How Many Calories? A Low Calorie Diet

What is a low calorie diet?  Well it restricts your calorie or food intake to no more than 1300 calories a day and not less than 900.  For those people who don’t know 600 calories a day is considered starvation level.  There are lower calorie diets which restrict food or calorie intake to no more than 800 calories a day.  The people who are on this lower calorie intake are usually those that are extremely over weight or obese.

How does this diet work?  Everyone knows that the body burns calories for fuel.  The thought is that the less calories you intake, the more stored fat your body will burn or use for fuel, thus causing or triggering weight loss.  Here is the disclaimer, do not start any diet without first talking to a health official, doctor or physician.

It is highly recommended that you get a book or a calorie counter to use for foods that do not have labels, like fresh fruits, meats and fresh vegetables. Of course you will also need to determine exactly how many calories you need to sustain your energy during the day.  The number of calories you need will be determined by your activity level.  If you are female and inactive, the daily recommended intake is between 1500 and 1800, for men it is slightly higher and then based on your activity level you may need to increase by 600 to 800 calories a day.

Carbohydrates, fats and proteins provide the basic nutrients that our bodies need to function.  Carbohydrates provide us with energy, fats give us that feeling of being full and proteins help us maintain and grow.  Your daily calorie intake should consider all of this and you should allow a certain percentage of each of these in your diet.  The amounts that we should maintain are as follows:  at least 60% of our intake of calories should be from carbohydrates, 25% from fats and 15% from protein.  This provides just basic percentages.