A 500 calorie per day diet is a way to quickly lose excess weight. The daily calorie intake is different for everyone. It depends on lifestyle, metabolism, height and weight. The average calorie intake for a woman per day is 1500-2000 calories. The name of the diet contains the essence of the diet - consume 500 calories per day.
Goal: the body, receiving a smaller norm, begins to use up its reserves.
Like any way to change your diet, this method has its advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantage of the diet: you have to calculate the number of calories in each serving. To ensure accurate measurements, you should purchase a kitchen scale and arm yourself with a food calorie table.
The disadvantage of this method is that it is a sharp limitation and a lot of stress for the body if you stick to this diet for a long time.
The advantage of a diet for weight loss is the diversity of your diet. If mono-diets quickly get bored with their products, then here you can cook something new every day. Accordingly, you can spend a lot of time on such a diet without breakdowns.
Basic principles of nutrition, recommended duration
The 500 calorie diet is the simplest method for losing weight . It consists of getting rid of extra pounds as quickly as possible, selecting a daily diet of approximately 500 calories on certain foods.
It can be considered varied, not consisting of the same or not the most favorite products. When creating your own menu, you need to calculate the energy value of dishes based on the calorie content of their ingredients, and then select them to fit the overall daily limit.
In this case, the standard is 500 calories per day.
The minimum physiological norm of energy according to WHO standards is 1200 calories ; a significant underestimation of this indicator is stress for the body. Therefore, maintaining a low-calorie diet for more than one day is dangerous. By following a certain diet plan, you can get rid of a minimum of 5-7 kilograms in a couple of weeks.
A five-hundred-calorie diet does not prohibit eating almost any food , but with the condition that the daily energy limit will not be exceeded. Everyone is free to choose what to eat - a bar of chocolate or a large portion of vegetables.
A weekly meal plan might look like this:
- On Monday you can eat everything except prohibited foods.
- On Tuesday, spend a mono-fasting day on one product or create a low-calorie menu (its options will be offered below).
- Wednesday is a day without restrictions, just like Monday.
- Thursday is like Tuesday.
- The remaining days of the week are the same as Monday and Wednesday.
If your health deteriorates during fasting, then you need to reconsider the food set for weight loss in the direction of increasing its energy value.
What are calories
Calories measure any energy, including that obtained from food. The body spends it to ensure vital functions, to perform certain reactions, etc. Many people may ask: “How will this information help me lose weight?”
If you ask any nutritionist or athlete, they will confidently answer: in order to lose weight, you need to spend more calories than the body receives. Therefore, you need to calculate how much energy a person spends per day, and based on this, select the daily calorie intake.
Sample menu for the week, recommendations for preparation
The lowest calorie diet recommends five meals a day . It is important to note that only 2 fasting days are done per week (the second and fourth) with mandatory calorie counting; on the remaining days this is not necessary.
At this time, everyone eats without any special restrictions, but with the exception of some products, the list of which will be given below. Compliance with the drinking regime - up to 2 liters of clean water per day - is mandatory on all days.
On fasting days, several diet options are offered.
1st option:
- Breakfast. Coffee without sugar - 7 kcal, an apple weighing more than 100 g - 72 kcal. Total - 79 kcal. If you replace the apple with a 20-gram piece of cheese, which has 43 calories, the total is 70 kcal.
- Snack: orange – 43 kcal.
- Dinner. Bean soup, consisting of a 150-gram piece of cabbage and the same volume of green beans, 3 potatoes, 2 carrots, a couple of green onions and herbs. A 200 gram serving is 99 calories. Salad: 2 tomatoes (24), cucumber (12), piece of cheese (43). Total yield – 79 calories, whole lunch – 178 units.
- Snack: banana (90) or apple (52).
- Dinner. 4 carrots per 300 g weighing 105 kcal.
2nd option:
- Breakfast. Tea without sugar, 2 boiled eggs or steam omelet – 250 units.
- Dinner. Vegetable salad of cucumbers and tomatoes with a 200-gram serving - 180 units.
- Dinner: half a banana – 45 units.
3rd option:
- Breakfast. Tea without sugar with an apple or a piece of cheese in 20 g - 99 units.
- Snack – orange – 43 units.
- Dinner. 200-gram serving of lean chicken broth with vegetable salad – 178 units.
- Snack – banana – 90 units.
- Dinner – 3 baked apples without sugar – 100 units.
Soup for lunch can be replaced with lean fish baked in foil; another option is fish with steamed vegetables. Breakfast can consist of several vegetables or fruits.
It is not necessary to drink coffee or tea; pure water without gas will have a greater effect . In 2 weeks, with its help you can get rid of almost a kilogram of toxins.
On all days of the week, fried, smoked, fatty foods, flour, salt (soy sauce will replace it), sugar (sweeteners instead), vegetables with a high starch content (potatoes, rice, corn) are prohibited.
And on days of a strict diet, milk and dried fruits are not allowed.
500 calorie a day diet: recipes
- Sea salad for 150 kcal. Stir boiled shrimp, mussels and squid with green salad leaves. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice.
- Tropical salad for 200 kcal. Fry a slice of chicken breast in a dry frying pan and cut into pieces. Cut one slice of pineapple into cubes. Cut the cucumber into strips. Tear lettuce leaves. Season with salt and a tablespoon of light mayonnaise.
- Pollock with sauce for 160 kcal. Steam pollock fillet. For the sauce, mix two large spoons of sour cream, finely chopped herbs and one grated gherkin. Pour the sauce over the finished fish and season with white pepper.
