Activity
#4212·Dennis Hackethal, about 12 hours agoMost people are overnourished. One way to take control is to measure your daily energy expenditure and not eat above that.
Using an online calculator like https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html, you can get a decent estimate of your daily caloric needs.
Then, using https://cronometer.com/, track your food to ensure you don’t exceed your daily caloric needs.
By eating in a 500-calorie deficit, you can lose about a pound per week. Lift heavy weights a couple of times a week so the weight you lose is fat, not muscle.
This is a simple way to do body recomposition.
A chronic calorie deficit will trigger a suppression of the active thyroid hormone T3. Lowering T3 causes a lowering of the metabolic rate, which lowers the rate of caloric burn at rest.
For this reason, CICO dieting often hits a wall when the body adjusts to the new low calorie lifestyle.
An alternative is to improve the quality of the foods, such that the metabolic rate increases while caloric intake is kept the same (or even increased too, by a lesser amount). This would be preferred by the body as it is a more complete solution: all nutrient requirements are being met and energy is being produced and utilised in abundance.
I think it is much more useful to think of the body as a dynamic energy-processing system, rather than a ledger of calories.