Try My New Macronutrient and Calories Calculator for Ketogenic Diets

[Blood Sugar 101]

I put together a new calculator that uses the most accurate formula available to calculate BMR--it turns out that the Harris Benedict equations do not hold up well when tested in the lab with real people whose metabolisms are measured.

The calculator figures your maintenance calories, and then, given your chosen carbohydrate intake, calculates the safe level of protein you need to be eating and how much fat should round out your diet.

This is a beta. My thinking is that it could be very helpful to people looking for help breaking stalls.

The calculator is here:

Calculate Yoru Nutrient Balance on a Ketogenic Diet

There is more discussion of the principles used to design the calculator at my blog at Diabetes Update Blog .

I welcome your feedback. For those of you who log your intake, I'd really like to know how close the calculator comes to the micronutrient balance you have found to produce weight loss, especially after the first months of the diet when weight loss is usually easier.

One thing the calculator tells me is that I'm not imagining things when I find it almost impossible to lose weight. My caloric requirement is about 1450 a day for maintenance. <sigh> This is one major reason why those of you who are young should do what you can to lose weight NOW, because once you get to be in your 60s your metabolism is likely to operate at a rate that is one step above hibernation,

[hadenuff]

What a great new tool. I bookmarked it. When I have more time I will compare it to what I have been eating. I know for sure that I am not eating enough. Still can't wrap my brain around that one!

[Ilpirata]

sub

[hummingbird11]

many thanks! great tool for me to check-out & share! I was just thinking about you the other day, it's been awhile since I've bumped into you! I hope you've been healthy, wealthy & well. a BIG happy & healthy new year to you!

[retroworx]

Wow. Well that was depressing. To lose weight, I must stay below 1100.

I suspect this is quite true and I am already in the middle of a WOE experiment to see if I really need to keep things under 1000 calories, given my age and my Hypothyroidism.

BS 101:

I notice that the conclusions don't seem to change when I adjust the carb intake numbers -- does the calculator adjust for the fabled "Atkins advantage" of ketosis?

Thanks for this!

[hummingbird11]

Originally Posted by retroworx

Wow. Well that was depressing. To lose weight, I must stay below 1100.

Oh Retro, that stinks! Is that with or without Exercise?

[Sleepy]

calculations to lose 1 lb per week....what if you want to lose 2 or more?

[hummingbird11]

Originally Posted by Sleepy

calculations to lose 1 lb per week....what if you want to lose 2 or more?

to lose more, cut the cals again.
but 1-2 lbs per week is healthy & sustainable.
(heavier people can lose 2 lbs a week safely)
lose more than that per week, and you'll be back!
(again & again & again)

PS: I that song: Going to California by LZ

[Sleepy]

Originally Posted by hummingbird11

to lose more, cut the cals again.
but 1-2 lbs per week is healthy & sustainable.
(heavier people can lose 2 lbs a week safely)
lose more than that per week, and you'll be back!
(again & again & again)

PS: I that song: Going to California by LZ

cut the cals about how much?

love me some LZ

[disgal]

Well, it's telling me I need 198 grams of protein(and 1700 calories). I'm thinkin' that's too much.

I feel best when I follow 65ish-70ish/ 5 /25ish-30ish (fat/carb/protein). I don't really count calories but I log my food and it usually comes out about 1400, give or take.

That means I get around 100-109 gms of protein. This seems to be working really well for me (and I've done this in the past). I definitely don't feel I need more calories.

[BrianSCohen]

Jenny,

Thanks for this calculator. What I find interesting in this calculator is that for someone following a low carb diet, it suggests that you can maintain or lose weight simply by modulating fat intake. My experience suggests otherwise and in fact I believe Dr. B suggests that you modulate protein to adjust your weight. In either case, I calculate that to maintain I need to eat 242 grams of fat, I guess I am off to belly up to the butter bar to keep my calories up.

Thanks for the post.

[electricfeel]

woah, it's telling me i need to eat 168g of protein to avoid losing muscle mass. i can barely choke down 80-90g daily. bummed.

also, to round out my diet with 92g of fat. i typically eat 120g+.

[Blood Sugar 101]

Dr. Bernstein suggests cutting protein to lose weight BUT he also limits how far you can cut it down. The amount you can cut it down to safely would be the amount calculated by the "after 3 weeks on a ketogenic diet" option.

