No More Diets

How can you count the calories you are burning?

Good luck if you are trying to lose weight by counting calories! Most people get this completely wrong by underestimating what they are eating and overestimating how much they are burning. If you can be reasonably accurate then it’s a great way to lose weight - aim for a 500 calorie a day deficit to lose a steady 1lb a week without too much deprivation or trouble.

Here is a calculation tool for finding out how many calories you are burning with a whole list of different activities. You enter your weight in pounds and the duration of your activity in minutes and then get an estimate of the number of calories you used for the list of activities.

Calorie calculator

Remember that these calories are not EXTRA calories you are burning on top of the calories you would use just by sitting around - they are instead of - so you need to subtract the calories you would use just by existing to get an a picture of how much you have helped your weight loss goals.

Remember too that we all burn up calories at a slightly different rate depending on metabolism and body composition so this is an estimate at best.

I believe you can get monitors which measure more accurately how many calories you are burning but I have no personal experience with these as I don’t usually advise the calorie counting method for weight loss. Could anyone else recommend one?

I have read so many diets which all propose different calorie amounts. How many calories should I be eating to lose weight?

The simplest calculation for the number of calories you need to maintain your weight is to take your weight in pounds and multiply by 12. (Remember, there are 2.2lbs in a kilogram if you weight yourself in kilos.)

If you weigh 10 stone (or 140 pounds) that’s 1680 calories daily just to stay the same.

To safely lose weight, subtract no more than about 250 calories from that and then make sure you get active to the tune of 250 calories a day. That doesn’t have to be formal exercise - it can be doing gardening, housework, cycling or walking - anything active.

This will give you a 500 calorie a day deficit, and should result in you losing about a pound a week.

Actually I’m not that fond of calorie counting because it’s too easy to underestimate the amount you are eating or to forget to add something in and too easy to overestimate the number of calories you are burning. And even if you manage to lose weight by being meticulous in your calculations, who wants to keep calorie counting forever? When you stop counting the weight piles back on.

To my mind it’s better to forget about counting calories and to train yourself to eat sensible portions of delicious healthy food and to change how you interact with food so that you have good habits and a slim body for the rest of your life - and so that’s what I teach in my 8 week weight loss coaching program.

What is the best way to eat the “right” number of calories without having to go so obsessive?

Actually even if you are obsessive it’s difficult to get calorie counting right without being wired up to scientific measuring equipment.

Sure, there are calculations you can do where you input your age, your sex, your height, your weight and your level of activity but it will all still depend on your own metabolism (rate of burning calories).

And of course the amount you need changes (gets less) as you lose weight - and also changes day to day with the activities you do.

So it’s best that none of us get obsessive about calories - though it sometimes helps to have an idea of the rough amount you use each day if only to help put you off eating mega amounts of fast food or a big plate of cakes.

If you follow a few simple guidelines you can usually forget about calories altogether and still lose weight

a) eat your calories rather than drinking them - it’s quite easy to drink a whole day’s worth of calories in an evening out or throughout the day and not feel like you’ve had anything to eat (you haven’t)

b) eat only when you are physically hungry - not just because food is there or because you feel like nibbling something

c) stop eating before you are full - once you are full you have eaten too much. As a guideline serve lean protein about the size of the palm of your hand, a handful of carbohydrate (pasta, rice or potatoes) and fill up on veggies or salad

d) choose healthy food (low fat, whole grain, fruit) over unhealthy (fried, white bread/pasta/rice, dessert)

e) eat unhealthy food (chocolate, snacks) in very small doses - and no more than once a day

f) move your body whenever you can - if it needs doing, do it, if an errand needs to be run, run it, if a dog needs to be walked, you walk it…I’m sure you get the idea

I don’t generally advise low-calorie substitutes for foods - to my mind you are better eating smaller quantities of real foods and enjoying them than eating chemicals or even poor substitutes in terms of taste. But if you’re happy with that it’s one other way to reduce calories without counting.

I don’t eat vegetables. How can I diet without eating them?

This question is a bit similar to the one from the lady who couldn’t eat salad (”Salad upsets my stomach“) but also subtly different so I wanted to answer it too.

There are so many people who just don’t eat vegetables - and at least two of my friends run a mile from anything green.

First of all, do you have to eat vegetables to be slim?

No - neither of my friends are carrying too many pounds

Do you have to eat vegetables to lose weight?

Here I would have to say that they definitely help - they add a huge amount of bulk to your diet without adding many calories at all.

I usually recommend that you try and fill half your plate with vegetables or salad and then have a quarter lean protein and a quarter whole grain carbohydrates. Without the vegetables you can’t add much more carbohydrate or protein (which are relatively calorie dense) to fill you up.

So if you try and lose weight without them you will probably get hungrier than your friends who eat more veggies. You may also have to go into calorie counting mode because you won’t just be able to rely on the fullness signals you get.

I just wonder why you are so against vegetables.

Maybe you were forced to eat them as a child and swore never to eat them again once you had a choice. But there are so many different varieties and so many ways of cooking them that I wonder if you could not learn to love them for the sake of your health as well as your weight.

If you want to give vegetables another try, some ideas which work for my friends “because they don’t taste like vegetables” are

• roasting vegetables in a little olive oil in the oven to create a sweet taste and crunchy texture - great for carrots, peppers, parsnips and sweet potatoes
• making them into soup - even disguising them completely by pureeing the soup in a blender
• adding them to a curry, casserole or stew - where the taste of the sauce disguises that of the veggies
• adding grated vegetables to bulk out minced (ground) meat in a bolognaise or chilli dish
• mixing in vegetables in a macaroni cheese (e.g frozen peas and sweetcorn)
• stir frying them and adding a strong stir fry sauce which disguises the vegetables
• combining mashed potato with mashed root vegetables

Each of these ideas will add bulk to your diet without the calories and without that heavy boiled sprouts and cabbage taste you might have grown up to dislike.