Too Much Drinking, Now I Need To Diet

If you read the guidelines they’ll tell you that the “average” man needs 2500 calories a day. That’s great, but what exactly is the average man and more to the point how many calories do I need?

First of all, what is a calorie? A calorie is just a unit of measure of energy. In fact 1 calorie is the energy required to heat 1 litre of water by 1 degree Celsius. It’s also the way in which we measure the amount of energy our bodies are burning. So back to the question then, how many calories do I need each day?

Well for a start I’m not average height, I think the last thing I read said that the average height of a UK male was 5′10″. I’m only a short ass so I’ll knock a few hundred calories of for that and call it 2300. It’s also a fact that the more muscle you have the more energy you burn (most overweight people also have a larger muscle mass in order to support their excess weight). The cool thing about this is that as you build muscle you also require more energy (ever wondered how come those well toned skinny people can eat tonnes and never get fat?). Seeing as how I’m about 30% pure fat at the moment I’ll knock of 100 calories for that bringing it down to 2200. Once the physical attributes are dealt with it then comes to activity, how much or little you do. This is where it can get a little complicated.

I have an office job that involves me sitting on my behind most of the day. Back in the day most men actually did manual jobs that was like one constant workout, I think the shift is much more towards us lazy office tarts nowadays. I’d hope that whoever calculated th average took into account the greater population doing little work activity these days but even with that in mind I’m probably on the lower side of that average daily activity so of goes another 100 calories.

So all in I think that I need about 2100 calories a day to remain at my same weight. This doesn’t include the extra walking I do or the gym workouts that are burning 600+ calories each. The good news is that I reckon I’m only putting between 1400-1800 calories in each day. If my maths is right I would be losing weight slowly even without the extra exercise, as it stands I should be able to maintain a fairly swift amount of weight loss.