Topic: How many calories is safe?

[Bret [Soundcrafter]]

Just wondering how many calories below what you burn is safe...I've been trying to lose weight (fat) and so I've been tracking for a little bit on FitDay as well as doing 15-hour fasts the past couple of days. Now I'm curious, I'm trying to stay withing the 30/40/30 ratio (carbs/protein/fat) and I think I've succeeded yesterday, but my calorie count was almost 800 below what I burned that day (according to FitDay). Is that too much? Should I be concerned about muscle loss at this much of a difference? For that matter, what difference should I aim for in order to achieve safe, stable weight loss?

Here's yesterday's FitDay link: http://www.fitday.com/fitness/PublicJournals.html?Owner=BretMattingly&Year=2008&Month=11&Day=29

A couple of notes to that: Add about 300 cals. I ate shit at work. Ugh.

And today's, which I'm slowly updating: http://www.fitday.com/fitness/PublicJournals.html?Owner=BretMattingly&Year=2008&Month=11&Day=30

[Chris Salvato]

3200 calories is 1 pound of fat

A 3200 Calorie deficit over 1 week will, typically, result in 1 lb of fat loss.  In my experience, you can "safely" lose 2# a week.  I have seen people lost as many as 5 when they are very obese.

800 caloric deficit in one day is not bad at all.  That is only 5600 calorie deficit by the end of the week.  If you are worried about this, you can always "zig-zag" your calories.

[Bret [Soundcrafter]]

3200 calories is 1 pound of fat

A 3200 Calorie deficit over 1 week will, typically, result in 1 lb of fat loss.  In my experience, you can "safely" lose 2# a week.  I have seen people lost as many as 5 when they are very obese.

800 caloric deficit in one day is not bad at all.  That is only 5600 calorie deficit by the end of the week.  If you are worried about this, you can always "zig-zag" your calories.

Hadn't heard that before. Is that exact, as in, "1 pound of fat contains about 3200 calories of food energy", or an estimate, "If you have a deficit of 3200 calories you will likely lose 1 pound of fat, due to metabolism, etc, etc."

Thanks for the advice. I shouldn't be concerned with muscle loss, then?

[tombb]

3200 calories is 1 pound of fat

A 3200 Calorie deficit over 1 week will, typically, result in 1 lb of fat loss.  In my experience, you can "safely" lose 2# a week.  I have seen people lost as many as 5 when they are very obese.

800 caloric deficit in one day is not bad at all.  That is only 5600 calorie deficit by the end of the week.  If you are worried about this, you can always "zig-zag" your calories.

Hadn't heard that before. Is that exact, as in, "1 pound of fat contains about 3200 calories of food energy", or an estimate, "If you have a deficit of 3200 calories you will likely lose 1 pound of fat, due to metabolism, etc, etc."

Thanks for the advice. I shouldn't be concerned with muscle loss, then?

The 3200 calories is a lower number than you would have for 1 pound of pure fat, which is 4000 calories (1g of fat is 9 calories, convert from metric to get the 4k number).

This lower number is a consequence of the fact that you store fat in cells and not in solidified pure fat, so you have extra water and non-burnable material in each pound of fat cells.

Metabolism is not counted in this, and you can't exactly make sure your body will use just fat and not also lean tissues, carbs etc, but generally if you do it gradually enough as Chris suggested and keep exercising your metabolism should stay elevated and you should be able to burn fat to a good degree, so it's a decent rule of thumb/estimate.

Muscle loss is always something to keep in mind if you eat less than you burn, but since you eat protein and exercise too you can handle some deficit without really losing muscle itself, although you will still get somewhat reduced muscle gains during this period. Regardless, if you plan things well you won't need be in calorie restriction mode for too long.

[Chris Salvato]

To add to what tommb said, during a caloric deficit your hormones are going to play a key role in minimizing muscle loss.  You really need to keep GH and androgenic hormones as maximal as possible.

This means:

1) For diet you need to take in a lot of vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts along with ample protein.
2) For exercise you need to keep it at high intensity - whether that is heavy weights, speedy intervals between 5-10 minutes for the whole bout, or both.
3) You need plenty of sleep and hydration.
4) You may want to consider fasting as this has been shown to increase pulsing GH levels in sleep...though I don't know if that fits in with your age group.

[Soundcrafter]

To add to what tommb said, during a caloric deficit your hormones are going to play a key role in minimizing muscle loss.  You really need to keep GH and androgenic hormones as maximal as possible.

This means:

1) For diet you need to take in a lot of vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts along with ample protein.
2) For exercise you need to keep it at high intensity - whether that is heavy weights, speedy intervals between 5-10 minutes for the whole bout, or both.
3) You need plenty of sleep and hydration.
4) You may want to consider fasting as this has been shown to increase pulsing GH levels in sleep...though I don't know if that fits in with your age group.

