Is it healthy for a bloke to eat only 1800 calories a day? That's basically what I've been on for the last couple of weeks to shift some weight.

I can't say it's easy - this is an example of what I ate yesterday :

Breakfast : 2 toasts (brown bread) spread with 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' and lemon curd + a banana + a shot of whey protein = 450 calories

Lunch : banana + apple + shot of whey protein = 250 calories

Dinner : Two beef grillsteaks, small amount of chips, loads of veg = 700 calories.

Also spread around at other times of they day : 1 more whey + 2 apples + some cheese with to go with the apples + a couple of cups of tea with one sugar + couple of biscuits = around 5/600 calories

So I hit my target without feeling too hungry but during the day there was more than one moment when I could have lost it and bought a bag of skittles or something. I'm not sure how long I can keep this up or if it's even healthy to keep it up.

Any advice would be much appreciated

It does sound on the low side for a man. I am no expert but if you feel healthy enough and have enough energy to do what you normally do in a day without feeling weak and tired then I guess it is okay to do it short term. If you are really struggling and finding you aren't eating enough to satisfy the cravings, the obvious thing to do would be to up the calories a bit.

Are you taking any extra vitamins? Maybe boost the vitamin intake up a bit.

I take loads of vitamins - in fact I'll take anything. At the moment I'm on multivitamins, flax seed oil, garlic, glucosamine and a combined zinc, magnesium and calcium supplement.

I might stick it out for another week and see how it goes

Cheers Sue

How many calories you need depends on build, activity levels etc. I am sure I read that 2500 is the recommended daily intake for men. Just go how by how you feel. From what you describe, it looks like you are eating healthily. Well done though for persevering with it.

By the way in my starved state I started seeing your name as Sue Toblerone!

Hehehe. You really are in a starved state!

I think 1800 cals is ok, but i think you should eat something more substantial than fruit for lunch and that you should have a bit more variety with your food, is fine now because your really motivated, but in a week or two you may 'hit the wall' beacuase you may feel too hungry in the day. why not have chicken or fish with potatoes and vaeg, therefore giving you more choices and more calories during the day? also, dont forget the beuaty of calorie counting is that you can treat yourself to a bar of chocolate or packet of crisps occasionally and make up for it in other ways. There are loads of great wbsites to help you work out haow many calories to eat, try weightloss resources or nutracheck.com.
sorry for the essay! hope it helps, good luck

Imran - let me cut to the chase.

You are eating rubbish, no wonder you are starved. Chips, grill steaks, lemon curd???

You know better than this I'm sure. Take your evening meal - you could have had a large baked potato and a proper steak instead of a 'few chips' and grill steak.

Breakfast - a bowl of cereal with semi skimmed milk (or better yet porridge - I hate it but if you can cope with whey protein you could probly tolerate wall paper paste).

Try fitday.com to keep track of what you eat not only does it track calories, but also carbs, protein and fats - its customiseable too. You can also put in nutritional goals for yourself. The reports are fun too.

I would recommend eating little and often for example:

Breakfast: Porridge or boiled egg/wholemeal toast
Mid morning: piece of fruit
Lunch: Jacket potato and Tuna or Baked Beans
Mid afternoon: LF yogurt
Dinner: Chicken or Fish and plateful of Veg

I agree with Brenda get shot of the Whey Protein.

If you're hungry then drink water and eat more fruit.

I agree to. Cut out the lemon curd and sugar in the tea!
Instead of that you could have a piece of fruit.

As another person said the recommended calorific intake for a man to maintain weight is 2500 calories per day. To lose a pound a week you need to cut 500 calories per day therefore 1800 is a bit low try having 2000 calories a day and you (if science is correct) will lose 1lb a week.

I have been advised to before every meal eat either a piece of fruit or veg as the fibre in these then helps digest any food you eat after. Also they recommend to have three meals a day and 2/3 snacks a day (I was advised as a snack to eat a piece of fruit and a handful of nuts. Good meal ideas are fish/meat with steamed veg and maybe a small portion of carbohydrate.

Hope this helps.

Bit late to join in, but only recently joined this site.

My guess is that if you are a bloke and taking whey protein supplements, you are doing weight training?? If so, you would also need to take into account the amount of calories you are burning through your exercise.

Generally you shouldn't go below 85% of your daily requirement (that is for generally living plus exercise). So, if you need (as an average for a bloke) 2500 for maintenance, and you so say 5 weight sessions a week where you burn 250 calories a time (another 1250 cals over the week), you would need about 2,678 cals a day to maintain your weight.

1,800 cals is only 67% of your daily requirement and would be way too low. You should be eating around 2,276 per day on average. Much less than this and you will go into starvation mode and hang on to all the fat, plus (assuming my guess in the first paragraph is correct) you will also lose muscle mass and that will be counter-productive.

