Jericho: How many calories?!?!
A while back a friend of mine found an interesting calculator online. The calculator tells you how many calories you need to intake in one day to maintain your weight. Not lose, just remain steady. When one isn't on a diet, one usually wouldn't count calories. So, it's interesting for me to see approximately what I was eating when not dieting.
The calculator for men is here and for women it's here. These are based on the Body Mass Index or BMI. BMI is a great tool for those looking to stay at a healthy weight or for those having only a few pounds to lose, but it gets a little wacky on the far low and far high ends. The calculators only present an estimate, and considering the numbers I'm about to put in, it's probably a wildly inaccurate estimate.
But, it's fun to watch!
So, I enter 6 feet, 2 inches, 507 pounds, 35 years old and Activity Level: Sedentary (let's face it, I'm a sloth!) and I am told I need to bring in 4906 calories a day to maintain that weight! Yipe!!!
My new-found svelteness of 486 pounds gives me a total of 4742 calories per day!
This estimate is probably way off, but it would explain a few things. I'm trying to stay at or around 2000 calories a day on this diet. If it takes 4700 calories to maintain my weight, that means I'm in default by 2700 calories. With 3500 calories making a pound, this means that every two days I'm losing 5400 calories, or round about a pound and a half. This works in with the numbers I'm seeing on the scale pretty well. This is also assuming I never leave the couch. I do get up and go to work now and then, so I am burning a few more calories.
The really scary thing is that 5000 calories per day isn't that hard to do. Steph and I worked this out a while back and it scared us silly. Now, I'm not picking on McDonald's. I'm using them as an example of a universal constant that we all understand and as something that when I'm not dieting I will READILY eat as many times as I can! The following calorie totals are right from the horse's mouth.
If I were to eat whatever I wanted from Micky D's, my three meals would be the following:
Breakfast:
2 Bacon, Egg & Cheese McGriddles
1 Sausage Biscuit with Egg (Large Size Biscuit)
1 Hash Browns
1 Large Coca Cola Classic
Calories: 1860
Lunch:
1 Big Mac
2 Double Cheese Burgers
1 Large French Fries
1 Large Coca Cola Classic
Calories: 2300
Dinner:
1 Big Mac
2 Double Cheese Burgers
2 McChicken Sandwiches
1 Large French Fries
1 Large Coca Cola Classic
1 Large Chocolate Shake
Calories: 3790
Grand total: 7950 calories.
Is that an excessive amount of food? Sure. But, I could easily have put away that much food in one day a mere three weeks ago. Now that I'm dieting, my stomach has shrunk, but I'm sure I could still do most of that. However, the amount, and the calories, makes me a little sick to look at - or maybe that's just my meds!
It's no wonder that I put on 30 pounds between October and March. It's not that I ate the above everyday - hardly. But, I could have easily done that. On a busy weekend day, replace breakfast at McDonalds with breakfast at Burger King and then change dinner to Arby's - you'll still come out to about the same results.
The good news is that, at least for now, those days are behind me. I can't say I won't fall off the wagon, but we take it one meal at a time. The other fun news is that calculator tells me at 200 pounds, my eventual, over-all goal, I'll need to intake 2500 calories! Woo! That's higher than my current goal intake! If I up my activity to "Light" - I get 2600! I could eat like a bandit!
The calculator for men is here and for women it's here. These are based on the Body Mass Index or BMI. BMI is a great tool for those looking to stay at a healthy weight or for those having only a few pounds to lose, but it gets a little wacky on the far low and far high ends. The calculators only present an estimate, and considering the numbers I'm about to put in, it's probably a wildly inaccurate estimate.
But, it's fun to watch!
So, I enter 6 feet, 2 inches, 507 pounds, 35 years old and Activity Level: Sedentary (let's face it, I'm a sloth!) and I am told I need to bring in 4906 calories a day to maintain that weight! Yipe!!!
My new-found svelteness of 486 pounds gives me a total of 4742 calories per day!
This estimate is probably way off, but it would explain a few things. I'm trying to stay at or around 2000 calories a day on this diet. If it takes 4700 calories to maintain my weight, that means I'm in default by 2700 calories. With 3500 calories making a pound, this means that every two days I'm losing 5400 calories, or round about a pound and a half. This works in with the numbers I'm seeing on the scale pretty well. This is also assuming I never leave the couch. I do get up and go to work now and then, so I am burning a few more calories.
The really scary thing is that 5000 calories per day isn't that hard to do. Steph and I worked this out a while back and it scared us silly. Now, I'm not picking on McDonald's. I'm using them as an example of a universal constant that we all understand and as something that when I'm not dieting I will READILY eat as many times as I can! The following calorie totals are right from the horse's mouth.
If I were to eat whatever I wanted from Micky D's, my three meals would be the following:
Breakfast:
2 Bacon, Egg & Cheese McGriddles
1 Sausage Biscuit with Egg (Large Size Biscuit)
1 Hash Browns
1 Large Coca Cola Classic
Calories: 1860
Lunch:
1 Big Mac
2 Double Cheese Burgers
1 Large French Fries
1 Large Coca Cola Classic
Calories: 2300
Dinner:
1 Big Mac
2 Double Cheese Burgers
2 McChicken Sandwiches
1 Large French Fries
1 Large Coca Cola Classic
1 Large Chocolate Shake
Calories: 3790
Grand total: 7950 calories.
Is that an excessive amount of food? Sure. But, I could easily have put away that much food in one day a mere three weeks ago. Now that I'm dieting, my stomach has shrunk, but I'm sure I could still do most of that. However, the amount, and the calories, makes me a little sick to look at - or maybe that's just my meds!
It's no wonder that I put on 30 pounds between October and March. It's not that I ate the above everyday - hardly. But, I could have easily done that. On a busy weekend day, replace breakfast at McDonalds with breakfast at Burger King and then change dinner to Arby's - you'll still come out to about the same results.
The good news is that, at least for now, those days are behind me. I can't say I won't fall off the wagon, but we take it one meal at a time. The other fun news is that calculator tells me at 200 pounds, my eventual, over-all goal, I'll need to intake 2500 calories! Woo! That's higher than my current goal intake! If I up my activity to "Light" - I get 2600! I could eat like a bandit!
posted by Jericho Brown at 4/05/2007 12:29:00 PM
5 Comments:
Fast food is our undoing, I believe. Already this month alone, we've gone to Jack in the Box (there's one at the corner) four or five times and got KFC as well. I keep telling myself that we'll stop with the fast food all together, but it's just so damn convenient. When we're out of easy food at home, I just run to the corner and get a 99c chicken sandwich and potato wedges. I'm hoping that just by ditching fast food all together, I'll loose some weight. We'll just have to wait and see.
Just ditching the fast food alone I am sure will drop some weight. We were eating fast food up to 5 times per week or more. Being in school two nights a week plus working full time doesn't leave much time for cooking. I've learned to make some healthy stuff on the weekends that we can eat on the nights we get home late because of school. It's been a real help so far.
Finding baked chicken at the local grocery store has helped. You can get the full roasted chicken at most places these days, but easier to eat cut up parts are harder to come by. One store in our area has it and we love it.
The next time you buy one of those birds, you should ask how it was prepared. Most of the time they are brined before cooking, which means they have absorbed salt and possibly sugar.
Don't I know it! I'm so depleted of salt I can taste every bit that's in my food these days.
The roasted chickens at our favorite store are indeed dripping in sodium. The baked chicken is seasoned with salt, but not as much. You can tell from taste, but it might be worth it to ask.
Then again, considering the level of intelligence behind the deli counter, it might not be worth it!
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