General Weight Loss Part 1: Diet, BMR and Cycle Dieting

So if you read my history blog posts you will know that I went through a starvation period where I had Ketosisacidosis and I was nearly passing out several times.  It was then that I changed to the current diet form that allowed me to power past my original goal weight and go lower then I had ever thought I would be able to go.  We will start with basic information and move on to more complex diet things on another post. 

To start it is probably best to find a website or a application to assist in tracking calories.  I personally like My Fitness Pal, but there are several other applications you can choose from.  You can choose between a nice digital scale and or a set of measuring cups and spoons.  I recommend a digital food scale as it is more accurate.

To start lets talk about starting out on a diet and how to figure out how many calories you can consume in order to lose weight.  To start you have to figure out your Base Metabolic Rate (BMR).  Now to do that involves really complicated formula's, but can be boiled down in a much easier way by just multiplying your current weight by eleven.  If you are in a very active job or life style you could raise that number to twelve or more, but if you are just starting out ten is a good start.  Age can also effect

So lets say you were me and your starting weight is 240 lbs and you multiply that by eleven then your body burns approx. 2,640 calories just to live or what I call Maintenance Calories. 

Now if you want to lose weight in a healthy manor then you need to subtract 500 calories from that total.  That will usually give you the one pound a week that is generally considered the healthy weight to lose.  If you are first starting out and very over weight like I was you will lose a lot of weight quickly at first. 

Now that you know that if you want to lose weight and my original 240 lbs that I needed to eat approx. 2,140 calories to lose weight.  Now if you just simply eat that from day 1 to day 100 you might be ok, but you could end up like I did.

Now that we know how many calories you can eat now lets talk about how cyclical dieting can benefit you.  Doing this cyclical dieting can make life much easier as you know you have a little bonus waiting for you.  This is what I followed and it made life much more tolerable.

Monday - Friday: Diet calories of 2,140.
Saturday & Sunday : Maintenance Calories 2,640.

That rotation would be repeated for four weeks.  After four weeks of this you get the bonus of having an entire week of Maintenance Calories otherwise called a Re-feed week.  Which looks like this on a calendar.



Now I always felt like the week 3-26 through 4-2 was like a celebration week.  This was my reward for being good for a whole month. 

I hope this post will help someone out there.