To think 2000 calories a day really isn't very much

[Drqedwa]

I was sat in a restaurant today and noticed almost all the dishes were around 500-800 calories for the salad and low calorie options. The normal dishes (pasta, grilled dishes) were around 1000 calories. This wasn't a greasy take away but a Greek restaurant which uses only fresh ingredients.

I eat healthily but I eat more than 2000 calories a day. I maintain a healthy weight which may be due to the fact I'm fairly active and the calories I eat are from healthy food.

I can easily see how do many people are overweight as it's very easy to go over the 2000 calories mark.

A bowl of porridge with fruit, rice salad, protein bar and banana and for dinner lamb roast dinner and I'm already over the 2000 mark. That's not factoring in the lattes I had or the flapjack after dinner!

I would be so hungry if I reduced how much I eat. How do people manage to routinely eat less than 2000 calories? For me to achieve that I would have to record everything I eat.

Obviously I'm a healthy weight so I'm doing just fine. But AIBU to think 2000 calories a day really isn't much and we've lost sight of what a normal days worth of food looks like?

I think a lot of people th I k to be overweight you must be gorging on takeaways every evening but in reality it's very easy to over eat as our bodies don't need many calories.

Even eating healthily we can overeat.

A calorie is a calorie, regardless what food it comes in, they all act the same way.
And most people don't need as many as 2000, it is just your particular metabolism, build, muscle mass, and exercise level allows you to eat more than that and maintain a healthy weight.

2000 can be used up very quickly in a small volume, or it can be absolutely LOADS depending on the food.

Those salads will be so high calorie because of dressings which are full of sugar.

I'm on the fence about this.

If you're not really counting, it's incredibly easy to go overboard.

If you are, and you're choosing wisely (I know some people seem to do this instinctively because they just like healthy food, yes childhood friend who at 8 years old didn't like chocolate or ice cream but asked for stewed gooseberries instead, and who is still whip slim, grrr), then 2,000 is quite a lot. You could have a monster grilled fish and veg dinner for v few calories, for example.

Bloody hell. I've been logging for a while as I've lost weight and now trying to maintain and I'm at about 1400-1600 per day and I think that's loads! I eat fresh healthy food though, loads of fruit & veg etc, so high volume but I guess low calorie. Don't know how I'd get to 2000 unless I had lattes & cake etc every day or ate larger portions / unhealthy stuff.

Yeah, but you probably don't have roast lamb every day, do you?!

That's the point. Most people who maintain a healthy weight will have some days when they eat more and some days when they eat less. Very few people eat exactly the same number of calories every day.

If you go out for dinner, or you have something like a roast, perhaps you'll eat get through quite a lot of calories. But that balances against the days you maybe had a bowl of soup or chicken stir-fry or whatever it may be.

I think, TBH, that most people who find it hard to stick to 2000 calories have totally lost sight of what portion sizes should be. And I include myself in that!

Some days i eat less but I have dessert every day.

The salads didn't all have dressing. Some were 800 calories without ANY dressing. It's easy to go over 2000 calories. If it wasn't there wouldn't be so many people overweight.

When you actually see how little 2000calories is it's shocking.

I'm rea!utmost people don't sit down to quinoa and a fillet of grilled cod each day. Normal foods like lasange, cottage pie,burriots, fish and chips etc. Would be nearer the 1000 calories mark for one meal.

There was a post on here a little while ago and everyone was saying 2000 calories was too much and it should be lowered to 1200. So you can't please everyone.

The salads didn't all have dressing. Some were 800 calories without ANY dressing.

What was in them? I’m guessing cheese. A normal veg based salad isn’t 800 calories.

I think that restaurant portions are massive so I rarely finish them (and I'm pretty greedy. )

If I'm going out to a restaurant, I'll skip or have a very small meal earlier in the day so my total calories for the day won't be loads more than a normal day.

If you're eating 'healthy' foods 2000 calories is a huge amount. In junk food it looks far less.

