Metabolism

Brown_Eyed_Girl

Can someone tell me, when it comes to keeping your metabolism at the optimium rate for losing weight, is it better to try to eat regularly OR keep the calorie intake at the correct level. I suppose what I am trying to ask is ............... if you cut the calories to maybe a 'tad' too low would it matter if you were eating 6 times a day ????

Dragan

Generally speaking the best thing to do is eat sub maintainence calories and eat 5 to 6 meals a day.

You don't want to drop the calories too low, i find 250 below maintainence is about fine, but you need to remember that drops as your weight drops!

Also, i might vary my 250 recomendation depending on the starting weight of the trainee.

rubadub

I don't full understand the question, why the OR? can you not do both at once. Is your "correct" level of calories your reduced one?

I ate 500kcal less than my normal intake and ate 6 meals a day. 3500kcal is approx 1lb of fat gain or loss. So over 7 days I was loosing 1lb of fat, (500x7).

Best to combine both, exercise to use calories and eat less to intake less calories, so you can eat 250kcal less and exercise for 30mins per day to loose and additional 250kcal. SO that would be 1lb per week too.

Brown_Eyed_Girl

Ok my question is this ........... doing all the calculations I should be taking in about 1500 cals a day, but if I reduce this to 1200 cals a day over 6 small snacks will my body go into 'starvation' mode and hold on to fat or will the fact that I am eating regularly throughout the day overcome this ???

rubadub

How did you calculate that you need 1500kcal per day? It seems quite low, usually you hear that women need on average 2000kcal per day, and that is just with moderate activity. Do you know your current calorie intake?

What is your age, weight, height?

The online calulators are only estimates, you can have a naturally high or low metabolism. You can work out your own basal metabolism rate, calulate your calorie intake per week and if you weight is the same then that is pretty much your maintenance/basal rate. But like Dragan says it will drop when weight drops. This is since if you are carrying an extra 100lb then it is like, well carrying and extra 100lb around! so it is like you are carrying a barbell of weight around everywhere so use more calories.

Eating the 6 meals should increase your metabolism meaning your daily needs will be more, so if you normally eat 1500kcal in 3 meals per day, then if you change to 6 meals you could eat more, i.e. change to about 1700kcal per day with 6 meals.

Exercising will increase your metabolism too, lifting weights will put on muscle which also increased metabolism. When on a calorie deficit you risk loosing muscle so exercising will help prevent muscle loss.