Alright, forgive me, but...GH?

Also, not that it's a problem, but why veggies so much? And I'm 17, what kind of age group we talking here?

[Chris Salvato]

GH = Growth Hormone

Veggies like broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts promote higher testosterone concentrations which help with muscle gain and retention.

You are still growing at 17 -- I can't say that I know fasting is beneficial at those ages. Though I deduce that is is just as beneficial, I can't be 100% sure as I am not well versed enough in fasting and development/growth.

[tombb]

To add to what tommb said, during a caloric deficit your hormones are going to play a key role in minimizing muscle loss.  You really need to keep GH and androgenic hormones as maximal as possible.

This means:

1) For diet you need to take in a lot of vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts along with ample protein.
2) For exercise you need to keep it at high intensity - whether that is heavy weights, speedy intervals between 5-10 minutes for the whole bout, or both.
3) You need plenty of sleep and hydration.
4) You may want to consider fasting as this has been shown to increase pulsing GH levels in sleep...though I don't know if that fits in with your age group.

Alright, forgive me, but...GH?

Also, not that it's a problem, but why veggies so much? And I'm 17, what kind of age group we talking here?

GH = Growth Hormone, just one of the various hormones your body produces in varying amounts depending on activity and nutrition. As with everything, excess or deficit are both very bad while well-regulated secretion is very good. 

Excess can lead to in some way unexpected results like diabetes and muscle weakness even if in proper amount you have stronger muscles and better metabolism. But you don't really have to worry about excess since it's not as easy to cause as excess in other good anabolic hormones like insulin.

Basically sleeping well, exercising with sufficient intensity and volume, and eating well all help you have well-regulated pulses of release, which is what you want anyways.

Normally even eating alone helps you secrete GH, but if you don't eat all that well and eat in excess, your body starts to sort of not bother as much anymore, so an occasional fast can help you reset a bit that pattern and make your body a bit more responsive to secreting GH and Insulin in response to food.
That's as you would expect, if you have food that's a good time to grow(GH) and build muscles(insulin etc).

[Alec Furtado]

Veggies like broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts promote higher testosterone concentrations which help with muscle gain and retention.

No spinach? But Popeye says...



Gah I love this forum... so much great information and posts.

[Chris Salvato]

Maybe spinach helps with test, I don't really know...

I did find this useful little post though -- granted I am not sure how accurate it is but it seems pretty good
http://www.whiteknight.ca/FORUMS/index.php?s=d60fb565f765230acbfd84eb63158ae8&showtopic=4573&pid=49715&st=0&#entry49715

[tombb]

Edit:correcting my post here, I was saying most of the testosterone boost effects are from normal nutrients like vitamins, proteins etc, which is true, but there is some indirect effect specifically from broccoli/cabbage-specific molecules.
They affect estrogen and not testosterone directly, but since the two are related (your body can convert testosterone into estrogen if needed), it can at least potentially help in protecting some of the testosterone you produce from being removed through these pathways especially if things are off balance..
I would still say these are smaller effects comparing to the role of general exercise and nutrition, however, but everything helps.

[Jake Vigil]

Woah. This just struck me quite hard, for some reason.

Mommy always told me to eat my vegetables. Those veggies are beneficial to testosterone production... VEGGIES MAKE ME A MAN!

.
Disregard all of my post.

[Bret [Soundcrafter]]

Woah. This just struck me quite hard, for some reason.

Mommy always told me to eat my vegetables. Those veggies are beneficial to testosterone production... VEGGIES MAKE ME A MAN!

.
Disregard all of my post.

Rof.

Tombb: So what you're saying is good eating and balanced vitamin intake will benefit, but I shouldn't freak the hell out if I don't eat broccoli/Brussels sprouts?

[Chris Salvato]

I would freak out if you don't get enough vegetables, yes

Whole foods will always be the best source of vitamins.  Supplementation is always secondary, if thats what you were thinking.  The 100% DV that you may be shooting for can be far less than you actually need.

[tombb]

Woah. This just struck me quite hard, for some reason.

Mommy always told me to eat my vegetables. Those veggies are beneficial to testosterone production... VEGGIES MAKE ME A MAN!

.
Disregard all of my post.

Rof.

Tombb: So what you're saying is good eating and balanced vitamin intake will benefit, but I shouldn't freak the hell out if I don't eat broccoli/Brussels sprouts?

In terms of testosterone specifically, yes balanced eating and vitamins/proteins in general will have the same effect, so for example if you really didn't like brussel sprouts you could just replace them with pretty much anything else that was also healthy and balanced food or supplements.

