How do you eat your allotted calories? Mine 1300 epic fail!!

[DDYes]

I need to CONTROL the amount of calories I eat.  I am failing.  Any suggestions!!!!  Help.  Have only lost 2 pounds in two months.  What suggestions about how to control food intake.  1300 a day is my goal.

[Dominique]

I was about to say someone your age should be able to diet on more than 1300 calories, then I noticed in your profile you were retired from the Army, so all I can say is you look young for a retiree

If you only have a limited number of calories to play with (hopefully, more than 1300, though), you need to make smart decisions as to what to eat (and not eat). You did also mention in your profile you needed help with eating clean. There are various schools of thought as to what constitutes "clean eating", but also a lot of common features everybody more or less agrees on: eat primarily from whole / minimally processed sources (as opposed to food that comes packaged from a factory wih a laundry list of ingredients), eat plenty of veggies (no one has ever died from an overdose of veggies), as well as fruits. 

I personally learned a lot from an e-book titled "Understanding Healthy Eating", mentioned in this topic. FWIW, I also described my eating (largely based on the principles layed out in the e-book) for the past year in this other topic.

You can do it, and your experience from the military (ability to plan and execute) can certainly help! 

[emili]

@DDYes it is mind of matter. I think you wrote the post to get it out into the universe. It is out. Now you have to decide what's most important to you in the moment you are planning a meal, a snack or fighting a craving. Plan your meals with good nutrition in mind. shop the perimeter of the grocery store to avoid premade foods which are high in everything except nutrition. Go back to "boot camp" and exercise. You can do this.. it is a matter of realizing you are finished feeding emotions and are ready to feed your body.

[Fitness_Nut]

G'day @DDYes

1300kcal is hard to work with but if thats your goal then awesome!

What the others said about processed food is also very correct but I would suggest looking at your macronutrients as well, which can be done by logging everything you eat through the Fitbit log or by other means. Additionally, you'd want to reduce the amount of carbohydrates you're eating and eat a diet consisting of high dietary fat, high protein, and low carb. The macronutrient breakdown of the daily diet for fat-loss would look something like this:

Protein: 40% - 50%

Fat: 30% - 40%

Carb: 10% - 30%

This is because carbohydrates blocks the process of fat burning. When eating dietary fat, your hormones will allow the body to burn fat easier and quicker as your insulin isn't always increasing and decreasing. Some examples of dietary fat consist of: Fish, lean meat, avocado, vegetable oils, nuts, seeds, and cottage cheese.

HOWEVER, keep in mind that 1g of fat equates to 9kcal while 1g of either protein of carb equates to only 4kcal. To ensure that you do not enter a caloric surplus, I would strongly advise to count your calories and macronutrients (It may suck at first but you get used to it, trust me ).

I hope all this helps and good luck 

[Dominique]

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@Fitness_Nut wrote:

This is because carbohydrates blocks the process of fat burning. When eating dietary fat, your hormones will allow the body to burn fat easier and quicker as your insulin isn't always increasing and decreasing. 

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I will agree it makes sense to keep protein relatively high, especially during a weight loss phase. I will disagree that the presence of carbohydrates would be blocking oxydation of fatty acids. You can eat very little carbs and plenty of fats, but will lose no stored body fat at all if you are in a caloric surplus. You can also eat plenty of carbs, very little fat and will lose fat of you are in a caloric deficit. In other words, macros do matter, but energy balance (calories) matter even more for fat loss. At the end of the day, once you have set your proteins, how you distribute the rest of your calories between carbs and fats is largely a matter of personal preferences. You may have a preference for fats over carbs, it’s the opposite for me and we can both achieve our goals. 

Studies have shown that once protein and calories are equated, there’s no difference between LCHF and HCLF in terms of weight loss achieved. Adherence to the diet is even more important than calories and macros, so people should pick up a way of eating they can stick to.   

[lavabelle]

I have recently read a book called "Brain over Binge" by Kathryn Hansen that really helped me understand the role of our brains in controlling eating and cravings. I am not bulimic, but the author is, and the story of her struggle to overcome her bulimia by understanding the function her "brain" played in forming her bad habits really helped me understand my own "binges".

I think eating at 1300 calories is very difficult and your brain will in many instances try to override your efforts...but if you understand how it works, you can re-wire or overrule this. 

Wishing you much success!

[JakeLikesCake]

1300 calories is... not much. At 4 calories per gram of protein/ carb and 9per gram of fat, you should be looking for ways to get in somewhere in the neighborhood of:

• 130g of protein (40% of your calories),
• 100g of carbs (30% calories), and
• 40g of fat (40% of calories).

If you want to go that low-calorie, you'll be cooking your own meals quite a lot. No big deal, but some people don't love cooking. For me, it's just part and parcel of the lifestyle. One thing that works great for me is spending an hour or so on meal prep once a week. When I do that? Everything else works out fine. When I don't? Good luck, Jake.

Go check out /r/mealprepsunday on reddit as a resource/ idea spot. I usually make all my lunches for the week on Sunday evening and grab one until they're gone. Need more protein? Put more chicken in. No carbs? Add more veg and skip the rice. High carbs because I'm trying to gain weight or am lifting/exercising more? Put more rice in! Leftovers? I can take a little of that ____ and add ____ and have a good meal... Etc.

Other quick tips:

• Get yourself a food scale and get used to using it. A sub-$20 electronic one from Amazon or Walmart with a tare function is fine. Weigh a handful of whatever snack, then discover that what you thought was a serving size is not, in fact, a serving size. Nuts are good for this exercise. A serving of Doritos is depressingly small.
• Find a protein powder you can tolerate (some don't like whey, some have ethical objections, some have other reasons for not using it) and consider replacing a meal with a protein shake. You won't turn into the hulk from it, and if you are trying to eat clean overall, you can get a LOT of help from a snack of 25-30ish grams of protein plus a little fat and a few carbs once a day. If you have a sweet tooth, this alone can save a whole day. I'm a big fan of Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard, specifically the double rich chocolate flavor.
• Find a way to incorporate resistance training. Doesn't have to be fancy gym-membership stuff or make you feel like you're gonna die. Bodyweight squats and lunges require no equipment and can build important skeletal muscle in short order. A little additional muscle keeps metabolism up, burns calories while you're doing it, builds bone strength. So do it up.

I've prattled on enough, hopefully some of this helps. Good luck!