"carla" wrote in message ...
One of the Survivors wrote:
I've been low-carbing for a couple of weeks now and I'm wondering how
caloric intake affects your weight loss on this diet. I've stayed at
a good level of carbs a day (15-30g, cut from probably 300g at least),
but how does the increase of calories affect a person on this diet?

If you head on over to a resource like www.fitday.com, and enter in a
typical pre-diet day, you will probably find that you are eating fewer
calories now rather than more. (Certainly if you are losing fat you are now
eating fewer calories than before, no magic there.) Those 300g of carbs you
used to eat represent 1200 calories a day that are no longer part of your
diet. Even if you replace half of those calories with low carb foods - and
that's quite a bit of low carb food - you would still be running a
substantial calorie deficit compared to your previous eating habits.

How do you calculate how many calories you should have in one day? I
am 6'2, 220lbs (down from 226)...Isn't there a number of calories that
a person just works off in a regular day? I do a fair bit of moving
around at work and I've been walking 4 or 5 nights a week, so I'm
curious as to how to limit my intake.

FitDay also includes a calories consumption calculator, but the general
consensus is that it vastly overestimates the amount of calories burned off
doing things. If you tell it that you are sedentary 24 hours a day, it will
give you a reasonably accurate (as accurate as anyone else's) estimate of
your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Most people find that eating right around
your BMR is effective for weight loss. (Remember that your BMR decreases as
you lose weight.) That's what I do.

Another approach many people take is to start at 10 times their bodyweight
in Calories; so if you weigh 220, you would start at 2200 for a couple of
weeks. If you don't see any loss at that level, come down to 9 times your
bodyweight, and so on. Since you are male (I'm assuming this because of
your height, and apologize if I am wrong) and you exercise, you will
probably lose weight very comfortably at 10 x bodyweight, but you have to do
the experiment to know for sure.

Also, is there a number to shoot for as far as grams of fat are
concerned?

I'll let someone else field this one.

Wow...Thanks a lot for letting me know about the fitday site! That is
awesome. It really made me feel pretty good today. Although, I'm
concerned that I'm pretty low on the fat and calorie intake. It's
almost 9pm and I've only eaten a little over 1000 calories and 43
grams of fat. Considering how many calories it says I worked off
today, I'm 3000 calories ahead. If I eat at this rate, is it possible
that I won't lose just because I'm not eating enough? I feel that
I've eaten quite a bit today...well, especially tonight, I just had
tuna salad and cucumber for lunch. But I had a steak and some cheese
and some cottage cheese.

Oh yeah, I am a male, you're right. I thought that would have been
funny if I pretended to be a very large female, but I decided against
it.

My next question would be: What is it, four calories per gram of fat?
Do you add that onto your regular calories to find where you're at?

Thanks.