I started my diet today and I decided to cut on my food, while maintaining my jogging exercise (three times per week for 1 hour). But before I start this, I want to make sure I got all the numbers right… So I did a little research on calories different food/drinks contain, and what my daily need is…

My goal is to loose 2 pounds (1 kg) per week, meaning that I have to cut 7000 calories in a week’s time. As you probably know one pound (0,5 kg) of body weight is equivalent to 3500 calories. So in order to reach my goal, I have to create a calorie-deficit of 7000 calories, or I can cut on some calories, and increase the calorie expenditure, by increasing my exercise.

Average male (30 years old, 180 pounds) needs 2300 to 2800 calories per day (depending on activity, or the lack of it). Average female needs 2100 to 2700 calories. And this is just to maintain your current weight.

So If I want to lose two pounds per week, I need to cut my daily calorie intake from 2200 to 1200 calories. Over a week this will add up to goal of 7000 calories. I can do the same by increasing my exercise by 300 calories/day, and only cutting on food calorie intake of 700 calories… Further, a combination of calorie-diet and increase of exercise makes weight loss easier to sustain.

So, for my first day (Saturday, unfortunately) I only ate the following:

• muesli for breakfast with yogurt (150 cal)
• mixed salad with dressing (250 cal)
• black bread (100 cal)
• big popcorn (400 cal – movie night with friends, could not helped myself)

at a total of 900 calories, which looked promising… (you can find calorie count of most any food by looking at the sticker, or by googling it – you can find nice places like this, that have collected all calorie data)

but afterwards i started counting calories from drinks, and I was shocked to learn that alcohol (well, it was Saturday night!) brings in A LOT of calories!!

• two coffees with milk (200 cal)
• juice (100 cal)
• beer big can (0,5 liters - 250 cal)
• water with taste (0,5 liters -100 cal)
• 4x 1dcl of red wine (4x 100 cal = 400 cal)
• coke (100 cal)

in total of 1150 calories! which jumped my daily total to unimpressive 2050 calories, meaning I did not do much at all! And to top that – alcohol is really even worse when dieting, as it contains sugar and often makes you hungry. But more on that next time…