That’s the quantity of calories I should be eating in order to maintain the current body structure I have — if I were an average that is.

diet
–noun
1. food and drink considered in terms of its qualities, composition, and its effects on health: Milk is a wholesome article of diet.
2. a particular selection of food, esp. as designed or prescribed to improve a person’s physical condition or to prevent or treat a disease: a diet low in sugar.
3. such a selection or a limitation on the amount a person eats for reducing weight: No pie for me, I’m on a diet.
4. the foods eaten, as by a particular person or group: The native diet consists of fish and fruit.
5. food or feed habitually eaten or provided: The rabbits were fed a diet of carrots and lettuce.
6. anything that is habitually provided or partaken of: Television has given us a steady diet of game shows and soap operas.
–verb (used with object)
7. to regulate the food of, esp. in order to improve the physical condition.
8. to feed.
–verb (used without object)
9. to select or limit the food one eats to improve one’s physical condition or to lose weight: I’ve dieted all month and lost only one pound.
10. to eat or feed according to the requirements of a diet.
–adjective
11. suitable for consumption with a weight-reduction diet; dietetic: diet soft drinks.

Telling people you’re on a diet to maintain your current weight, or even gain weight, generally gets you a few rather odd looks and many rather curious (snide? dubious? derisive?) comments. It’s quite hard to understand really. Many people seem to believe that the only time you “diet” is when you’re trying to lose weight, it’s these same people that end up using crap and unhealthy diets like the Atkins (sorry Dr Atkins you’ve been deluding house wives for almost 40 years now; many of your principles are valid, however your implementation is not) diet for fast results and end up yoyoing up and down on these things.

Losing weight is easy, losing fat is not. There is no quick solution so I don’t know how people get it into their heads that they’re able to lose in excess of 5kg / week or something equally ridiculous. The only people who can even approach numbers like that are the morbidly obese. Marketing is a wonderful thing… those people you always see in TV ads, many of them start out ripped and then gain a bunch of fat for the before and after pics.

Just as an aside, a can of coke contains roughly 140 calories of carbs. In this form it’s basically pure simple sugar, so it gets metabolised very quickly and isn’t really used for much. Also something to note is that the average person who doesn’t do any physical activities probably doesn’t even hit 2000 calories a day for maintenance requirements. Anyone doing the maths yet? Here’s some more numbers, there are roughly 4 calories in a gram of carbohydrate, 4 calories in a gram of protein, 9 calories in a gram of fat, and for all you drinkers out there 9 calories in a gram of alcohol. The first 3 have nutritional value, alcohol however does not, hence the term “empty calorie” often gets bandied about. Empty calories tend to get converted straight into fat and are present in many popular “foods” — anything with sugar basically, as well as dense saturated fats. To lose weight, it’s quite simple, your body needs to burn more calories than it consumes.

Anyways, this post got sidetracked quite a bit so I’ll probably follow up with a proper one where I explain things a bit better. I’m sure many people aren’t even remotely interested, this is just something that has quite a life changing impact on me.