The Mathematics of Weight Loss – Calorie counting and more explained
Weight loss is simple really. Eat less calories than you use. All diets (nearly) use this principal. Some refer to it as calorie counting, other diets don’t mention it – but it is still the backbone of nearly every diet you have and will try.
OK lets start with the basics:
A man needs 2500 calories per day;
A woman needs 2000 per day;
Both of these are the averages for a person of middle age with basic exercise levels (a bit of walking each day).
1 pound of fat = 3500 calories.
So now we can do some simple maths. If you eat 500 calories less than you need per day (1500/women 2000/men) you will lose 1 pound of fat (3500 calories) in 7 days (500*7 = 3500).
So thats 1 pound of fat shed per week by going 500 calories less than you need a day. If you went a thousand calories less per day you would lose 2 pounds per week. 2 pound is, incidentally, the recommended weight loss per week and so what we are aiming for.
If you are wondering where your everyday calorie burning is coming from – you lose about 50 calories an hour just resting, more for thinking (even your brain burns calories thinking hard, so try some sudoku!), moving around the house, doing house hold tasks, talking, etc. Infact everything you do and everylittle movement goes towards your basal calories burn.
Your weight loss may change slightly depending on your bodies metabolism and its ability to alter itself to suit different diets, but you really shouldn’t worry about this too much.
So now we know, just watch how many calories we are eating each day and we will soon shed the weight…
The trouble is, 1 pound a week seems very slow weight loss to most dieters, and 2 pound per week, whilst much better, means only eating either 1000 or 1500 (man/woman) calories a day. That is not easy, i know!
So what options are there? Well the most obvious choice is to include a lot of exercise into your daily routine so you burn up 500+ calories a day. This means you can eat a fair bit more and get fitter, whilst losing the same amount of weight.
For a person of 150 pounds, a 5 mile run will burn 590 calories – not too bad!
Unfortunately exercise each day such as a five mile run is impracticable for many busy people – in fact its tough for anyone living in the modern world. So try mixing exercise some days with eating a bit less the other days. Weight loss may be slow but you will get there.
If you are not a great dieter, meal planner or exerciser i can only recommend the excellent Fat Loss 4 Idiots.I have lost more weight on this diet/course than any other – but it is handy to know the science behind weight loss even when on a program such as this!
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!