This Body Transformation Proves You Need to Eat More (and Not "Starve Yourself")

By Jenny Sugar

Updated on 6/25/2018 at 9:00 PM

Let's talk food and calories 👀🙌🏼 I get lots of questions about how much you should eat. It is not easy to answer this question. It depends on a lot of things: your weight, your height, your age, how active you are during the day, how often and how intensive you workouts are and what your goal is. But one is definitely easy to estimate. It's how much you shouldn't eat. You can't starve yourself ‼️ When I see people saying that they eat 800-1200 kcal, this seriously scares me. You won't get any results on a long run with this amount of calories. Your body and you need enough fuel to feel good, to take challenges and to achieve goals. Let's start the calculations with RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate), basically the amount of calories you burn when at rest (or in different words - you need to stay alive). The more active you are during a day, the more calories you should eat to maintain your weight. It is normal that when you want to lose fat you decrease your calories intake. However, you should be smart doing that. Don't put your body in a high calorie deficit straight from the beginning of the process. You will not have much to cut later on when you hit a plateau and you don't see any progress anymore. I would suggest starting at 10% of your calorie intake caloric decrease per day for a few weeks. If you look at my progress on the pictures, it happened mostly because I changed my eating habits (and started to workout out). In 2015 my eating was a total mess. There were days I forgot about food (too much work and stress) or I could eat the whole box of donuts only for lunch. When I switched to linear calories intake per day my results rushed. And the consistency and regular eating was the key. If you are now at a very low calorie intake and you don't see progress, try to eat more. It may be a little bit difficult at the beginning, you may gain weight but when your body adjust to it, you will see only benefits 💁🏼♥️🤗 #transformationtuesday #transformation #lifting #heavyweights #girlswholift #beforeandafter #ageisjustanumber #nutrition #eatbetternotless #bbgprogress #screwthescale

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In order to lose weight, creating a calorie deficit is a must. It's simple math — you need to burn up more calories than you're taking in. But this woman, Nessa, is living proof that cutting too many calories doesn't work. She says, "You can't starve yourself ‼️ When I see people saying that they eat 800-1200 kcal, this seriously scares me."

Your body needs fuel in order to function and feel good, and the more active you are, the more calories you'll need. You do need to cut calories to lose weight, but Nessa says, "Don't put your body in a high calorie deficit straight from the beginning of the process." She suggests figuring out how many calories you should decrease per day, but only decreasing 10 percent of that for the first few weeks to let your body get used to it. If you all of a sudden start cutting out 500 calories a day, you're going to be hungry, cranky, and will most likely just give up, or not get the results you're after.

Be consistent with your calorie intake, and make sure you're consuming enough calories (never go below 1,200). These progress photos are proof that eating more and eating the same amount of calories per day are what worked for Nessa. So if your weight has hit a plateau, maybe the key is to eat a little more!