LEARN TO COUNT CALORIES CHALLENGE – PART 1

This is a macaroon, kinda looks like a nipple in this picture.. I got a bit offtopic. A macaroon is a good illustration of my diet – I overeat carbs. That’s it. Last month I did an “exercise every day” challenge, now it’s time to learn counting calories so that exercising effort is not lonely.

How much calories I need?

I never tried to count calories. I was a super abstract thing. I know that a woman on a diet normally sticks with 1200-1500cal a day but I’ve never imagined what it represented and how it looks like in a food form. When I put my measurements into calories counting app – it informed me I should still to 1300cal a day.

Ok..

So I tried to note down everything I eat normally. And ended up with about 2500cal a day. Hm.. by this logic I should be 100kg.

Ok..

So I went for a proper check up about body composition. And these are my results. Since they’re in Czech there’s English notes below.

Weight – 71,9kg

Muscles – 25,9kg

Fat – 24,7kg or 34,4%

Water – 34,4kg

BMI – 24,3

Resting metabolic kcal need – 1389cal.

Suggestions:

Gain 2 kg of muscles and loose 10kg of fat.

Stick to 1800cal a day with moderate activity and adjust in case of more exercising.

I have a classical pear shaped body with big butt and legs. However I was surprised to find out that my legs (the fattest part) has the lest % of fat.

How to monitor it?

At first I started to track calories with “Lose it” because I liked the UX and UI the most. However, this app is not great with bar codes of czech products (shocker!), so that was a down side. The dietitian who made the body composition check up suggested “MyfitnessPal” which I don’t enjoy as much visually but it does work like a magic with bar codes and database of products.

What I noticed:

1. When I track my “natural” intake, it’s visible that I overdo it with fats. In fact I have so much fat in diet that’s it’s almost in a keto diet direction. 
2. I still have high kcal level just for existing, no need to do extreme dieting to have calorie deficit. Just not to consume crazy amount of junkfood.
3. Cooking own food is more tedious since I have to manually put all the ingredients to know how much kcals it is in the end, scanning a ready-to-eat food from the box is so much simpler.

Summary

1. I have a surprising amount of fat and I need to lose about 10kg of it.
   Normally fat % over 30 is getting into obesity direction, which my body doesn’t look like have one.
2. I got to stick to 1800kcal a day trying to keep carbs-fat-protein proportion around 50-30-20.
   Of course adjusting it to exercising activity.
3. I don’t need to change diet dramatically.
   Since I eat a lot of healthy foods, I can just stick to them but only reduce the junk-food part that causes extra kcals.
4. Make bigger time gaps between eating.
   Often snacking causes insulin to stay at high level which doesn’t get my body to use fat as an energy source – and that’s what I need to target.