How do I know how many calories I should be on for fat loss?
The most common question I get.
I will answer this question but before I do I want to point out that your specific calorie target is very rarely the problem.
In all likelihood the secret to successful fat loss for you isn’t a specific calorie target.
It’s figuring out WHY you overeat.
It’s working on your relationship with food.
It’s changing the narrative you have around diet and exercise.
It’s learning self compassion - not because it will make you soft but because it will allow you to work harder. Self compassion removes the excuse you have to give up when it doesn’t go to plan.
This work is much harder which is why people avoid it by fixating on exact calorie and macro targets or which food group to avoid.
For most people that isn’t the problem (& if it is, it’s a quick fix)
The problem is less about knowing what to do (that’s the easy part),
The hard part is actually doing it.
That requires figuring out what your barriers are & overcoming them, questioning your behaviours and learning to sit with feelings, urges and emotions rather than reacting to them.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
- Viktor Frankl
Responding not reacting is how you live the life you want rather than tumbling through live responding to your environment.
Now that is out the way you probably still want to know how to set your calories.
Well, calorie calculators are inaccurate.. sometimes WILDLY inaccurate.
You see, calorie calculators are simple; human biology is not.
Estimations from calorie calculators have been shown to be out by 233- 426 kcal/day (this could be your whole deficit).
So then what?
Well the good news is you don’t need to be half as accurate as you think.
All you need is a sensible start point.
& calorie calculators are (usually) a sensible start point then you need to be consistent and adapt as required.
Better than a calculator would be my sensible start point…
I have been helping people successfully lose fat for over 10 years now. I have helped over 10,000 women.
& people REALLY dislike this, probably because it looks lazy but I am focused on getting you results not overcomplicating the process to make it feel unnecessarily personalised (the personalisation comes after)…
This is what works for fat loss:
The vast majority* of women would do really well on 1600-1800 calories.
*I say majority because I base this on the average woman I work with…
Weight: 60-90kg (lower or higher and we may need to tweak the numbers)
Activity: 7,000-12,000 steps on average per day ( if lower then I would focus on increasing steps - for health as well as fat loss, unless there is a specific reason why not e.g. injury. If higher then calories will be adjusted)
Exercise: 2-5 workouts per week (same principles as for activity)
If you fit into the above brackets then aiming for 1600-1800 calories a day if a great start point for fat loss.
You can average this out over the week to allow for flexibility with social events etc but avoid extremes i.e. very low days and very high days. As a general rule don’t go above or below by more than 300 calories.
From here you monitor and adapt as needed.
People waste so much time obsessing over calorie targets when calorie tracking is so inaccurate anyway.
Do something sensible for 30 days consistently before you start deciding it doesn’t work & dropping your calories or giving up.
I elaborate on this in video format here
To conclude:
Everyone thinks they need very specific calorie targets as if that is the reason they are struggling to lose weight.
You don’t. What you need is a sensible start point.