- Chocolate and berry dessert for 150 kcal. Mash half a glass of berries into puree. Dilute low-fat cottage cheese with a tablespoon of yogurt, add sweetener and stir until smooth. Place berries in a bowl, curd mixture on top, sprinkle with cinnamon and cocoa powder.
- Chicken soup 50 kcal. Chop the chicken breast and boil the broth. Add carrots, onions, bell peppers, salt and spices. There is a great substitute for noodles - shirataki pasta. Their calorie content is zero. Sold in health food stores.
- Shirataki paste. Grind the chicken breast through a meat grinder. Stew the minced meat in water. Add carrots, onions and a spoonful of tomato paste. Stir in shirataki (noodles).
How to calculate calorie content yourself
To count calories in your daily diet, be sure to use a calorie table , which displays information about the amount of energy received from each product. For example, 100 g of beef is 220 kcal, veal - 108 kcal, potatoes - 77, and beets - 37. To understand whether this is a lot or a little, you can compare it with 100 g of sugar - 399 kcal.
Energy replenishment from complex dishes - salad, soup, etc. can be calculated by summing up the indicators of all components. Interestingly, there are no calories in pure water; you can drink it as much as you like .
As for the energy component of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, 1 g of proteins and carbohydrates contains 4 kcal each, and fats contain 9 kcal.
Calculation of the optimal calorie content of a menu for weight loss is best done individually , taking into account your weight and height index. This means that you need to subtract 100 from your height and compare the result with your actual weight.
Let's look at how to do the calculation using conditional examples:
- Weight – 66 kg with height 164 cm . 164-100=64. 64 is close to 66. 164-66*3=294. 500+294=794 – this is the optimal daily calorie value for best weight loss.
- Weight 82 kg with height 170 cm . 170-100=70. In this case, the weight clearly exceeds the height. Therefore, the calculation conditions change: 170-82=88. This value is multiplied not by 3, as in the previous example, but by 2. The result is 176, i.e., to lose weight, you already need 676 calories per day.
- An example of calculating the calorie content of borscht .
The recipe for this dish includes half a kilogram of cabbage (240*5=120), 100 g of beets (37), the same amount of onions (30), half a kilogram of potatoes (90*5=450), 200 g of carrots (27*2=54), kilogram of veal (108*10=1080), 100 g of vegetable oil (899) and 2.5 liters of water (0). In total, with a weight of 5 kg, the dish contains 260 kcal, and its 200-gram serving contains 106.7 kcal. (2670:500*200). - An example of calculating the calorie content of buckwheat porridge with water. A glass of buckwheat – 626 kcal (313*2), 2 glasses of water – 0. Total: 600 g contains 626 kcal, and in a 100-gram portion – 104.3 kcal.
How to lose weight by counting calories? Our website has the answer to this question. Read articles on the following topics:
- Low calorie 800 calorie weight loss program.
- Losing excess weight with a 1000 calorie diet.
- Nutritional tips for 1200 calories per day.
- Recommendations for creating a 1300 calorie diet.
- Is it possible to lose weight on 1500 calories a day?
Calorizer
Since not everyone likes to count, an online calorie calculator was created to simplify the calorie counting system. In order to calculate the energy value of a product or a whole dish, it is enough to indicate everything eaten in it. And in a second the result is ready.
But the online calorie calculator is far from the only one; there are many more quick ways. Applications for smartphones, tablets and computer programs. They can show not only the calorie content of an individual product, but also an entire dish with a large number of ingredients. For example, you don’t need to count each component, you can just type the name of the salad - and the result is ready.
Recommendations for the duration of compliance
To make any sense from unloading, you need to follow these rules:
- Do not do it for 2 days in a row; it is better to stick to the 5 to 2 scheme, i.e. no more than two such days a week.
- Additionally, take a vitamin-mineral complex.
- If you feel hungry, first drink a glass of water, and if it doesn’t go away, then eat something, for example, a couple of walnuts.
- Drink at least 8 glasses of clean, still water daily. This will help not only effectively lose weight, but also improve your well-being.
- Have snacks with low-calorie fruits, such as tangerines - there are only 330 units per kilogram, and bananas are high-calorie foods.
- A food diary helps you control your weight, where you need to enter data about your daily diet.
- It is undesirable to eat after 16:00 on fasting days.
Saturday
Number of kilocalories: 1547
Breakfast
- Buckwheat – 50 g
- Greens – 50 g
- Cheese – 20 g
- Chicken egg – 55 g
Boil buckwheat and egg. Finely chop the greens, egg and cheese and mix with buckwheat. Add salt to taste.
Snack
- Grapefruit – 200 g
- Orange – 200 g
- Banana – 100 g
- Buckwheat – 50 g
- Green beans – 200 g
- Cheese – 30 g
- Chili pepper – 20 g
- Sunflower oil – 10 g
Fry beans and peppers in oil, boil buckwheat. Mix and sprinkle with grated cheese.
Snack
- Walnuts – 40 g
- Beetroot – 150 g
- Chicken breast – 100 g
Boil beets and breast separately. Cut the beets into slices or grate them.
Snack
- Kefir 1.5% – 350 g
Contraindications, pros and cons
The positive aspects of the 500 calorie diet are that it cleanses the body of toxins and cholesterol, it normalizes blood glucose levels in case of obesity, and speeds up metabolism. She has many followers, but there are also many opponents of such fasting.
With a decrease in blood glucose, dizziness and weakness may occur . Weight loss is sometimes accompanied by headaches, nausea; if you abuse low-calorie fasting, your nails break, your hair becomes dull, your skin peels, and circles appear under your eyes.
This method of losing weight is contraindicated for pregnant and nursing mothers, teenagers, diabetics and those who have problems with the gastrointestinal tract, liver and kidneys.
