To begin designing your own diet, you’ll need to know your Basal Metabolism Rate (BMR) and know how many pounds you want to lose per week.
To lose one pound of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories.
If your BMR is 2547 calories per day (as mine was) and you want to lose 2 pounds per week, you must deduct 1000 calories per day (3,500 calories x 2 = 7,000 calories / 7 days = 1000 calories) from the 2547 BMR rate so you have a daily calorie balance of 1600 calories (rounded up from 1547).
You will now develop a weight loss program for yourself based on 1600 calories per day.
Setting a goal of losing 2 pounds per week is sensible. Losing 1 to 1-1/2 pounds per week may be the right amount for you. You don’t want to set your daily calorie level so low that you will be hungry.
If you want to lose more than 2 pounds per week, consider increasing your activity level. I, like so many other people my age, have arthritis of one form or another that keeps us from doing strenuous physical activity. There are alternatives to strenuous exercise.
Divide your calories between your daily meals
Divide the 1600 calories among the meals you usually eat per day. Eat three meals if you can. In my case I decided I’d devise meal plans that called for 400-calorie breakfasts, 500-calorie lunches, and 600-700 calorie suppers. Your calorie counts won’t always be exact, but close is good.
You can change calorie distribution levels to suit your own needs. If you’d rather have a 650-calorie supper and a 550-calorie lunch or a 700-calorie breakfast, a 500-calorie lunch, and a 400-calorie supper, you may do so. It’s entirely up to you how you arrange your calories. Just be sure you shoot for the goal of no more than 1600 calories per day (or your personal daily goal).
If your goal is to eat only 1200 calories per day, you could divide your calories into a program where breakfast is perhaps 350 calories, lunch is 450 calories, and supper is 400 calories. If you can, it is better to eat the largest two meals during the earlier part of your day when you most need the energy the food supplies.
Developing menus
After deciding how you wish to divide your calories among your meals, start developing menus for yourself that give you the necessary amount of calories. It’s easiest to start with breakfast menus. It’s a meal you can eat at any time during the day, so if you want to start your diet before you have some lunch and supper menus designed to your liking, you can eat a variety of breakfasts. I often eat my omelet menu for lunch or supper.
Developing the breakfast, lunch, and supper meals independent of one another allows you to switch menus around to suit your needs. For instance, if a friend asks you to go out for lunch where you will likely consume more calories, plan on eating one of your low calorie breakfast or lunch menus for your supper meal so that you stay within your goal.
The trick to this diet
If there is a trick to this diet it is that you measure and record everything, so that you know how many calories you’re eating and then you make choices among the foods you love.
You are going one step beyond cooking with your favorite recipes: you are figuring out the calorie count per serving for these recipes.
Believe me, it is not that difficult. It takes a little extra time, yes, but it is well worth it when you see your weight going down each week.
One of the first recipes I calculated the per-serving calorie count for was my favorite banana bread recipe because I had overripe bananas on my kitchen counter. Here’s how it works:
Connie’s Basic Banana Bread
| Ingredient | Calories |
| 1/4 cup vegetable shortening @ 1 Tbsp. = 110 calories | 440 |
| 1 egg | 78 |
| 2 cups flour @ 1/4 c. = 110 calories | 880 |
| 1 cup granulated sugar @ 1 Tbsp. = 45 calories | 720 |
| 3 mashed, ripe bananas @ 93 calories each | 280 |
| 1tsp. baking soda @ 0 calories | 0 |
| 1/2 tsp. salt @ 0 calories | 0 |
| 1 cup chopped nuts (pecans: 1/4 c = 200 calories | 800 |
| Total calories for entire loaf: | 3198 |
| Calories per 1/12th of loaf slice: | 266 |
| Calories per half-slice serving size: | 133 |
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I baked the banana bread in a 3-3/4" x 10-1/4" loaf pan. When the loaf cooled I examined it and decided to cut it into 12 slices. The slices were fairly thick so I decided my serving size should be half a slice. I froze the full slices in packages of four slices each with plastic wrap between each slice so that I could easily remove one slice, as I needed it. I then divided the total loaf calories by 12 slices to get my total per thick slice. No doubt I could easily get 14 slices from the loaf but I liked the thick half slices. The portion size and calorie counts are acceptable to me. Here’s the balance of the recipe in the event you’d like to make it for yourself. I don’t know where the recipe originally came from but it is the recipe I’ve used since I was 12 years old, experimenting with baking. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cream sugar and shortening. Add egg and mashed bananas. Blend well. Sift together dry ingredients and add gradually, incorporating well. Add nuts. Put into a greased loaf pan and bake 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. It’s important that the bread goes into the oven immediately because the wet ingredients activate the baking soda and the rise will begin immediately. |
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I had never realized how many calories were in banana bread when I used to help myself to two generous full slices slathered with butter before I started my Do It Yourself Diet.
