How to Decrease Your Caloric Intake

With all the hype about being thin and getting into shape, many people are looking for new ways to decrease their caloric intake, if not only for appearance reasons, then for health reasons. Numerous ways exist for you to decrease your caloric intake. However, if you're looking to lose weight, the key to doing so is really very simple. You need to consume less calories than your body needs to maintain your current weight. One way to do this is decrease your caloric intake.

Step 1

Know that 3,500 calories equal one pound. So if you want to lose a certain amount of pounds, then you can multiply how many pounds you want to lose by 3,500 to determine the calorie deficit you need to create to lose the weight that you want to lose.

Step 2

Determine how many calories you need per day to maintain your current body weight. A variety of charts exist that give you an approximation of this estimate based upon your current age, weight and height. You can calculate your basal metabolic rate yourself with the following formulas:

Women:
655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

This, however, is not completely accurate because you need to take your activity level into account as well. If you are sedentary, multiply your BMR by 20%, lightly active 30%, moderately active 40%, very active 50% and extremely active 60%. Add this number to your BMR to determine how many calories you need per day to maintain your current body weight.

Step 3

Decrease your caloric intake by decreasing the calories you need to consume to maintain your current body weight. To lose 1 pound per week, decrease your caloric intake by 500 calories per day, and to lose 2 pounds per week, decrease your caloric intake by 1,000 calories per day.

Tips

Most people decrease their caloric intake with a combination of exercise. For instance, to lose 1 pound per week, you could decrease your caloric intake per day by 250 calories and then you could burn the other 250 calories by exercising.

Warnings

Generally, you should not lose more than 2 to 4 pounds per week. If you are extremely overweight, however, you might lose more in the beginning of your diet program.