If you are looking to build muscle then you need calories to do that. You might also find that you will lose more weight by eating more (sounds wierd I know, but it really is true). But, you also need to make sure that what you eat is good quality stuff to (eg ditch the grill steak and chips and swap for chicken breast and jacket potato), but with possibly another 400 calories a day to play with, this should ensure that you are never hungry.

An excellent book is Anita Bean's Guide to Strength Training which also explains in quite some detail how to accurately calculate your calorie requirements, or Food for Fitness.

You need to know what your Base Metabolic Rate is to figure out if your cal intake is too low. Everyone's BMR is different depending on age, weight etc so the standard 2000 for women 2500 for men is only a general figure.
For example my BMR is 1644 so if I were to eat the standard 2000 I would be consuming more calories than I actually need.

Put your weight etc in to this calculator:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

I think you would be better swapping some of your food to better quality food as already said, especially if you are exercising.
The general advice is usually don't go more than 200 cals below your BMR to avoid 'famine mode' kicking in. You would be better getting your protein from skinless chicken and fish than beef!

Your basal metabolic rate is only the amount of calories that you need to function (ie bodily organs, breathing etc), and is the amount you would need if you were lying in bed without moving for 24 hours a day.

The 2000 or 2500 average includes an element for physical activity, and most of us have at least some of this, if not as much as it should be! If you permanantly consumed 1644 calories a day you aren't consuming more than you need as it doesn't account for what you do in a day.

I do agree that these are just indications of averages though, and if you want to be more exact you need to work it out for yourself. There are a few different methods, but take into account your sex, age and weight.

You should never eat any less than your BMR as then your body doesn't have enough to function.

I just tried that and according to the calculator my intake should be around 1322. Three coffees in Starbucks and thats it. Surely that can't be right.

BMR is just the bare minimum you need to function, assuming you lie in bed 24 hours a day - you then need to multiply it by a number (can't recall them off the top of my head but will try and post back when I have more time) to allow for your level of physical activity, and that is the number of calories you need per day.

See my post above - you should never eat any less than the BMR. It is not a target for calorie intake (unless you want to make yourself ill!)

Hello, it is Amanda Ursell here, The Times nutritionist. I agree with a lot of what has been written in your responses. It is difficult to give you specific advice without knowing your height, your starting weight, what you used to eat in a normal day and your levels of activity. That said, I hope that the information below helps a little. It is true that men need around 2500 calories a day, but this is an average figure. To lose 2lb of weight a week you need a calorie deficit of about 7000. This can be achieved by reducing your daily calorie intake by 500 a day and increasing your activity levels to burn off 500 calories a day. If you eat regularly and base your meals on slowly digested carbohydrates (like porridge, rye, pitta and granary bread, new and sweet potatoes, pasta and noodles), good quality protein (like lean red meat, eggs, fish, poultry, Quorn and tofu) and have plenty of vegetables and fruit this will help you to feel full and to get lots of variety of nutrients. It is fine for healthy people to consider taking a multivitamin and mineral supplement but do be sure that it contains about 100 per cent of the recommended daily amounts of the vitamins and minerals and that it is not one containing mega doses. I hope that this helps a little.

Yes you can work out your total daily expenditure as below: (pasted from a website!)

Activity Multiplier
Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extr. active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.)

Example:
Your BMR is 1339 calories per day
Your activity level is moderately active (work out 3-4 times per week)
Your activity factor is 1.55
Your TDEE = 1.55 X 1339 = 2075 calories/day

There are 3500 calories in a pound of stored body fat. If you create a 3500-calorie deficit in a week through diet, exercise or a combination of both, you will lose one pound. If you create a 7000 calories deficit in a week you will lose two pounds. The calorie deficit can be created through diet, exercise or preferably, with a combination of both. Because we already factored in the exercise deficit by using an activity multiplier, the deficit we are concerned with here is the dietary deficit.



So to use myself as an example bmr 1644 activity 1.55 = 2548.2

I want to lose 2 lbs a week so am aiming for a calorie deficit of 1000 per day = 1548.2

So my aim is to eat around 14-1500 cals a day.

I know it works as it has really worked for me in the past so I feel this is a good system to use. But I can see why some people might be put off by all the number crunching!

I would be interested to know what Amanda has to say on this though?

Hi Amanda, going off this topic could you give me some nutritional advice too please?

I have now switched to brown rice and pasta for the family (have always had granary/wholemeal bread) - I thought I'd read somewhere that children shouldn't have a high fibre diet.

My children are 7 and 11 and as well as the fibre, they do get lots of cheese, fruit, fish, meat, veg, etc. (and the occasional bit of 'junk') - is this diet OK for them?