Below that amount, you risk cannibalizing muscle. So at that point you have no choice but to cut out fat if you are stalled.

As far as activity level goes, there is quite a bit of research suggesting that people overestimate the impact of even the most energetic exercise on their caloric needs. If you aren't stalled and eating more than the calculator suggests and losing, then you probably are burning off what you think you are.

But this calculator is geared towards people who are stalled and many of them are overestimating the energy burnt in exercise. Plus, as you get older, (or if you are small) even amount of calories exercise burns off decreases, too.

Don't decrease your calories below 1100. It will depress your metabolism and though you may lose weight fast, when you go back to eating what should be maintenance, you will start to gain weight because your metabolism will be so slow.

That is one major reason to lose at the slowest rate you can stand, because slow loss gives you the best chance to maintain without having to eat a starvation diet for the rest of your life.

As far as how I'm doing goes, I packed on some weight over the holidays as expected-- 3 to 5 pounds but also a LOT of water because I was using a lot of Apidra insulin. I kept my blood sugars completely normal, so that was great and made it really easy to get back onto a diet afterwards. But the weight will pack on when you cover it with insulin.

I have been eating an extremely low carb ultra clean diet (10 g per day) since Dec 29 because that is the only way I can get completely off the insulin. (I have been having problems with the vial of basal insulin they sold me last month and don't get a new one for another week.)

This is the "bore yourself to death with food" diet--meat, eggs, under 4 oz cheese, one big salad a day. No processed anything (except 1 dose of bacon), no Artificial Sweeteners. No protein powder. Potassium, multivitamin, Vitamin D (3000 IU), calcium and fish oil. Lots and lots of hot tea, mostly herbal.

The extremely low carb diet definitely flushes out water--I can see that on my Tanita. I won't know how much fat I lost until I get back to eating a more reasonable low carb diet. It's been fun to see the scale descending more dramatically than usual, but I'm pretty sure most of it is water.

Mentally this extremely low carb diet make me feel odd and I don't feel that burst of energy that some do. Plus, living in the middle of a cloud of ketones isn't much fun. I was curious to see if eliminating insulin completely will make any difference in my weight loss speed, which was extremely slow all the months I was low carbing last year. I'm finishing up 2 weeks, so tomorrow I'll start adding in more veggies.

[retroworx]

Originally Posted by hummingbird11

Oh Retro, that stinks! Is that with or without Exercise?

Yeah! It totally stinks! Pity party for me!

BTW, that's totally sedentary. I'm currently anemic (ferritin below 4, which is just about as low as ya' wanna see ), and the only exercise I can manage these days is the typing you see here.

[BrianSCohen]

Originally Posted by Blood Sugar 101

Dr. Bernstein suggests cutting protein to lose weight BUT he also limits how far you can cut it down. The amount you can cut it down to safely would be the amount calculated by the "after 3 weeks on a ketogenic diet" option.

Below that amount, you risk cannibalizing muscle. So at that point you have no choice but to cut out fat if you are stalled.

As far as activity level goes, there is quite a bit of research suggesting that people overestimate the impact of even the most energetic exercise on their caloric needs. If you aren't stalled and eating more than the calculator suggests and losing, then you probably are burning off what you think you are.

But this calculator is geared towards people who are stalled and many of them are overestimating the energy burnt in exercise. Plus, as you get older, (or if you are small) even amount of calories exercise burns off decreases, too.

Don't decrease your calories below 1100. It will depress your metabolism and though you may lose weight fast, when you go back to eating what should be maintenance, you will start to gain weight because your metabolism will be so slow.

That is one major reason to lose at the slowest rate you can stand, because slow loss gives you the best chance to maintain without having to eat a starvation diet for the rest of your life.

As far as how I'm doing goes, I packed on some weight over the holidays as expected-- 3 to 5 pounds but also a LOT of water because I was using a lot of Apidra insulin. I kept my blood sugars completely normal, so that was great and made it really easy to get back onto a diet afterwards. But the weight will pack on when you cover it with insulin.

I have been eating an extremely low carb ultra clean diet (10 g per day) since Dec 29 because that is the only way I can get completely off the insulin. (I have been having problems with the vial of basal insulin they sold me last month and don't get a new one for another week.)

