alt Hacker News> and was amazed at how many calories I would have to eat in order to stay the same weight. It was huge.
Can someone explain this to me? I try to stay under 2000 calories. To me it means eating almost nothing. Let's say I have berries and yogurt. That ~300. Add a morning latte (no sugar). Now we're at 500. I've effectively had a tiny breakfast and already spent 1/4th of my calorie budget.
Taking what I just ate and multiplying by 1.5 x 2 meals are two more tiny meals and I've hit my limit. And that's no snacks and avoiding all sugar
The only way to make it lots is to eat heaps of veggies with no dressing / oil.
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By eating different foods. I frequently get filling bento boxes in japan that are ~500-600 calories. And drinking when is extremely counterintuitive when trying to maintain/lose weight.
Note that the specified BMR is 2,900 in this article. If you are a heavier individual you tend to have a higher BMR.
A latte with semi-skimmed milk is closer to 100 (probably 125ish) than 200 calories in your example. A low fat greek yoghurt can be as low as 50 calories per 100g, so the 300 calories examples gives you 600 grams of yoghurt, quite a large portion.
The best way to hit a deficit though isn't to eat very little, its to eat satiating and/or high-volume food and add a small amount of exercise. For example potatoes will generally fill you up quicker than rice, pasta or bread for the same calories.
Wonder what you need that latte for if you’re minding calorie intake. Black coffee is pretty easy to get used to and holds close to zero if not zero.
I personally skip breakfast and just eat lunch and dinner.
I'm not very active, and I've found that doing that as well as not eating snacks, sugar, or having calories in drinks makes it pretty easy to roughly be calorically neutral day to day.
The bit preceding this quote is pretty relevant to the discussion, specifically about BMR and generally making the right decisions using a data driven approach.
You try to stay under 2000 calories. Why? Is this number backed with data and helping drive you towards a specific goal?
Consider that the author's BMR might have been higher than you think.
I have one maybe one and a half meals per day which works great for me. I don’t think that works for everyone. I basically don’t eat anything from after dinner to lunch. I’m not explicitly doing IF or anything, it’s just an eating pattern I’ve settled on over the last couple of years and matches what we sort of did in our hunter gatherer phase.
I also have a sour-spicy tooth instead of a sweet tooth which means I’m naturally driven to snacks that are not calorie heavy.
>Can someone explain this to me? I try to stay under 2000 calories. To me it means eating almost nothing.
2000 is "almost nothing"? What are you used to eating? Is it regular natural food or food industry crap loaded with sugar and calories? Here's two examples of eating througout the day:
- 1 cup Greek yogurt + 3/4 cup berries (~230 kcal)
- 10.5 oz salmon + 5 oz baby potatoes + 5 spears asparagus (~750 kcal)
- 1 banana (~105 kcal)
- 7 oz grilled chicken breast + 3/4 cup cooked rice + - 2 cups vegetables (~585 kcal)
- 1 oz mixed nuts + 1 apple (~280 kcal)
OR
- 1 cup Greek yogurt + 3/4 cup berries (~230 kcal)
10.5 oz ribeye steak + 5 oz baby potatoes + 5 spears asparagus (~1,000 kcal)
- 1 apple (~95 kcal)
- 7 oz grilled chicken breast + 3/4 cup cooked rice + 2 cups vegetables (~585 kcal)
- 1 oz mixed nuts (~175 kcal)
Both are around ~2000Kcal. Are these "almost nothing"?
>Let's say I have berries and yogurt. That ~300. Add a morning latte (no sugar). Now we're at 500. I've effectively had a tiny breakfast and already spent 1/4th of my calorie budget.
Make the latte into a black and it's 0 calories. But even with latte, you consume 1/4 of daily calories, in one of the 4 (3 + snack) meal of the day. Sounds about right.