Minimum Caloric Intake
How much is too much?
You know your weight. You know your ideal weight. You know your target weight loss. How do you get there? And what do you need to know before you begin?
Everyone wants to drop the most weight the fastest. After all, as soon as you finish dieting, being hungry, and establish better eating habits you get to eat normally, cheat every once in a while, and practice the routine you are already living by. But trying to get there in a hurry may actually be bad for your diet and your body.
Every body needs at least 1200 calories for all of its organs to function properly - you will need more depending on your age and height, but 1200 is the absolute minimum. Going below this does several things, and the details here are important.
When you go under 1200 calories, any meal you eat more than 350 calories the body turns all excess into fat stores, because it believes it is preparing for a famine. The body then proceeds to break down lean muscle and bone, instead of fat, to get its energy. Your metabolism slows down to keep from expending energy from what your body sees as a shortage. Most importantly, and perhaps most devastatingly, as soon as one ups to a normal diet, the body stores as much as it can in fat, maintaining a low metabolism, and potentially (and usually) gaining more weight.
The magic number of 1200 is still very low. Look at the following numbers and consider implementing them into your life.
- 3 meals of 350 calories
- 2 snacks (in between the three meals) of 250 calories
This yields 1550 calories, enough to keep your body running, your vitamins high, and your metabolism active. No lean muscle is deteriorating. This is also more than enough to lose weight. Your body will reduce fat stores, and simply by 20 minutes of exercise a day, through anabolism will turn the calories into muscle cells, not fat storage.