It never ceases to amaze me when I start working with a client and tell them how many calories they should eat daily to lose weight. Almost without exception I hear "I can't POSSIBLY eat that much in one day- I'll never lose weight!" The reality is that if we don't consume enough calories everyday then we won't lose weight.We need to give our bodies a certain number of calories each day just to maintain life. We have automatic systems that we rarely think about that need fuel. Things like your heartbeat, our liver and pancreas, our lungs inhaling and exhaling even while we sleep. Scientists have determined that in order to maintainlifeeach and everyoneof us needs to consume a minimum of 1200 calories a day. Ifyou workout then you need more. There are a couple of examples that I like to use to help people understand the importance of fueling our bodies properly. If our goal is weight loss then we need to create as inefficient metabolism as possible, with this in mindI'm going to compare a Toyota Prius with a full sizeHummer. When we push ourselves and don't give our bodies enough fuel we create a Prius metabolism - very fuel efficient. When we eat 5-6 small meals throughout the day which provides enough to fuel for all of our bodies needs we create a Hummer metabolism. Two great real life examples of the Hummer metabolism are Michael Phelps and Mia Hamm. When the women's US soccer team won the World Cup Mia consumed over 4000 calories a day andhas a lean beautiful body. We all know what Michael looks like, he had to eat 10,000 calories every single day just to be able to provide his body with the fuel it needed to become the greatest swimmer of all time. We don't want efficient metabolisms we want as inefficient metabolisms as we can create and the best way to achieve that is to eat. Of course we need to be sensible and eat a balanced diet full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean meat, I promise you the results are well worth the effort. One more car analogy - if we got in our car and only had 1/2 a tank of gas could we take a 500 mile trip without stopping to refuel? Of course not we'd run out of gas! Don't do that to your poor body - it's doing it's best to take care of you, shouldn't you return the favor?