Now I know, I still eat it, but I eat half-slices of it. Now I consider it a special treat and I savor it more as I eat it.
One of the next things I calculated was Mother’s Homemade Strawberry-Rhubarb Sauce. I won’t go into the details here but this was one thing I had to measure after it was cooked so that I’d know how much sauce had been produced after cooking down the rhubarb.
I didn’t concentrate only on treats, another early calculation was done on my "Doctored-up" Spaghetti Sauce.
I used Ragu spaghetti sauce, added one pound of 85% lean ground beef (my package had a Nutrition Facts label stating it was 13.6 ounces for a total of 960 calories), 2 Tbsp. raw sugar to cut the tomato acid, and one medium chopped onion. I reduced the calories in the ground beef by 15% because I cooked off the fat and didn’t put it into the Ragu sauce. (Note: That may be faulty reasoning, but it seemed logical to me.)
My final calculations: 1/2 cup serving doctored-up Ragu = 157 calories. Knowing how many calories in my doctored-up sauce was handy information to have. I could have the sauce over pasta, a baked potato, make Ziti with it, make lasagna with it; I had only to use my imagination.
When I want a meal of spaghetti sauce over pasta, I measure out 2 ounces of dry pasta (whatever variety I feel like eating that day) and cook only that amount. Surprisingly, that is enough pasta. Two ounces of pasta is 200 calories. Combined with the sauce, you have a nice lunch meal of 357 calories. You can still add a serving of vegetables and a small salad, or a dinner roll, or some fruit, or maybe you’ll want to have a cookie and still be under 500 calories.
Going over your daily allotment
When you invariably go over the daily allotment of calories you’ve set for yourself, don’t fret, tomorrow is another day. So what if you went over your allotment by 200, 300, 500 calories? Don’t beat yourself up over it. It means nothing in the long-term scheme of things as long as you return to your modified eating plan the next day. I feel satisfied if I stay between 1600 and 2000 calories per day though I stay quite close to my 1600-calorie daily goal.
Strawberry shake
One day I wanted to have a small strawberry shake (about 560 calories) at a fast food restaurant along with my cheeseburger (340 calories).
I thought about it awhile, then rejected the shake for the bottle of skim milk I carry with me in a small cooler. (Note: I carry skim milk with me because I’m diabetic and sometimes I need to drink it to counteract a low blood sugar.) I figured, if I wait until I get home, I can put 1/2 cup of strawberries (22 calories) into the blender along with 8 oz. of skim milk (90 calories) and 1/2 cup of vanilla ice cream (120 calories), blend for a few seconds, and I’ve got a 232 calorie strawberry shake.
Skip the ice cream and I have a 112 calorie strawberry milkshake - a matter of making choices. It also occurred to me that the 560-calorie shake was the equivalent of 1-1/2 quarts of skim milk. I could give up milk for six days to make up for drinking the strawberry shake. It wasn’t worth it to me to order the 560-calorie shake. I had other options.
You’ll notice that I use strawberries a lot. In the summer when they are so plentiful I love using them because they are so low in calories as are so many fresh fruits. They are also available all year round as frozen fruit. I buy the whole frozen fruit without added sugar. If I feel that they simply must have some sugar, I add it myself so I know exactly how many calories I’ve added. One tablespoon of sugar (48 calories) goes a long way to sweeten up the frozen berries.
Calorie counts for menu planning
Menu planning based on calorie count is much easier than it was years ago because we now have the Nutrition Facts label on prepackaged foods so you can see exactly how many calories you are getting for a specific serving size.
I think Corinne T. Netzer’s book The Complete Book of Food Counts is a must for you to develop your various menus. Mine is the fifth edition that is over 800 pages of familiar foods with their calorie counts along with the grams of protein, carbohydrates, fat, cholesterol, sodium, and fiber. There are also very easy to use online calorie counters. Here are two good ones: Calorie Counter and Calorie Lab. The Calorie Control Council sponsors an interesting website that includes a calorie counter and some 2000 calorie per day menus using low-calorie and low-fat foods and beverages.
