Guidelines for how much you should eat: Calories, fat, sodium, etc

[JanetRose]

I cannot find a website with information. Does anyone know? Thanks.

 

[bicker]

There are literally thousands, and what's more, most of them disagree with each other. There are a lot of very powerful and conflicting forces seeking to influence you in this regard, and each one of them believes they're doing so because it is what is best for you. Be forewarned.

The WISH forum, here on the DIS, is as good as any place to get a certain set of those perspectives. I recommend you post your message there. You'll still get conflicting information, but you'll only get a small portion of the available perspectives thrown at you (and among them, incidently, the one I believe), so it'll be easier to distill the information you are seeking. Just keep in mind that there is no correct answer to your question.

 

[JanetRose]

thanks

 

[Christine]

Another place you can go is www.fitday.com.

It is pretty generic and not pushing any specific diet. You can put your information in there (how much you want to lose, what your eating goals are) and it will give you some guidelines. There is also a daily journal you can post and, at the end of the day, it will tell you how much fat, carbs, sodium, nutrients, etc., that you have eaten.

Best of all, their basic stuff is free and it's all you need. My friend paid the $20 for the "cadillac" verison of Fitday and it was really more than was needed.

 

[bicker]

FitDay points out something important: While there is no correct answer about calories, fat, sodium, etc., there are a few things that are unquestionably helpful if you're trying to gain control over any aspect of diet: Journaling, for example. Lots of folks are successful without journaling what they eat, but there are very few people who have been more successul without journaling than they were with journaling, all other factors held constant. In a nutshell, for many things, what is truly known is that numbers for micro- and macro-nutrients is only part of the story: Diet control is all about establishing healthy behaviors.

Of course, we don't know why you're looking for the information you're asking for, so it's not clear that's relevant to your situation...

 

[Christine]

FitDay points out something important: While there is no correct answer about calories, fat, sodium, etc., there are a few things that are unquestionably helpful if you're trying to gain control over any aspect of diet: Journaling, for example. Lots of folks are successful without journaling what they eat, but there are very few people who have been more successul without journaling than they were with journaling, all other factors held constant. In a nutshell, for many things, what is truly known is that numbers for micro- and macro-nutrients is only part of the story: Diet control is all about establishing healthy behaviors.

Of course, we don't know why you're looking for the information you're asking for, so it's not clear that's relevant to your situation...

bicker,
This was the case for me. I was just trying to lose 10 lbs and was really having no success. I *thought* had cut back my calories sufficiently (and I had, indeed, cut back). But it wasn't enough. The helpful folks on the WISH board pointed me to Fitday. When I started journaling there I realized that my "cut back" version of eating was still around 2300 calories a day. Certainly not enough for any weight loss (imagine what I must have been eating before that ). So, Fitday allowed me to see where I needed to cut speficially. Once I got my calories down to about 1800 per day, I started losing. After I got in the swing with that, I really started to look at "how" I was eating. They give you a nice little pie chart that shows how much of your calories are fat. That was good. Because you can still cut calories but not be eating well. The sodium count was good too. I could see that on my "Lean Cuisine" days, I would exceed the recommended guidelines for sodium. Fortunately, I don't have a problem with sodium but I still wanted to work on getting it lower and this site really helped me to see all those things.

 

[bicker]

Be careful with sodium. I got my sodium intake under control when I was losing weight -- so much so that I started blacking-out. My doctor's recommendation: Eat more salt. Life is often a careful balance -- just pushing towards one side of an aspect is not always the right thing to do.

 

[Christine]

Be careful with sodium. I got my sodium intake under control when I was losing weight -- so much so that I started blacking-out. My doctor's recommendation: Eat more salt. Life is often a careful balance -- just pushing towards one side of an aspect is not always the right thing to do.

Thanks. I was just trying to get it down to the recommended 2400 mgs versus the close to 4000 mgs. I was probably getting.

 

[bicker]

What was interesting was that I believe my intake, at the time, was close to 3000 mg per day. It just wasn't enough (and here's the kicker) for me. That's why there is so much conflicting information: People are different!

 

[JanetRose]

I finally found it:

Recommended
Calories 2000
Fat 65
Sat Fat 20
Cholesterol 300
Sodium 2400
Carbohydrates 300

 

[bicker]

My experience is that level of intake will support a 200 pound person. YMMV.