Before we can begin to assess our diet and find ways of losing weight, gaining weight, or maintaining a healthy weight we must first recognise how many calories per day we need to fuel our bodies.
The guidelines below are designed to help you maintain your weight. For a weight loss of 1lb per week you would need to cut back by 500 calories a day. If you want to lose weight it is very important to monitor the fat content of your meals.
| WOMEN | AVERAGE 2300 (weighing around 10 stone) |
| MEN | AVERAGE 3000 (weighing around 11.5 stone) |
The lighter you are the fewer calories you need.
Also take into consideration your level of activity. If you do a lot of exercise, our have a job that is very active, like a waitress or a builder you will need more energy. If you work in an office you require less. We need more calories when we are younger and less as we get older.
Here are some samples of how you might use up your daily calories:
| SAMPLE ONE | SAMPLE TWO | ||
| Bowl fruit and fibre, skimmed milk | 200 | Bacon on Toast | 400 |
| Packet Crisps | 130 | Packet Crisps | 130 |
| Cup Soup | 70 | Bar Chocolate | 200 |
| Cheese and Coleslaw Sandwich | 300 | 8 pints lager | 1600 |
| Apple | 60 | Kebab and chips | 1000 |
| Portion Roast Chicken | 160 | DAY’S TOTAL | 3330 |
| Mashed Potato | 180 | ||
| Peas | 80 | ||
| Boiled Carrots | 15 | ||
| Gooseberry Fool | 200 | ||
| Fruit Salad | 120 | ||
| 2 large glasses white wine | 300 | ||
| Packet of salted nuts | 250 | ||
| DAY’S TOTAL | 2065 | ||
You can see from these two examples how we can get our daily calorie requirement in differing ways! We all have bad days where we eat greasy food and drink too much, but try and make this less often and to eat a healthy balanced diet, such as sample one, at least most days. If you are careful most of the time you can get away with having a a bit of a treat, perhaps on the weekend!
If you are dieting it may help you to make a chart like this everyday, and look for ways to cut back on calories, for example here you could save 580 simply buy not having nuts in the evening and skipping the fool and bag of crisps. You still would be left with enough food to satisfy your hunger. To help you, you could buy a little Calorie Counter book to check values of foods you’re unsure of.