This is the "bore yourself to death with food" diet--meat, eggs, under 4 oz cheese, one big salad a day. No processed anything (except 1 dose of bacon), no Artificial Sweeteners. No protein powder. Potassium, multivitamin, Vitamin D (3000 IU), calcium and fish oil. Lots and lots of hot tea, mostly herbal.

The extremely low carb diet definitely flushes out water--I can see that on my Tanita. I won't know how much fat I lost until I get back to eating a more reasonable low carb diet. It's been fun to see the scale descending more dramatically than usual, but I'm pretty sure most of it is water.

Mentally this extremely low carb diet make me feel odd and I don't feel that burst of energy that some do. Plus, living in the middle of a cloud of ketones isn't much fun. I was curious to see if eliminating insulin completely will make any difference in my weight loss speed, which was extremely slow all the months I was low carbing last year. I'm finishing up 2 weeks, so tomorrow I'll start adding in more veggies.

Jenny,

That explanation helps. I do think it might help to point out, this is about fat loss, not weight loss. As you have noted, we don't want to lose muscle mass. My main point was that people who have reduced their carbs to ketogenic levels and are stalled should first look at the their protein levels. If your protein levels are way above the levels needed to sustain your lean body mass, then excess protein will be utilized by the body for glucose and even for fat storage. Once your protein levels are down and you have still stalled, then this new calculator could then be used to really force the issue through further calorie restriction. I would also further modify your minimum calorie requirements to be essentially a deficit of about 500 calories. I need over three thousand calories just to maintain. If I limited to 1100 calories (actually probably below 2000) I would go into starvation.

The only slight criticism I would have with this calculator is that to really be accurate, it really should calculate your protein demands based on lean body mass. Again, I would just note that this calculator can help people after they have attempted to break a stall by reducing their protein down to sustainment levels. Fat reduction as guided by this calculator may not work if your protein is too high.

Thanks for your efforts. This is a really good tool for those on ketogenic diets.

[Blood Sugar 101]

Brian,

I take your point about it being better to calculate protein based on lean body mass, but there is no generic way to determine LBM so rather than estimate it incorrectly, I've erred on the side of overestimating protein a bit.

The kind of person who is obsessed with gym-related body composition trivia is way beyond a need for this particular calculator. But the average dieter is not measuring with calipers and has no understanding of even the most basic facts of nutrient balance. They are the people who will find this most useful.

I learned this when I first put up my protein calculator. People are often way overeating protein on LC diets and under eating fat, for example.

The other nice thing about the calculator is that it decreases both fat and protein as people's carb level goes up. One huge problem people have as they go up the carb ladder is that they continue to eat the very high fat diets that work with low carb levels.

Many of us maintain very well with high fat inputs and higher carb intakes (60 g or so) but as carbs rise, so does insulin and that means dietary fat is going to get stored on the body.

I do not know of a way to calculate the ketogenic threshold for carbs. It varies with body weight. A 240 lb person can stay in ketosis with twice as many grams of carbohydrates as a 120 lb person, I suspect, based on how much a gram of carbohydrate will raise blood sugar which is a straight line function of weight.

You can tell where your ketogenic boundary is by finding the carb level where you suddenly gain 3 or more pounds-from glycogen refilling. For me it is about 70 g, but I'm small. The research says 100 g, but that is an average of large groups, some of whom are probably, like me at 70 and others at 130 g.

I cut off the calculator at 80 g because the fat prescription you get at a higher carb intake would be dangerous for a person of my size, which is many people's goal weight.

[pooticus]

Hey Jenny this is cool but a couple of suggestions. I put my info in and it gave me the quantities to maintain my weight and I'm assuming they are correct per the formula.

The problem comes in (unless I'm misreading) when I look down to see how much I would have to eat to lose 1 lb per week at a specified carb consumption count and it does not show any changes in nutrient values. It just shows the same amount of macros to ingest. So I think that needs to be fixed.

Healthy Nutrient Levels for Your Ketogenic Low Carb Diet
Your Height: 65.5 inches
Your Current Weight: 284.2 lbs

Your Age: 46

Your Gender: Female

Your Activity Level: Sedentary


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO MAINTAIN YOUR CURRENT WEIGHT:
To maintain your body weight eat 2,327 calories.

