Let’s talk about food a bit more. Now that you have a good idea as to the types of foods you should be eating, the next logical question is “How much should I eat to lose fat?” This aspect of dieting is arguably just as important as choosing the right foods, because you’ll still gain fat even it you eat too much of the “right foods”…so NO, you can’t hit up the all-you-can eat chicken breast buffet.
Unfortunately, the amount of calories an individual can process is an extremely difficult thing to predict. As we discussed in the first installment of this series, multiple factors influence one’s calorie threshold- including age, hormonal status, gender, the amount of muscle mass, and let’s not forget activity levels. We can generalize that females tend to require less calories than men. Therefore, women usually need to consume less calories than their male counterparts to lose fat. Sorry ladies! Conversely, men can usually eat more and still lose fat.
If you had a gun to my head and I had to make some very crude (i.e. likely to be incorrect!) generalizations as to how many calories the general person could take in and still lose fat, I’d probably say in the area of 12-15x your body weight would be a decent start for men and maybe 10-12x for women. For example, as a 150 pound man, you could take in 1800-2250 calories; as a 150 lb. woman, it would be 1500-1800 calories. Again…these are just general guidelines.
Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to tell if you’re eating the correct amount of calories. The way you do this is simply monitor your weight and body fat percentage. We’ll talk about how to measure body fat some other time, but for now, let’s just use weight as our measure (even though this is NOT the best way to do things). If you’re losing weight at a rate you’re happy with, you’re doing ok – if not, drop your calories or increase your activity level. A good but attainable pace to lose fat is about 2 pounds per week, or 8-10 lbs. per month. An even better guideline would be 0.5 – 1% of fat a week.
Tags: Bodybuilding / Dieting / Diets / Fat loss / Food / Nutrition