How many a day?

Spotty Teapot

Full Member
I know that SW is not a calorie counting diet, and I am VERY glad for that :D but..roughly how many calories should we be having a day to lose weight anyway?

I only ask because thinking about it and reading a lot here it is possible that you could eat a lot of free food in a day (beans, etc) and be eating too much and not lose because of it..even though technically you are still on plan.
 
It depends on the in dividual. You need to work our your BMR (there are a number of free calculators online) which is the number of calories your body needs to just perform basic functions based on sex, age, height and weight. They then say that eating 500 calories a day less than that will lead to a 1lb weight loss over a week. People who are very overweight will have a higher BMR than a normal person just because it takes more energy to keep a larger body going.
 
You max really depends on your build and activity levels. Google 'Basal Metabolic Rate' this is "the amount of daily energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate environment" - it'll ask you your weight, height etc, and give you a general figure based on that. Mine is about 1500 cals per day if my memory serves me correctly.

It's true that you could 'over indulge' on free foods, but the idea of SW is that you would be full and satisfied with your free foods, long before you ever got to that level. It's taught me a lot about what I eat and I'm loving the healthy and varied diet I now eat.

I've been on SW for a month now and have tasted so many new things I've never tried before, I love it!
 
Well thing is your body need a certain amount of calories a day to keep going this is called your basal metabolic rate, the bigger you are the more your body will need obviously as your body needs more energy to function. Also Bmr is based on your activity level too. There are a load of calculators online.

As for maximum amount, iots hard to dsaythe recomended daily amount seems to lie around 2000 cals a day though a lot of slimming diets tend to say around 1800 cals a day. But with sw i think as long as you stick to plan you wont need to worry about calorie counting.

Though saying that i'm a serial calorie counter so for me its hard for me not to take a mental note of calories i'm consuming but because with slimming world you fill up on nutrient dense, but low calorie foods such as veg and friut(well i do being all green). Even though you seemed to be eating more energy wise your eating less.

Also i do think sw is magic as i;m trying to work it out properly and i cant tbh it has stumped me. I cant quite pinpoint how it works.
 
My boyfriend did ww's last year and lost around 3 stone on it, the other 2 stone he lost through calorie counting. I cant remember how much he was on, but it wasnt strict/low amount as he was also doing lots of running/races etc so he needed the calories. He's only got around a stone or so to go and he's signed up to do his first triathlon this year.

x
 
If it helps, I have counted the calories i've had a day on SW, just out of curiousity really as I was sussing out how the plan worked. It varied between 850 and just under 2000, but usually averaged about 1500, which is generally the amount advised per day for ladies wanting to lose weight.

The free food is really low in calories and high in water content, so while it feels like you're eating loads, it's really fairly low in calories and filling. The extra's like syns would work out at roughly 300 calories a day for the full 15 syns, and healthy extra's would work out at roughly 250 for cereal and milk, so even with those it gives you loads of calories to play with for free food.
 
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