Enjoy!
I don’t really mean to offend anyone but…
I saw this youtube comment earlier today, ” 1700 calories is starving ypurself. The average woman should be consuming 2000 calories a day. You can lose weight by eating healthy, not starvation. Please be safe sweetie ” and i just face palmed so hard. Maybe its just an asain thing, but i personally find it pretty ridiculous. My family rarely eats over 1600 calories a day, does that mean we’re starving ourselves? Im always full, so I think not. I mean, I myself only eat around 1500 and I have these giant heaping bowls of food.
Also, 1700 calories is the same as 24 pounds of celery. So… im starving myself by eating a mountain of celery taller than me every day…. or im just too short XD
Sorry but it just irritates me so much. its just such a big misuse of the word, and is really offensive to the people out there actually starving. geez. Lots of people probably won’t agree with me, but its just my own personal opinon. Please don’t get mad <3
tl;kiki
I have no idea how old you are, how tall you are, or how much you weigh, but…
a 25 year old woman who..
Weighs 52 K (115 LBS)
and is 160 cm tall (5’2 feet)
Requires 1234 (Check out that number) callories a day to maintain their current body weight assuming they do not do any kind of exsercise at all. Literally none, that is the Basal Metabolic rate.
I chose those numbers because they are the averages for a japanses woman.
If you exercise three times a week, defined as 15-30 minutes of eleveated heart rate, that number jumps to 1697 calories a day
For an american woman, its different.
weight 75 K (164 LBS)
Height 164 CM (5’5 feet)
The base rate is now 1489 and the amount needed if you exercise 3 times a week is 2047
Consider that it is recomended to exercise about 150 minutes a week, that’s 5 days of 30 minute exercise, so that puts those numbers at 1930 and 2308
You are either extremely petite, do very little exercise at all, or you calorie math is off somewhere. Generally speaking, starches tend to be high in calories, while being low in fat. Potatoes, grains, and rice. Athletes will often eat large helpings of pasta before events because the calories from the pasta give them an energy boost.
As for that comment, in America, besides the issues with obesity, we also have problems with other eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Generally, it’s almost always women, who get stressed out due to societies ideas of what they should look like, and then try to rapidly diet, often cutting down their food intake way too much and too fast.
If you do it that way, not only does it tend to not work, but it is also, very unhealthy. There’s only so much fat your body can loose before things start running into problems. Initially, Fat acts as an insulator and you’ll have problems regulating your temperature, but after that, as your body isn’t getting enough calories from your diet, and the fat reserves are being used up, your body will start converting protein, in other words, your muscles, into energy.
Anyways, the youtube posted was probably speaking to someone who is American or at Western European, and their advice for that audience, is probably pretty sound.
Um I really don’t mean to turn this into a debate or offend anyone but… uh those stats of an American woman has a bmi of 27.3, which is in the middle part of overweight…
Being overweight (I’m not trying to fat shame or anything, please don’t take it that way! >.<) comes with a load of health problems including diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. Which you know… probably isn't a good thing.
Also I'm 5 ft 4 and weigh 115 lbs :). Most Asians are quite small in general (like my mom is 5ft 3 and 105, Grace is 5ft 3 and 100, etc), so I guess my view of what's normal is different from yours and is just strange to me. That might be why our views differ a bit :). I mean in Canada I wear an extra small to small, but in China I wear a large to even extra large!
Thank you 🙂 I really hate it when people say that eating less puts you in danger of an eating disorder. That’s bullshit. Eating disorders are a psychological disease, not something that you just get.
Also, all diets work the same way: Intake less calories than you need, so your body uses the energy stored in fat. You need to be careful to eat all the essential nutrients, but other than that, as long as you still have body fat, you will not starve to death.
Yeah, i was thinking that that youtube comment was probably directed to an American, or at least a western European.
We’re generally taller and larger than Asians. Also, the food we eat, is usually, higher calory, higher carb, and higher fat, than what the rest of the world eats.
Also, as a general rule, we look for easy and lazy ways to do things, hence all the fad diets that pop up for months to years, and then disappear.
We’re also sometimes… idiots. So you get people who are like, “well, I cut down how much I eat by half, why aren’t I losing weight?” When they switched to eating nothing but fast food.
And also the people who switch to healthier foods, but eat an enormous amount of it.