You have decided to eat 2 grams of carbohydrate a day.

To avoid loss of muscle mass you must eat 150 grams of high quality protein each day. This can be found in 25.1 ounces of meat, eggs, or hard cheese.

Round out your diet with 191 grams of fat.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO LOSE WEIGHT:
To lose a pound a week safely decrease your daily intake to 1,827 calories.

You have decided to eat 2 grams of carbohydrate a day. To avoid loss of lean muscle mass you must eat 150 grams of high quality protein each day. This can be found in 25.1 ounces of meat, eggs, or hard cheese.

Round out your diet with 135 grams of fat.



The other thing that would be really cool is that I've heard that safe weight loss is in the nature of 2lbs per week. I would like to also see the program show the nutrient intake if you desire a 2lb per week weight loss!!!

Thanks for you untiring work in this field.

Here are my numbers for you to see what I'm talking about:

Healthy Nutrient Levels for Your Ketogenic Low Carb Diet
Your Height: 65.5 inches
Your Current Weight: 282.4 lbs

Your Age: 46

Your Gender: Female

Your Activity Level: Sedentary


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO MAINTAIN YOUR CURRENT WEIGHT:
To maintain your body weight eat 2,317 calories.

You have decided to eat 2 grams of carbohydrate a day.

To avoid loss of muscle mass you must eat 150 grams of high quality protein each day. This can be found in 24.9 ounces of meat, eggs, or hard cheese.

Round out your diet with 190 grams of fat.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO LOSE WEIGHT:
To lose a pound a week safely decrease your daily intake to 1,817 calories.

You have decided to eat 2 grams of carbohydrate a day. To avoid loss of lean muscle mass you must eat 150 grams of high quality protein each day. This can be found in 24.9 ounces of meat, eggs, or hard cheese.

Round out your diet with 134 grams of fat.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The goal of this calculator is to identify optimal protein and fat intake levels for adults eating a ketogenic low carbohydrate diet of under 80 grams of carbohydrate a day. It will not prescribe a diet of under 1100 calories a day because of the possible damage very low calorie diets can do to our metabolisms.
All low carbohydrate dieters should be careful to eat the amount of protein suggested to avoid losing lean muscle mass. Exceeding the recommended amount of protein significantly may raise blood sugar and contribute to stalls.

Use the caloric recommendations and suggested fat gram amounts if you are not losing weight on a low carbohydrate diet without counting calories.

The calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor formulas to calculate basal metabolic rate and caloric requirements.These formulas are derived from data taken from large groups of people. The caloric requirements they calculate may not be accurate for individuals with severe metabolic problems or people older than 75.

Your diet is more likely to succeed if you underestimate your activity leve. Select "Sedentary" level unless you regularly follow a strenuous exercise program.

This calculator calculates your protein requirement based on the assumption that your brain needs 110 grams of carbohydrate during the first three weeks of a low carbohydrate diet and 50 grams after that. This is a generous estimate erring on the side of caution.

We use a factor of .36 g per pound of body weight to calculate the protein needed for muscle repair for a person who is sedentary. For someone who exercises at fairly high intensity, we use a factor of .54 g per pound of body weight.

We assume that 58% of each gram of dietary protein can be converted into carbohydrate by the liver. The possible conversion of fat into carbohydrate at the rate of 10% is ignored a it is not a factor for most people.

The brain's requirement for carbohydrate drops dramatically three weeks into a ketogenic diet as the brain switches over to using ketones for much of its energy. This is reflected in our protein calculations which are high at the outset of the diet to provide protein-converted carbohydrate to fuel the brain.

In coming up with nutrient recommendations to meet your target caloric goals, all calories not allocated to carbohydrate and protein are assigned to fat. Nutrient grams have been rounded.

Healthy Nutrient Levels for Your Ketogenic Low Carb Diet
Your Height: 65.5 inches
Your Current Weight: 282.4 lbs

Your Age: 46

Your Gender: Female

Your Activity Level: Sedentary


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO MAINTAIN YOUR CURRENT WEIGHT:
To maintain your body weight eat 2,317 calories.

You have decided to eat 2 grams of carbohydrate a day.

To avoid loss of muscle mass you must eat 150 grams of high quality protein each day. This can be found in 24.9 ounces of meat, eggs, or hard cheese.

