To think 2000 calories a day is a crazy amount of food.

[HairsprayBabe]

The government guidelines are just not helpful when it comes to reccomending a healthy calorific intake. I have been dieting for the past 6 months and am proud to say I have lost over 4 stone not so stealth stealth brag

But anyway, the government recommends on average 2000 calories a day for women, even before I was watching what I ate I didn't eat that much (logged in MFP before diet proper started), and these days I would consider 1500 cals a treat day.

I know it is all linked to TDEE and BMR but I cannot believe that the average woman in the UK could happily eat 2000 calories a day and not gain weight! Where has this figure come from? It really is no wonder that obesity is on the rise.

So IABU is 2000 calories a normal amount of food or are my views skewed?

Nancy how do you work out I dropped two dress sizes then? And have you got any idea of the amount of pure physical labour involved in certain types of field archaeology? It isn't all decorously scraping a brush, you know...

Obviously we only ate like that on the days when we were on site, and after the dig was over we all reverted to normal eating.

8000 a day is the top end of what women consume trekking across Antarctica towing a sled all day, sled carrying all their own supplies.

2000 calories assumes you walk around 10,000 steps a day. When I started tracking my steps and logging food, I realised that I only do around 7500 so I burn around 1750 calories a day. In order to lose weight I can't eat more than 1250 a day. Even so, I've realized that I wasn't losing weight before because I was being too strict and only eating around 800-900 a day which put my body in starvation mode. It's lovely being on a diet where I eat krispy kremes! I've basically just cut down on biscuits and cheese. I'm petite in height and I think we basically don't need as many calories as taller ladies.

How would they find the time to eat 8000 calories while trekking across Antarctica?

2000cal is assuming your doing the recommended level of physical activity is it not? I can see how you could gain weight on 2000cal if you have a sendentary job.
I'm a small person (5'3" and 7st 13lbs last time I checked), when I was in the army, during training exercises, I was eating 5000cal per day, in 4 meals plus snacks in between. That, coupled with the incredible amount of physical activity being done in the freezing depths of Scotland in mid-winter, I didn't gain a single 1lb.

Has anyone addressed the '100 cals is 100 cals' thing yet?

100 cals of sugar is very different to 100 cals of dense protein. Just breaking the protein down to a form in which its calories are ever going to be useable for energy wastes calories. I recently read (proper journals) that you lose 30% of the calories in protein just from digesting it, compared to only 5% of carbs. Plus, many of the calories contained in protein will never be used for energy production (it's a really inefficient metabolic process that becomes important in times of starvation) because your body would far rather use the digested protein to replace and repair itself.

(Starvation = low carb/fat conditions, not necessarily absolute starvation)

Nope the 8000 calorie thing is ridiculous, I'm sorry but I understand how the human body works. You didn't eat 8000 calories, that's around what male Olympic weight lifters eat to put on muscle and lots of fat. If you were busy you wouldn't even have time to munch all that anyway.

I was reading one of these threads the other week and out of interest I added up all my calories for the day on My Fitness Pal, I've never been a calorie counter, 43, 5'8, and about 9st 9.

I was amazed to see I'd consumed about 3500 calories in what I'd consider a fairly normal day's eating, so I continued doing it for a week and it seems I eat around 3-3500 calories very day.

I'm not massively active and have no thyroid issues and have eaten like I do my whole adult life.

So how the Dickens does that work? I do eat what I would consider to be a very health diet, plenty of whole foods, all full fat, no skimping on the butter or oil, love the fat on meat, lots of protein and not too many carbs, though I don't consciously avoid them.

So I guess an average is just that.

Checked the BMR for someone of 5'6" weighing 620lb (about 45 stone) last night because of a programme on Ch5 or similar. It came out at around 3500. I was pretty surprised that someone weighing 4-5 times the ideal would have a BMR only about double.

I used to live with a professional rugby player (then England U23 captain). The sheer volume of food he had to put away in order to maintain was frightening. And bloody boring. A whole bag of pasta with two whole chicken breasts for lunch. I don't know what he was taking in but I remember that the rowers were working on 5000 ish so I daresay similar.

On Antarctic treks it's highly concentrated stuff like jerky and Kendal mint cake and equivalent, isn't it? Because you struggle to eat the volume required to get that calorie total in "normal" food.

I'm currently on about 1200 as using MFP and am 7lbs from goal. Once at goal, with my lifestyle, MFP reckons 1800 to maintain.

I guess if I was more active it'd be more.

I don't know how it will work on 1800 as I may keep losing weight slowly if it's too low so it'll be a case of adjusting accordingly once the time comes.

2000 does seem loads at the moment when I'm on 1200 as I'm eating well on that so upping to 1800/2000 will seem huge but in reality it's just slightly bigger portions and more (for me this is the biggest struggle) olive oil when cooking!

I think it's all about perception.

It depends how you get the 2000 calories. I can easily eat 2000 calories in a day and not gain weight but with healthy normal food. If I'm eating fried food, snacks, crisps and chocolate there's no way I'd eat 2000 calories of it, I'd soon gain weight. It's dangerous when calories are the only guideline.

Bollocks. A calorie is a calorie, from that point of view. More calories consumed than used adds weight, doesn't matter what they are calories of.

It's less efficient to release a calorie from a protein than from a carb. The chemical bonds are different, the metabolic pathways used are different, the biological uses for protein are different.

You could eat 100 cals of protein and sequester almost all of them in non-energy processes - those calories remain unused.

(Until you really need them - low glucose/low fat/starvation - and then you'll start to break the proteins down to divert them to energy production)

2000 is a lot. But it really depends on your weight, activity levels etc. There are online calc to work out your basal metabolic rate and then add on more for your activity level - voila, you have what you should be eating to maintain or whatever!!

Bollocks. A calorie is a calorie, from that point of view. More calories consumed than used adds weight, doesn't matter what they are calories of.

That is true, but some foods use calories to digest/ get energy out of some don't. That cabbage soup diet actually used up more from eating and processing it than you took in.

I'm losing just over 1lb/week on 2000-2500 Calories a day (8.5Stone down so far with 2-4stone to go), which means my maintenance is >3000Calories. Although I am highly active now that I can actually move without feeling like I'm dying. I actually couldn't imagine eating

I ate tons and stayed skinny until I got to 48. Now I have to eat 1200 cals to lose a pound a week!

I think there IS more to it than simply cals in v cals out. But I don't think we know for sure yet, do we? I think there's more we need to discover about the role of gut bacteria too.

I think it's generally known, though, that some high calorie foods are "better" in that some of it passes through as waste. Like nuts. A lot of nuts is fibrous stuff, so passes through easily. Apparently.

Opens thread. Feels like a fat pig. Closes thread.

I lose a pound a week on 1200 too. That's with 10k of steps.

Even with steps, I rarely burn 2000 cals a day (according to fitbit, anyway).

That's fine if you burn that much.
I'm a woman, 5ft 7, weight 11 stone, size 10-12. On an average day my calorie burn is inbetween 2100 and 2600 depending on activity levels. So eating 2000 cals would be a big deficit (and good for fat loss).
It will differ from person to person.

Opens thread. Feels like a fat pig. Closes thread.

Haha, yes absolutely

Just done that bbc link. Apparently I need 2100 calories to maintain my weight...my fitbit tells me I only burn around 1900 so I can't see that ending well!