Don't Starve Yourself

Here is some food for thought.. Or food for yourself actually. My husband and I did a diet/exercise regime when we lived in Los Alamos for the summer. My husband would bike the 4 miles roundtrip to work and I would hit the gym at least twice a day and figure out new and healthy/diet recipes. After losing weight successfully for awhile, I hit the plateau and I got bummed. I worked my butt off. I dieted, I exercised, I drank nothing but water, I cut out sugar, carbs..EVERYTHING. But nothing worked. My lowest weight that I hit that summer was 172 lbs.

Anyway, I heard that women usually need to consume about 1200 calories a day if they want to lose weight. Men it was 1800+. I want to say I heard it from the Biggest Loser, which is a great motivational show for those that need a jumpstart. So this was the calorie intake that I was following before/when I hit my plateau. Well, after doing some more research, I've come to find out that it's important to figure out your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate).

I found out that my BMR is 1674.55 calories. What is the BMR? Well, it means the calories that you burn if you were to stay in bed ALL DAY. So in just one day, I burn over 1600+ calories. I was shocked! According to my previous diet, I did not eat enough calories a day! What happens is that if you limit your body on the number of calories, your body will go into starvation mode. And this starvation mode is something that everyone tries to trick their body out of. Once your body hits that, it does not want to lose weight and it retains as much body fat as possible.

As gender counts for many things, BMR is not an exception. Here is the formula:
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

So the moral of the story is that you shouldn't starve yourself. You won't lose the weight in a healthy way.