A general idea is all well and good, but too often you see people calculating through intricate arithmetic that their daily calorific needs to grow are, say, 3750 calories.
They'll make up eating plans correct to the last calorie, eat that amount day in day out, regardless of what they actually DO on that day (as DIESEL's guide advises), making no adjustment to take into account activity, whether it was a workout day or not, etc etc.
Okay, so you've got your 3750 calories. Some days that'll be okay. Now comes the day when you go and play soccer for an hour with your kids. Or wash your car. Or help your neighbour put down some decking. You eat those 3750 calories again blindly, even though your expenditure has obviously been more than that, and you need to eat more - but you don't because you've got that magic number.
What's more, calorie counting as a concept isn't really sound. It smacks of 24hr time windows and 'it doesn't matter WHEN in those 24hrs that you eat your calories' etc - I say bollocks to that, the body doesn't count 24hrs, we just do, it's a human convention. The body knows periods of inactivity and periods of activity of varying intensity levels.
Calorie counters think that they can eat half their calories in one meal and spread the other half over six meals and that'd still have the same metabolic effect as eating six evenly sized meals.
Or, the killer, is when dieters who eat like 1700 calories a day, comes their cheat day and what do they do? Banana for breakfast, apple and slice of cheese for lunch, and then spend 1600 calories on dinner with some junk food.
That's NOT how the body works.
Yes, count calories to roughly estimate how many you're eating, but once you've got that vague idea, put the calculator away. Your body will tell you the rest.