And not to mention the people who decide to eat a salad every day, but then cover it in high-fat dressings and things like that.
Anyways, that comment was likely sound advice aimed to a western European, but not an Asian person.
The 2000 calorie recommendation from the FDA is for the AVERAGE ADULT female. The comment is misleading. First off, you need to be an adult female. Second, this is the AVERAGE, not the MINIMUM. Third, this is for all races. Asians tend towards the lighter end of the scale in height and weight. 1700 calories is plenty for an asian female.
Als a female of half European, half Asian origine. 165cm or 5.4 inch tall. I eat around 1400-1600 a day. If I am above the 1600 kcal I will gain weight. My mum who is an Asian eats and drinks even less I think around 1200-1500. And with 1500 a day she will gain weight.
Even though 2000 is dependent on your age, body structure, length and activities of what you do in your daily life. How younger how more your body burns because it is still developing. If you get older you sleep less and eat less.
If you have an office workers life, you will burn less then having an active job etc… So yes face palming was the right thing to do ^ – ^
Well,that comment really is a little…
First of all they got one thing wrong: you do lose weight by cutting calories intake down, not just eating healthy. You can eat as healthy as you want, but if manage to eat say 3000 calories of healthy food a day, you will not lose weight, you will gain some (depending on your inicial height and weight, obviously, but most people would gain a lot of weight)
There are even studies about that.
There was an interesting informal study a few years ago (the most entertaining one I’ve seen so far, even if it’s not the most reliable). There was a nutrition university professor that wanted to prove this point to his students. So he set to eat only junk food, but eat only the amount of calories a man of his age and stature should. He lost weight (because before he was eating more calories than he should).
This leads me to another problem about that comment. The ‘1700 calories is starvation’ thing, or being full with the same amount.
If you eat those 1700 or 2000 calories in ‘junk food’ or in ‘healthy food’ it will be completely different.
The feeling ‘full’ is abount food volume, not calory intake. It is about your stomach actually being filled with food. And a slice of pizza has less volume than a regular bowl of salad. If you’re used to eating bigger amounts, it will also take more food to actually make you feel ‘full’, no matter the calories.
That also means you can eat 4000 calories a day and still feel hungry the whole time, because your stomach complains that it isn’t full. It doesn’t mean you’re starving.
Even that professor complained about it. At the begining he would feel hunger pangs, just because his stomach was used to bigger amounts of food. As time passed, the stomach got used to the volume of food being less, and the hunger stopped.
And as was already mentioned, that is the AVERAGE. Different people need different amounts of calories. Height, metablolism, physical activity are some of the factors to take in consideration.
By the way, I’m european,175+cm, and permanently going between 75/80kg (so I’m on the top limit of a healthy BMI). I just eat what I feel like and don’t really go on diets, I just try to be carefull. I eat less than my mother who is 160cm. She sometimes eats twice or more than me. I don’t know how she can jug all that food in her stomach (obvioulsy she’s overweight, though surprisingly not by as much as one would think).
Oh my, that came out awfully long.
Off to read the chapter now!
Thank you for the chapter (^.^)/
That was very informational :).
Haha, enjoy!
This is so true! Very well said, Prak! A person can’t make a diet based on calorie intake alone, let alone a comment regarding how much calorie intake a person should have.
I’m South Asian and I’m between 5’1 and 5’2 and my weight normally fluctuates between 100-104lbs, but I get full very fast so I eat small portions. I rarely exceed 1600 calories a day as well, but that doesn’t mean I’m ‘starving’ myself or unhealthy.
Everyone is different in their needs in terms of diet, so counting calorie intake would never suffice in weight gain/loss. I think people forget that the same so-called advice they give to ‘skinny’ people, if they gave similar advice to people overweight would be regarded as offensive. Just because someone is underweight or overweight compared to the average person, does not necessarily mean they have some sort of eating disorder. Assuming as such is not only offensive to the person but also people who actually suffer from eating disorders. Someone’s weight is nobody’s business but their own.
I also think the person who made this youtube comment failed to see the contradiction in their own words of saying how the average woman should consume 2000 calories, but failed to recognize the person they’re directing the comment to may not be the average woman.
Anyway, onto read the chapter updates! Thank you Kiki!
U no, i saw this comment n video ur tlkn about…. So crazy =] small world i guess lol