How many calories should I actually be eating?
This is probably one of the most common questions we get asked when women are looking to start their journey with us. It’s a very personal thing and can depend on your goals, your overall health and dieting history.
The focus when setting up your calorie target should first take into account covering the minimum number of calories for your body to continue to operate optimally. What this means is it needs to provide you with enough calories and therefore enough of the differing macronutrients (fats, proteins and carbohydrates) in order to support your health from all aspects. There is also the micronutrient content (vitamins and mineral requirements) we need to take into account so that you are not running the risk of any nutritional deficiencies that could also affect your health.
Even if your goal is fat loss, we need to make sure the minimum requirements are met before moving forward. This is why we teach the importance of a balanced diet and correct nutritional practices. While calories are the governing part of weight gain or loss, it is also where those calories are coming from that dictate our health.
Alongside providing the education on the healthiest eating practices for most people, we recommend starting at what is called maintenance calories. This is the number of calories currently required to maintain your current body weight. Why do we do this? Well before we start adjusting this level to take into account your goals, we want to assess your current metabolic rate. By putting you on your predicted maintenance level we can then see within 2-3 weeks how your body is responding. Since many women have gone through many yo-yo diets over the course of their lifetime it is likely that they may have a slower metabolic rate than what is predicted due to what is called metabolic adaptation. If this isn’t the case we can then go about creating your calorie deficit. If your metabolism is below predicted it is probably worth spending sometime at maintenance in order to improve metabolic rate before adjusting, as you may need to drop to an extremely low calorie level in order to lose more weight at this point and this wouldn’t be conducive to your health. Remember we need to focus on health first and foremost.
Love these tips? Want to know more? Well you are in luck, we have just launched our ‘Nutrition for Women’ course!
In this short course we will take you step by step, through the menstrual cycle and how best to support it with nutrition. In this course, you will also receive your unique calorie & macro breakdown specific to you and your goals!