The Myth of the 2000 Calorie Diet (well, at least for most women)

This is my first foray into blogging so I welcome any questions or suggestions about these articles or fitness and nutrition in general. That being said, I am a certified personal trainer and lifetime athlete but not a certified nutritionist. Any nutritional information comes from life experience as a personal trainer and athlete. (Plus I'm in law school so I felt like I should put some sort of full disclosure clause in here)

First Post!

I love working out, but I hate dieting! Unfortunately food is such a huge part of loosing weight and getting fit so my first post is going to address general nutrition tips and tricks that I have found helpful in setting up a diet plan.

One of my personal pet peeves is the 2000 calorie diet. Every label I read and the general guideline we all somehow learned, bases a daily diet on 2000 calories but for an average woman, 2000 calories equates to 181 lbs. Of course everyone is different and you may have a faster or slower metabolism that “average”. (Tip: working out ups your metabolism!)

An easy way to estimate how many calories you should end up eating by the end of the day is to multiply your weight times 11 (for women) and 12 (for men). This will give you the amount of calories/day that will maintain your weight.

For example: For a 140lb woman, eating 1540 calories will maintain that weight.

Don't get scared yet, this does not take into account exercise!

If you are looking to lose weight, base your calories off of your goal weight and if you can, shave off another 100-200 calories if you can manage without becoming exhausted. Even if you can't go lower than your goal calorie amount don't worry, you'll still be loosing weight.

For example: If a woman’s goal is 130lbs, 1430 calories will maintain this once she gets there. In order to lose weight more quickly, try to cut those 100-200 calories from the 1430 until your reach your goal. So for our example, she would aim for 1230-1330 calories/day. Be careful not to cut too much!

Your total calorie amount is for the entire day, if you workout you need to take that into account.

For Example: If a person is aiming for 1300 calories/day, lets say she goes to bootcamp and burns 400 calories, she can now eat 1700 calories to replace those workout calories that were burned.

You will really need to replace those calories! If you're working out, you'll need energy to get through the workouts. If you are tired and lethargic the workouts will be so much harder and you won't burn as much as you would if you had more energy! If you cut too many calories it can actually slow down your metabolism as well because your body goes into starvation mode, so make sure to eat something in the morning to get it going and don't cut down too far!

Here are a couple of great Apps I have found to keep track of your calories:

This is my Favorite – Livestrong Calorie Tracker: Tracks your weight loss and has a huge inventory of exercises and foods, including brand name foods from the supermarket and restaurants so you can keep track of everything. You can set an alarm to alert you if you haven't tracked for the day. It also breaks down your food into percentages of protein, carbs, and fat.

Lose it: Also has a huge inventory of exercises and foods, including brand name foods from the supermarket and restaurants so you can keep track of everything.

Thanks so much for reading my first blog!

-Kelsey