Firstly ensure you have protein at 1.0-1.25g per pound of bodyweight. The rest of your calories come from carbs and fats, as described below.
As a very basic rule of thumb, we use the figure 15 x bodyweight (in pounds) is a good estimate for the number of calories required to maintain body weight.
If you’ve been dieting a while this could be as low as 10-12x your bodyweight in pounds as your metabolism slows it self to retain energy. Its normal that this happens, and can’t be avoided (beyond going crazy on calories and dropping them severely from the word go – not wise!).
We like to start at the top end of the calorie scale where possible (again unless you’ve been dieting for a while) so we can keep eating as much as possible whilst shedding a pound or two a week. Not only does it keep the metabolism happy, it stops one feeling like they are starving themselves.
We’d suggest starting at 14x your bodyweight and slowly dropping from there, perhaps drop 100-150 calories per day when fat loss stops.
One thing to bear in mind is that if you are very overweight, people you go even lower – about 8-9 x bodyweight – as body fat is protective of the metabolic hormones due to the fact that leptin etc is still very high and won’t be effected as much as someone somewhat leaner.
To give you a basic examples, 140-pound woman can set her calories from 1400 to 1680 calories. A 200lb guy can set his calories between 2400 and 2800 calories.
Don’t start at 1400/2400 calories however – it gives you very little room for adjustment if weight loss plateaus if you want to get somewhere without dropping calories very low very early – we don’t want you eating too little, especially at the start of the diet.
Bare in mind to get stage lean sometimes one needs to go beyond these suggested levels…