Round out your diet with 190 grams of fat.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO LOSE WEIGHT:
To lose a pound a week safely decrease your daily intake to 1,817 calories.

You have decided to eat 2 grams of carbohydrate a day. To avoid loss of lean muscle mass you must eat 150 grams of high quality protein each day. This can be found in 24.9 ounces of meat, eggs, or hard cheese.

Round out your diet with 134 grams of fat.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The goal of this calculator is to identify optimal protein and fat intake levels for adults eating a ketogenic low carbohydrate diet of under 80 grams of carbohydrate a day. It will not prescribe a diet of under 1100 calories a day because of the possible damage very low calorie diets can do to our metabolisms.
All low carbohydrate dieters should be careful to eat the amount of protein suggested to avoid losing lean muscle mass. Exceeding the recommended amount of protein significantly may raise blood sugar and contribute to stalls.

Use the caloric recommendations and suggested fat gram amounts if you are not losing weight on a low carbohydrate diet without counting calories.

The calculator uses the Mifflin-St Jeor formulas to calculate basal metabolic rate and caloric requirements.These formulas are derived from data taken from large groups of people. The caloric requirements they calculate may not be accurate for individuals with severe metabolic problems or people older than 75.

Your diet is more likely to succeed if you underestimate your activity leve. Select "Sedentary" level unless you regularly follow a strenuous exercise program.

This calculator calculates your protein requirement based on the assumption that your brain needs 110 grams of carbohydrate during the first three weeks of a low carbohydrate diet and 50 grams after that. This is a generous estimate erring on the side of caution.

We use a factor of .36 g per pound of body weight to calculate the protein needed for muscle repair for a person who is sedentary. For someone who exercises at fairly high intensity, we use a factor of .54 g per pound of body weight.

We assume that 58% of each gram of dietary protein can be converted into carbohydrate by the liver. The possible conversion of fat into carbohydrate at the rate of 10% is ignored a it is not a factor for most people.

The brain's requirement for carbohydrate drops dramatically three weeks into a ketogenic diet as the brain switches over to using ketones for much of its energy. This is reflected in our protein calculations which are high at the outset of the diet to provide protein-converted carbohydrate to fuel the brain.

In coming up with nutrient recommendations to meet your target caloric goals, all calories not allocated to carbohydrate and protein are assigned to fat. Nutrient grams have been rounded.

[Stevie Renee]

Hi!
I was wondering where you were. I had not seen much posting by you so it is good to "see' you!

Off to check it out...

[claire26]

Jenny you're my hero! This is fantastic – thanks so much for putting something like this together. Brilliant!!!

[Blood Sugar 101]

Originally Posted by pooticus

The problem comes in (unless I'm misreading) when I look down to see how much I would have to eat to lose 1 lb per week at a specified carb consumption count and it does not show any changes in nutrient values. It just shows the same amount of macros to ingest. So I think that needs to be fixed.

The protein and carb prescriptions stay the same, but you didn't notice that the amount of FAT is lower in the weight loss section that you quoted.

You need to decrease the fat to lose because at your size you have a very high protein requirement to maintain your brain and muscle mass. If you were to decrease protein lower than the 150 g you would run the risk of losing lean muscle mass rather than fat mass.

To lose another pound, you would, in theory, decrease your intake by another 500 calories. These too would have to be fat calories, not protein calories. That would be 56 grams less fat.

Your protein requirement drops as your weight drops, BTW, so you can eat almost as much fat as you lose while decreasing protein to match your new weight.

But you are still left with an amount of fat while dieting that is three to four times the amount nutritionists usually suggest--30 g. So you are still eating a very high fat diet.

I think this may often get lost in the way the books are written. All the famous low carb books were written in the late 90s when low fat diets ruled the world for a readership that were convinced that eating more than 30 g of fat a day would make them fat. So the authors gave the message "eat lots of fat!" But 100 g is lots of fat compared to 30!

[sandyn]

depressing- its says I should eat 1400 cal. I thought I was doing good at 1700 cal. guess that explains my lack of loss

[Ilpirata]

depressing- its says I should eat 1400 cal. I thought I was doing good at 1700 cal. guess that explains my lack of loss

And I think that is the point of this new calculator. If one is losing well eating more calories than it recommends then please proceed! But if one ISN'T losing this is a great new tool to analyze your calorie/protein/fat/carb intake.

