One of the pleasures I get from this blog is the personal messages I get from people who are also becoming retired dieters, even some of my friends who long thought I was nuts to be using intermittent fasting to lose weight have been converted and are now quietly incorporating 24 hour fasts into their weekly schedules.
One thing that keeps coming up is ” Dave I fasted twice this week but I didn’t lose any weight ”
Even when using fasting for weight loss, you need to understand the amount of calories you consume is important. Taking a 24 hour break from eating is a great way to burn body fat during that 24 hour period, but if you then break the fast and consume more calories than your body needs, you will not lose weight.
So let me make it clear….
Calories In V Calories Out is what matters
To lose weight you need to consume LESS calories than your body needs. Intermittent fasting is just a tool to help you do that, but unless you are eating less than your daily requirement, you will not lose body fat. Yes you will burn fat during the time you are fasting, but if you then eat above your required calories, you will just replace the fat you burned.
As a retired dieter I don’t refuse the foods I love, I just make sure I eat less calories.
One problem for most people is they don’t know how many calories a day they need , we then also under estimate the amount of calories we consume.
Let me give you an example based on my current measurements.
Using a simple Basal Metabolic Rate ( BMR ) calculator which you can find here , you can work out your daily BMR. Go there and enter your details to find your own BMR number … please ignore any weight loss fad diet ads that may display.
In my case, as a 45 year old male with a current weight of 174 lbs and a height of 5 ft 10 inches, my BMR is about 1730 calories a day. That number is based on me doing nothing and staying in bed all day. As my work is Internet based, and my office is at home, in my case this figure would not be far off. Only adding exercise to my daily routine will increase the amount of daily calories I need. Sitting in a chair at a computer screen all day does not burn too many calories. So in my case 1700 calories a day is what I try and work with.
As I work from home, I do take a daily break from the laptop and take a walk. If we use the equation of 1 calorie per kilo of body weight per kilometer distance travelled, this would burn extra calories as follows.
174lbs = approx 79 kilos . so walking 1 kilometer would mean I burn around 79 calories. If I do a 5 mile walk that is 8 kilometers so that is 632 calories.
As I mentioned in this post about my six pack abs mission I look at my calories over 7 days, not daily. I eat more on a weekend, and reduce the calories on the weekdays when I am working. 12000 calories a week is what I try to work with. The intermittent fasting just helps make this easier to do.
Again we come back to the basic process that weight loss is not complicated. If you want to lose fat, then you need to be in a calorie deficit. This can only happen by eating less calories than you need, or by increasing the number of calories you burn off with exercise. Intermittent fasting helps you eat less. Even something as basic as walking gets you burning more calories. Use bodyweight exercises to maintain muscle, and you are on the right track. No gyms, no fancy diet plans, just a simple, no fuss way to lose weight.
In A word ? Eat Less Move More
Any questions ? please leave a reply in the comments or email me at retireddieter[at] gmail dot com
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