I eat pulses like quinoa with protein as a main meal often, as do the DC. We don't eat fish and chips more than once a month at the most, burritos likewise and I just don't cook high-calorie foods regularly. A normal supper for us (for example tonight's tea) is salmon fillets with ginger and lime with chilli wild rice and salad. "Normal" food doesn't have to be stodgy stuff.

My weight was gradually creeping up, so, while I wasn't overweight, I decided to calorie count for a bit and lose a few pounds (I have my fitness pal linked to my exercise watch so it adjusts my calories accordingly). To start with it was hard to get it to 1200-2000 (depending on exercise that day), but when you learn more it's easy to eat a lot with fewer calories.

A couple of glasses of wine and a slice of cake though and it's very easy to go over!

I think 2000 calories is loads & I am greedy and over weight

2000 is a hell of a lot of calories to me on a normal day.

I completly agree with you op.
I do think alot is about portion control.
Conincedently I was chatting with ds1 (14) about portion sizes and told him to weigh out the portion size of cereal. He was shocked as he normally has 3 times that.

I think 2000 is too much! Maybe I have a slow metabolism but to me you can have a large amount of healthy food and then some for that amount.

You can’t have lots of junk or processed foods but that’s the point isn’t it?

I find it's too much too. I meticulously logged my diet for a couple of weeks on MFP and struggled to hit 1500

I eat around 800 cals a day. Exercise for 1.5 hours a day just to maintain my weight. No one believes how little I eat; I have the slowest metabolism in the would.

2000 is a lot.
Out of curiosity as I don't need to lose weight, on an "average" week a couple of months ago I typed everything i ate into my "health" app: I generally have both a morning and an afternoon snack as well as breakfast , lunch and dinner every day, but my calorie intake was between 1750 and 1850 calories per day.

It depends what you're eating. I'm a body builder and during a bulk I need at least 2500 a day. When I'm in the last stages of a cut I'm on about 900 a day. But everything has to be clean food and nothing processed so 2500 calories a day eating clean is a massive amount of food, I really struggle sometimes. But if you ate processed food and takeaways then 2500 is easy to achieve but it will make you gain fat due to the saturated fat.

It depends a lot on how tall you are; I'm 5 foot 9 so 2000 is fine. Probably not so much if you're 5 foot.

People are overweight because they are consuming far more than they are burning off and have massive portions, takeaways and junk food. Not because they are eating 2300 calories of healthy food.

Science is now discovering that actually, not all calories are the same..different people can eat differerent foods/different calories without the same impact.

It's all portion size, though.

You don't have to eat a massive plateful of cottage pie, but we've got into the habit of doing so. You don't need to eat 800 calories worth of salad, but ditto.

I know I eat portions that are too big. Our plates and glasses have been getting bigger, too - just look out what your gran used to have. Remember those dinky wine glasses? And now we all have huge ones that take 250ml, and great big dinner plates and bowls that we fill.

I agree with you OP especially when you factor in that most people will be using convenience foods and eating alot of white carbs. You could easily be eating 3 meals a day only and going over you limit especially when you consider that people dont stop to consider the calories in drinks. A coffee could be 300/400 calories a drink. Most people end up over weight by a steady drip of a few hundred calories a day more than they need rather than gorging on food. That’s not even a yogurts worth.

I’ve decided to track my calories in an attempt to shift a little extra weight.

Im using the app ‘Lose It’, which is free. You input your goal weight, and decide how quickly you want to lose it (slowly, medium or quickly) and it tells you how many calories to consume that day to hit that weight by that date. Quite clever.

It’s rigged up to lots of items from all the main supermarkets etc too so it’s easy to track what you’re eating.

My target is 2100 a day to drop a stone in just over a month. So far I’ve been below that on every day (only three days in). This, combined with eating slimming world recipes that my wife and I are cooking, should see me hit it (but I imagine I’ll have a few days off!).