The thing about whole foods, especially vegetables, is that they have a bunch of extra interesting molecules that can have useful protective effects beyond that of "normal" nutrients.
We already figured out pretty much all essential nutrients, I could keep you alive and healthy for the rest of your life with just supplements. You would even have some benefits, like no pesticides, no toxins from occasionally spoiled food, perfect balanced dosage etc.
But what's still left in foods, especially from plants, is a lot of extra interesting molecules that can have additional protective and useful benefits, for example antioxidants, etc.  Many of these we already know of, and others are ones we might discover later on, so it's always good to always add things like real vegetables to your diet.

For broccoli's specific protective molecule that's normally mentioned in relation to testosterone, Indole-3-Carbinol, as I mentioned it doesn't have any effect on testosterone, even in very large doses. (It does help regulate estrogen, so it could possibly help if you have some estrogen imbalance that's affecting your testosterone...) For people interested, here is a study with very high doses on rats, measuring actual serum testosterone and finding no change:
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/74/1/10

... Serum testosterone levels in males were not altered by test diets. ...

[Chris Salvato]

For broccoli's specific protective molecule that's normally mentioned in relation to testosterone, Indole-3-Carbinol, as I mentioned it doesn't have any effect on testosterone, even in very large doses. (It does help regulate estrogen, so it could possibly help if you have some estrogen imbalance that's affecting your testosterone...) For people interested, here is a study with very high doses on rats, measuring actual serum testosterone and finding no change:
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/74/1/10

... Serum testosterone levels in males were not altered by test diets. ...

Bah.  More for me to research, now.

Estrogen modulation is still pretty important in increasing relative testosterone concentrations, but, as I said, I need to learn more about this.  Diet will still be key and eat your freakin vegetables.

[Soundcrafter]

tomb, I wasn't referring to veggies in
general. I eat them en masse. Just those specific ones. Yes, I eat well, and also take Centrum pet Chris' thread. I'll have to read the rest of the articles later. iPodding.

[Chris Salvato]

If your diet is sound and you are at a good place with body comp, finish your bottle of centrum and switch over to a better multivitamin, if you can.  Centrum is like the bottom of the barrel, but its good to get people used to taking them so they get used to taking pills in the morning...and if you are going to take one, it should be a multi-vit!

A generic brand, say, from Vitamin Shoppe/GNC/Vitamin World etc should be a fine next step up.  Examine the ingredients on the brand you choose.  You will see Centrum has a lot of ingredients that suck (like "modified corn starch") so you will want to switch to one that doesn't have anything that is blatantly obviously bad for you to start.

Get intimate with your ingredients sections!

[tombb]

If your diet is sound and you are at a good place with body comp, finish your bottle of centrum and switch over to a better multivitamin, if you can.  Centrum is like the bottom of the barrel, but its good to get people used to taking them so they get used to taking pills in the morning...and if you are going to take one, it should be a multi-vit!

A generic brand, say, from Vitamin Shoppe/GNC/Vitamin World etc should be a fine next step up.  Examine the ingredients on the brand you choose.  You will see Centrum has a lot of ingredients that suck (like "modified corn starch") so you will want to switch to one that doesn't have anything that is blatantly obviously bad for you to start.

Get intimate with your ingredients sections!

I'll have to strongly disagree with this.

There can be better vitamins, in terms of additional ingredients etc, but definitely centrum is not bad in any way, especially not for the reason you mention.
Corn starch is -NOT- a bad thing. Some people might not like the word 'corn'. It's not even really 'corn'-like, it's just plain starch, which chemically is just a chain of connected glucose molecules, which are something your body absolutely needs and can put to very good use.

But in particular, look at the amounts!

The amount of starch in each pill is somewhere between 16 and 30 -MICRO-grams. That's less than you could really see with the naked eye. Your brain would have already burned up that glucose just reading this sentence.  Plus it's obviously used for some practical purpose in assembling the pill itself rather than being used for it's almost negligible nutritional effect.

From a look at the ingredients, I would actually rate centrum or any generic imitation of it higher than GNC or similar, which are also unnecessarily more expensive.

On the other hand, if you have the money for it I would instead recommend choosing vitamins based on actual relevant factors, like time-release variants (very useful for non liposoluble vitamins), particular variants of minerals that are more absorbable, additional ingredients like provitamins, antioxidants etc.

[Bret [Soundcrafter]]

Chris: For the record, most things I eat don't have ingredient labels, and I read the crap out of everything that does.

In your "Eating Right: How to get started" thread, you recommended Centrum as a decent brand.

Is there, perhaps then, a multivitamin aimed at my age group/athletes that you could recommend off-hand?

Tombb: If I may, where did you get that 16-30 number?