your exercising habits towards these numbers if they're more than the expenditure estimate.
If you find that you're normally eating significantly under your goal calories and still gaining weight, or vice-versa, you may have a thyroid problem or other medical condition that's been going unnoticed and should talk to your doctor. That's another good part of tracking.
Note that, when losing weight, the US National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute believes adult women shouldn't go under 1200 calories a day, adult men shouldn't go under 1500 calories per day, and even on strict diets, no adults should go under ~900 unless being closely monitored by a doctor with a special diet to meet their nutritional needs.
(The needs of teens and children are much more personalized. Talk to your pediatrician to find out exactly how many calories are alright as a minimum for your growth rate, activity level, etc. Generally, it's believed teens shouldn't go under 1600 to 2000 calories per day for weight loss, and can go quite high for weight maintenance depending on their metabolism and activity level.)
Exercising only does so much for weight loss, especially if you're not tracking your calories with it or tend to overeat. It's very easy to eat more calories in a day than you could ever burn off.
To avoid losing muscle mass during weight loss or bulking, ensure plenty of the calories you're eating are protein. This both feeds your muscles and your body, where as limiting your protein intake results in your body turning to your muscle reserves for its protein. This is especially apparent when exercising without protein intake, where much of the weight loss is muscle rather than fat.
If you weight yourself daily, you may find sudden fluctuations of several pounds even when you've been tracking your calories. There are usually two causes of this.
1) You've been exercising new muscles. In order to heal your muscles, your body holds more water than usual until they heal. Water is very heavy. Take a couple days off of working your muscles here and there to let it release.
2) You've had more sodium than usual. It requires a a great deal of water to process salt intake, and your body will retain it until you've taken in enough water to process it. Again, water is heavy.
So yeah. Take a look at the labels of what you're eating, step on the scale now and again, and be a more knowledgeable person in your day to day life.
I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Talk to your doctor before starting any diet. Etc. etc.
