The best way to find out how many calories you need is to get a chart from your doctor that tells the calorie requirement of people at various stages of their lives. This will give you a guideline as to how many calories you should consume per day, but trial and error will help you determine how many calories you will need to maintain your weight, how many to lose weight and how many to gain weight. Regardless of your individual calorie requirement, the only way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than your body needs to maintain your present weight. The only way to know how many calories you consume each day is to record your calories in a little notebook or on a piece of paper as I did everyday for six weeks. It was amazing for me to see how seemingly little I would eat and the calorie count would be 1500.
Most people have no idea how many calories they consume each day.
If they would start keeping tract of exactly what they eat, they would see that they are consuming much more food than they think they are. Recording your food intake also makes you very aware of exactly what foods you are eating. Many of us think that we eat healthy, well balanced diets, but when we actually write down what we eat, the results can tell us otherwise. If you don t know what a well balanced diet consists of, see a nutritionist. By recording all the foods that I ate each day, I could be sure to eat foods from all of the food groups.