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Calories count, and women are eating a lot more calories on average than we did 30 years ago, according to a new and disturbing study. The government recommends that women need around 1,600 calories a day. That's going to vary depending on activity level, and if you exercise a lot you get to eat more, of course. You can figure out your own needs with an online calculator.
In recent decades, many of us bought into a "Fat is Bad" mindset and overloaded on carbs. Now the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction, and we're being bombarded by marketing that tells us carbs are bad. Let's face it, both are bad in excess. And if you snack at all on cookies, chips, ice cream -- or (if you've cut back on carbs) bacon, cheese, mayonnaise --- if you eat fast food, if you drink soda, if you frequently buy vending machine treats at work, it's hard not to exceed that 1,600 calories.
It's a sad fact; We can't just eat whatever we want whenever we want and stay trim and healthy. What are your thoughts about this study, Girlfriends and what new hints can you share to keep your food intake under control?
THERESA: I used to think I had a slow metabolism, and that someone like Wendy, who's quite thin, had a faster metabolism. Then Wendy and compared weeklong food diaries about a year ago when I was bummed about my weight, and it turned out she was taking in a lot fewer calories on average than I did. I cut back to about 1,400 a day of healthier foods for a few months, lost the weight I needed to, increased my intake to around 1,900 but stuck to eating healthy foods. And the weight has stayed off for nearly a year now. I feel like it's gone for good.
What kind of healthy foods do I really like? Sweet potatoes. I'll bake one for an hour and have it nice and hot with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese and call it dinner. Delicious, filling, nutritious.
Spinach salads with low-fat dressing. Cherry tomatoes. Anything cooked up with beans.
And dessert once in awhile, one helping after dinner, no seconds. If I don't eat much sugary stuff, I don't crave sugary stuff.
Also, I take inventory whenever I'm at the checkout line at the grocery store to make sure I'm buying fresh, healthy food and not junk.
YVONNE: I drink hot water with lemon all day long. (I know that makes me an old lady). Also, no more trips to the snack machine. I keep protein bars in my desk and my work bag so when I get hungry I open one of them, eat a few bites and eat the rest later because they tend to have a lot of sugar. I eat a lot all day, won't lie, but it's usually three meals split in half to make six.
ELLEN:
Most of you girlfriends know that I was quite ill last year and lost a good 20 pounds in addition to the 30 I lost a couple of years ago. I was getting back to my fighting weight this fall when BLAMMO! I don’t know what kicked in but I put back on that 20 pounds in about four weeks. I’m afraid to say it has something to do with the change of life. I just couldn’t stop eating. I wanted to eat ALL THE TIME.
After the holidays, I got hold of myself and I’m now back to drinking a lot of water and eating a lot of fruit. I don’t know what this does but it helps me control my appetite.
I sense that there is something about this time of life that helps you put on weight. Almost all my skinny friends put on weight at this time. They seem to lose it when they go through the pause. I remember a former boss who gave away all her clothes because despite exercising an hour a day, she just couldn’t get into her Size 6 business suits. Two years later she was back to the Size 6 set.
So I am cutting way back on my calories, increasing my exercise (Girlfriends will be glad to know that I am starting to jog on my home treadmill. Ugh.) and continuing with the strength training twice a week. I am also just going with the flow on the weight gain. Maybe it’s water; maybe it’s hormonal; maybe it’s because my kid went to college and I’m having some sort of weird reaction to loss. Or maybe it’s some reptilian instinct to bulk up because the young ones are about to put me on an ice floe and send me out to sea. I feel fit. If I’m a little fat, that’s ok.
LAURIE: I have lost 15 pounds since September simply because my dislocated jaw made eating painful, and there were lots of foods I couldn't eat, most of them carbo-loaded things like pasta and bread. But it seems to have changed my eating pattern in some way. I don't eat as much as I used to, and I don't want to. Smaller portions, not so many second helpings. And I consciously stop when I feel full, where I used to keep eating and feel over-full a lot after meals.
