If getting lean is as simple as creating a calorie deficit, why aren't more people walking around a 10 to 15 body fat well first off simple doesn't mean easy second when it comes to creating that calorie deficit there's a lot of bad information out there and most dont really have a clear idea, how to do this probably and that's why in this article i am going to share with you five things that most people get wrong when it comes to their calories and mistakes that you need to avoid to.
Finally lose body fat so let's dive right into in the first mistake, you need to avoid has to do with how you set your calories what i have seen people do is they are going to go online they are going to find a calculator they are going to plug in their stats and then they are going to calculate their resting metabolic rate they take that number reduce that by 500 and then set that as their daily calorie intake, this is not the correct way to determine your calorie deficit and it will set you up at very unsuitable diet, your resting metabolic rate is just one outbof four components of your metabolism.
The other three are your physical activity thermic effect of food and non-exercise activity thermogenesis these four components add up to something called your tdee total daily energy expenditure. Now that is the number that you need to figure out for yourself and then you reduce calories from there for example my resting metabolic rate is around 1800 calories per day now if i consider that i am also lifting weights four or five times per week i am walking eight to ten thousand steps per day and with my general lifestyle my estimated total daily energy expenditure is round 2800 calories per day.
So if i wanted to enter a calorie deficit to lose about a pound or half a kilo body fat oer week, i would start by settling my calories between 22 and 2300 calories per day now if i was making the mistake, and i was looking at my rest metabolic rate i would have to set my calories down to 1300 per day and that would definitely lead to muscle loss it would slow down my metabolism and i simply wouldn't be able to sustain it now the second thing a lot of people get wrong is they don't realise that their calorie deficit is actually a moving target.
So as you lose weight your body will adapt and you will be burning less calories and not everyone adapts the same way as a coach over the last eight years i worked with many clients, who had a very adaptive metabolism so to continue losing fat we sometimes had to go much lower in calories than was predicted by most calculators so how much your metabolism adapts is something you will learn over time and alot of people dont realise this and i get suprised when the calorie intake doesn't work anymore.
And this is why it is so important that you keep track of your food intake as well as your metrocs such as your weekly weight averages your waist size and taking regular progress photos so then you can adjust your calories when you see the things aren't moving forward and sometimes instead of just adjusting your diet it also helps to add more steps, and spend some calories.
While still being in a calorie deficit now the third mistake that i see a lot is people eating back the calories they burned and in theory this sounds pretty reasonable you track the calories you eat then you track the calories you burn and then on some of the days that you burn more calories you get to eat some of those back and by default a lot of the apps are actually set up like this for example myfitnesspal will try to connect with your phone or connect with your fitness tracker and then when you do certain amount of steps or you do a workout.
It will tell you that you have earned 500 or 700 more calories that day the problem here is that this estimated amount of calories burnt is not very accurate researchers spend tens of thousands of dollars looking to accurately estimate energy expenditure. And this is not something we can reliably do with our basic devices and apps and unfortunately i see a lot of people who get stuck, because they are eating back the calories suggested by the app simply cannot trust these algorithms yet.
For now my recommendation is that you ignore these suggestion, that you stick with your plan intake and then you adjust that intake based on your weekly weight changes, now this brings me to the fourth mistake which is trying to create a calorie deficit only through the diet versus only through exercise, and i often see these two extremes the first group is forced to eat a very low calorie intake to lose any body fat because they are completely sedentary and for this group even a small slip up is enough to wipe out half their weekly calorie deficit on the other extreme.
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