When you want to lose weight, it only makes sense to do your research to see what is most popular diets they are right now. But while there are plenty of fad eating plans out there, there’s an old standby that has suddenly become popular again: the calorie deficit diet.
The diet is simple at first: It doesn’t tell you what foods you can and can’t eat. Instead, it only focuses on calories, which are the amount of energy released when your body breaks down food. The more calories a food contains, the more energy you can give your body, explains Jessica Cording, RD, author of The little book of game changers.
Your body needs a certain amount of calories to function normally, but when you take in more calories than you need, the excess is stored in your body as fat, says Cording.
That’s where the calorie deficit diet comes in. But how does the calorie deficit diet work, and how can you tell if it’s right for you? Nutritionists break it all down.
So what is a calorie-deficient diet?
The concept behind the calorie deficit diet is quite simple: try to eat fewer calories than you burn. “A calorie deficit is when we consume fewer calories than our body burns in a day, both in terms of our natural resting energy expenditure (your natural metabolic rate) and any exercise or physical activity we engage in on top of that” , He says Dana Ellis Hunnes, PhD, MPH, RD, adjunct assistant professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and author of the forthcoming Recipe for survival: what you can do to live a healthier and more environmentally friendly life.
Can a calorie-deficient diet help you lose weight?
If you time things right, a calorie deficit diet should help you lose weight. “Calories are one of the main factors in weight gain or loss,” says Cording. “If someone consumes fewer calories than they burn, that can result in weight loss.”
Therefore, if you normally eat 2,200 calories a day, on a calorie deficit diet, you should lose weight if you strive to reduce it to 2,000 or more calories a day.
There is a reason this happens. “When we eat fewer calories than we burn, our body has to get energy from somewhere to continue its natural function,” explains Hunnes. “This additional energy to maintain bodily functions comes from the energy stored within our own bodies.” Typically, your body will burn fat first, followed by glycogen, which is what carbohydrates are converted to in your body after you eat them, says Hunnes. And, when that fat is burned, you end up losing weight.
How to do a low-calorie diet
There are a few ways to do this. “The gold standard would be to find out how many calories you burn in a day,” says Hunnes. That may include running a test known as indirect calorimetry, which measures how much carbon dioxide you exhale, combined with some complicated calculations to determine how much energy you burn at rest (that is, when you’re just sitting there, doing nothing). There’s also something called a Bod Pod that can measure how much energy you burn at rest, but both methods aren’t easily accessible to everyone.
So you can use online equations like the ones from the National Institutes of Health Body Weight Planner to try to find out what your daily caloric intake should be to help you reach a certain weight goal. To use it, you enter basic information like your height, current weight, age, and activity level, and then enter your goal weight and how long you’d like to take to reach it. From there, the planner will give you an estimate of how many calories you should eat to reach your goal weight in the time you specified, and how to maintain it.
But this isn’t an exact science, and it doesn’t take into account things like how much muscle mass you have (reduced muscle tissue). burn more calories than fat) and your individual metabolism, says Cording. “There are so many factors that go into energy expenditure,” he says. Still, it can give you a rough estimate to work with.
If you want to go easy on yourself and know you want to lose about a pound a week, you can try cutting 500 calories from your existing dietary intake, says Keri Gans, RD, author of The small change diet. “Safe weight loss is considered to be at a rate of one pound per week lost,” she says. “One pound is equivalent to a deficit of about 500 calories per day for a week.”
But being able to cut that many calories and feel comfortable with it depends on what you were eating before, says Cording. If you had a lot of high-calorie, sweet, processed foods in your diet, swapping them out for lots of fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats may not seem like a big deal in terms of your hunger levels, she says. . However, if you were already eating fairly healthy to begin with, you may feel more comfortable cutting out 125 to 250 calories per day, knowing that it will probably take you a little longer to lose weight. “I’ve seen people do really well with it,” adds Cording.
How much of a calorie deficit is too much?
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends that adult women eat between 1,600 and 2,400 calories daily, while men should aim for between 2,000 and 3,200 calories daily. (The lower end is if you do little or no activity every day.) Going below the minimum amount isn’t considered healthy, so you’ll want to keep in mind that you’re not in too much of a calorie deficit.
You could also be in an excessive calorie deficit if the pounds you’re losing “come on too quickly, like five pounds a week or more,” says Gans. Symptoms like fatigue, nausea, dizziness and constipation can also be signs that you’ve become too enthusiastic about your weight loss pace, she says.
In general, says Hunnes, “I strongly recommend not cutting more than 15 to 20 percent of calories.”
What is the healthiest way to go on a calorie-deficient diet?
In addition to not cutting too many calories from your daily diet, experts say there are other tips that can help you eat a calorie-deficit diet the healthy way:
- Focus on what you are adding to your diet. “If you’re adding more fruits and vegetables to your diet, you might naturally end up eating fewer foods with a lot of added sugar and fat,” says Gans. “Therefore, you will lose weight.”
- Strive for nutrient-dense foods. These include fruits, vegetables, 100% whole grains, low-fat dairy, seafood, poultry, lean meats and healthy fats, says Gans.
- Minimize processed foods. “I recommend incorporating the most natural forms of food into your diet as possible: single ingredient, as close to nature as you can find,” says Hunnes. “The fewer things that come out of a package, the better.”
- Watch the size of your portions. While you can calculate the exact calories at each meal, that can get stressful and time consuming. “Keeping portion sizes in check is probably one of the best tools to help,” says Gans.
- Pay attention to your macronutrients. Macronutrients, also known as “macros,” are the main food components you need to be healthy, Cording explains. “Make sure you’re getting enough protein, healthy fats, and feel-good calories,” she says.
- Eat in “Eating at home gives you more control over what’s in your food,” says Hunnes.
If you’re interested in following a calorie-deficit diet and aren’t sure where to start, check with your primary health care provider or a registered dietitian; they should be able to help you offer personalized guidance.
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