question about amount per day

[warbishop]

delte

[not2late]

Originally Posted by warbishop

I dont know exactly what the deal is with this but from what I gather there are 3 approaches to this diet that apply to me, IMO. Of course, I'm not trying to split hairs, I'm sure there are some who will disagree. Anyway...

When lookng at this diet in the past, I always saw it like this. During induction you need to be fairly strict but dont be too excessive with protein or it'll be converted to glucose anyway. And if that didnt do you well, you could limit your calorie intake at the same time to around 1200-1500 calories a day. Then if that didnt do you well, you could limit yourself to 1200 with about 70% or 80% of that fat calories.

Of course this is assuming a certain food isnt stopping you and that your meals are every 3-4 hours. This comes to my question. What is the minimum caloric amount your body needs every 3-4 hours in order to not slow your metabolism? cause if your body percieves you are starving, I know you can slow alot. So whats the minimum on average. Anyone know? And when they say every 3-4 hours, does this include nighttime as well? Do i need to get up to eat?

Thanks,
War

Calorie restriction isn't emphasized during Atkins. Dr. Atkins wrote about a "metabolic advantage" that his diet had, but low cal/low fat diets didn't. That metabolic advantage was that you could eat slightly more calories and still lose weight. I can't remember which study it was, but one done shortly after his death, showed those extra calories were in the range of 200-300 calories.

While Dr. Atkins did say you did not need to count calories, he did say they mattered. However, Dr. Atkins knew that ketosis/lipolysis was an appetite suppressant. Many ADBBers can tell you that their appetites aren't as huge as they were and some ADBBers have to force themselves to eat because they simply are not hungry. Because of this appetite suppression, Dr. Atkins advised us to eat the amount of food that satisfies our hunger (which doesn't mean to stuff yourself like a Thanksgiving turkey!)

I've never counted my calories on this diet, because counting carbs was already a hassle and I didn't want the extra job of counting calories. I've only listened to my body and have eaten what it needs at that time. Since doing this, I've noticed that sometimes I eat less and sometimes I eat more. I've lost weight without worrying that I didn't eat exactly 1500 calories today because it's really silly if you think about it.

Our bodies require energy (calories) to function: heart beat, breathing, blinking, walking up stairs, etc. Those daily caloric requirement mathematical equations are based on activity level. So unless you do the exact same activities, using the exact same movements, and exerting the exact same effort/force every single day, you will require the same amount of calories daily. I don't think many of us count how many steps we take to walk to our car, how many strokes we use to brush our teeth, how many breaths we take everyday, how many times our hearts beat everyday, etc. So the exact number of calories we need is virtually impossible to calculate because there are too many variables---unless we are in a coma, hooked up to life support machines that monitor all of our activities daily.

If we are in comas and hooked up to life support machines, it's rather easy to accurately calculate how many calories to feed us and the hourly rate to feed us, etc. because we are only using our basal metabolism at that point. But if we awake from our comas, start talking, start trying to get out of bed, then we use more energy than our basal metabolism, therefore, our caloric needs increase.

As for timing your meals, Dr. Atkins said to not go more than 6 waking hours without eating. Therefore, there is no need for you to set the alarm and get up at 2 AM to eat a meal.