Pain - it's the new Atkins!
I keep thinking I'll gain it back, but I'm trying to stay aware of portion sizes and carb-heavy meals.
1600 calories a day is a little high for me. I try to keep my claorie count to no more than 1300 calories a day. Otherwise I tend to gain weight even though I exercise quite a bit.
After years of on and off-again dieting, I'm at the point where I can be satisfied with small amounts of food. My husband and I always remark about how we used to eat a pound of spaghetti at dinner, and now we barely get through half a pound. Once you get used to eating small amounts, you're repulsed by huge meals. I eat half of what I used to -- but continue to weigh as much as ever. That's the metabolism of aging, I guess, but I think I look fine and I feel great. I can't imagine what I'd look like if I ate whatever I wanted.
Posted by: Jill on February 9, 2004 11:56 AMI recently decided to save myself some calories buy cutting back on fruit juice. Instead of chugging back several hundred calories in a large glass of orange juice, I'm now down to about 30 with Diet V8 Splash. (It's two for $5 this week at Acme.) It doesn't taste diety at all and makes you forget about the real thing.
Posted by: Jenice on February 9, 2004 11:59 AMThat reminds me, I do like V-8 juice. I like to have a can as a mid-afternoon snack. It's pretty filling, has lots of vitamins and not lots of calories.
Posted by: Theresa on February 9, 2004 12:00 PMHere's my biggest culprit: busines lunches. One or more during the week means I have to run a ton. I'd like to know how the Girlfriends deal with business lunches. Just got back from one, feel like I should run a half marathon to void it out.
Posted by: April Adamson on February 9, 2004 01:25 PMNow, I'm curious as to whether or not you all feel that our metabolic rate is more controlable then we currently believe and that all the dieting we do in life is doing us more harm then good? I still find it amazing that people can eat and actually survive on less then 1500 calories a day and am a bit stunned to hear that it is being recommended that we eat so little. Even when I enter a weight that is borderline underweight in the calorie counter and select just lightly active, I'm still above 1600 calories. Just being slightly more active and being happier with actually having a few curves (though still normal weight) I can eat almost 2000 calories a day.
With the dieting Yoyo that we go through (Especially women), do we not do soo much harm that we screw up this scale to a point we have to litterally starve ourselves just to stay supposedly healthy? I mean, if you really read between all the dieting lines, cutting calorie counts will cause your body to actually find ways to reduce your metabolism, especially by reducing muscle, yet this is exactly what we promote for losing weight. Yet we still manage to instill in women that exercise, sweat and all things active are things to avoid, when these are precisely what we need to do to lose weight. These are the things that will prevent our metabolism from slowing down so rapidly in life.
Now I do agree that these days we tend to eat way to much. It was scary to realize when I finally sat down and calculated calories when I was gaining, to realize I ate between 2500-3000 calories a day (Not hard to do). But yet I managed to lose 30lbs in less then a year by cutting back to 2000 a day, making the meals much more nutritous, and increasing my acticities up to 45 mins cardio 5 times a week, and weights 2 times a week. Even more amazing was being able to maintain the loss for over a year and a half, even though I let the calories slide to closer to 2500 a day and ended up skipping more workouts then I hit. Three years later, I only gained back 10lbs and just one month of being back on that same program has dropped 5lbs already, and I have yet to feel starved. Simple things like business lunches and eating dinners out don't frighten me, since I'm not trying to eat less then 300 calories a meal.
Posted by: midlife on February 9, 2004 11:19 PMA woman who's active needs at least 2,000 calories a day, and the more active you are, the more you need. And that can include a variety of really good food. And you're right-- the dieting yoyo is a bad way to go. I don't consider that I "went on a diet" last year. Rather, I adopted permanent changes in how I eat. Once I lost some weight, I could eat more healthy food each day (healthy being the key word there), but I didn't go back to my old undisciplined habits. You're also right about exercise, Midlife. When I added weight training to my exercise routine, the muscle I gained was crucial in keeping the weight off.
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