Maybe you could try cutting your calories by 150 per day and then burning 150 per day more to make up the difference?

[pooticus]

Originally Posted by Blood Sugar 101

The protein and carb prescriptions stay the same, but you didn't notice that the amount of FAT is lower in the weight loss section that you quoted.

You need to decrease the fat to lose because at your size you have a very high protein requirement to maintain your brain and muscle mass. If you were to decrease protein lower than the 150 g you would run the risk of losing lean muscle mass rather than fat mass.

To lose another pound, you would, in theory, decrease your intake by another 500 calories. These too would have to be fat calories, not protein calories. That would be 56 grams less fat.

Your protein requirement drops as your weight drops, BTW, so you can eat almost as much fat as you lose while decreasing protein to match your new weight.

But you are still left with an amount of fat while dieting that is three to four times the amount nutritionists usually suggest--30 g. So you are still eating a very high fat diet.

I think this may often get lost in the way the books are written. All the famous low carb books were written in the late 90s when low fat diets ruled the world for a readership that were convinced that eating more than 30 g of fat a day would make them fat. So the authors gave the message "eat lots of fat!" But 100 g is lots of fat compared to 30!

Thanks girl! I missed that completely!! I will go back and look again!

[Blood Sugar 101]

Originally Posted by Ilpirata

And I think that is the point of this new calculator. If one is losing well eating more calories than it recommends then please proceed! But if one ISN'T losing this is a great new tool to analyze your calorie/protein/fat/carb intake.

That is exactly my thinking.

And I want to be clear that these numbers are from group studies, so if a person is at the far end of the group, in terms of how their metabolisms work, it may not be all that helpful.

I really do look forward to hearing from people whether these figures are helpful for stall breaking.

[hummingbird11]

Originally Posted by sandyn

depressing- its says I should eat 1400 cal. I thought I was doing good at 1700 cal. guess that explains my lack of loss

you don't have to eat 1400 cals every day; you can zig zag-your cals to keep your metab revved-up!

shoot for 1400-1500 cals each day (1500 cals should be relatively easy with 65-70% fat)
then ONCE a week; spike it to 2000 cals and ONCE a week, take it really low but not less than 1200 cals.

something like:
1500/1500/1500/2000/1500/1500/1200

[hummingbird11]

Originally Posted by retroworx

Yeah! It totally stinks! Pity party for me!

BTW, that's totally sedentary. I'm currently anemic (ferritin below 4, which is just about as low as ya' wanna see ), and the only exercise I can manage these days is the typing you see here.

[sandyn]

Originally Posted by hummingbird11

you don't have to eat 1400 cals every day; you can zig zag-your cals to keep your metab revved-up!

shoot for 1400-1500 cals each day (1500 cals should be relatively easy with 65-70% fat)
then ONCE a week; spike it to 2000 cals and ONCE a week, take it really low but not less than 1200 cals.

something like:
1500/1500/1500/2000/1500/1500/1200

I try to just eat when hungry. So far that has been naturally falling at about 1700 cal. I have had some lower days just because I was too busy to eat. I just don't want to get into the whole calorie counting and restricting thing. My hope was that the natural appetite suppression I get from this diet would be enough to lower my calories enough to lose. I thought 1700 was good- Fitday has me at about 2300 cal for BRM! On a better note, it does look like I lost a pound today, so maybe I am ok for awhile?

[Ilpirata]

On a better note, it does look like I lost a pound today, so maybe I am ok for awhile?

Its such a personal thing! If you are losing then no, why would you change anything? Its when one doesn't lose for a long long time (speaking for myself here) that there is motivation to change.

[hummingbird11]

Agreed! If it ain't broke; don't fix it!

Originally Posted by Ilpirata

Its such a personal thing! If you are losing then no, why would you change anything? Its when one doesn't lose for a long long time (speaking for myself here) that there is motivation to change.

[Blood Sugar 101]

My feeling would be that we should eat at the very highest calorie level at which we can lose. This keeps us from feeling deprived, which always causes problems, plus it may avoid slowing down our metabolisms.

Of course, the highest calorie level at which I can lose is "not many." <g>