How Many Calories Do You Need to Lose Weight?

Losing weight is all about calories. Too many calories put on eight......not too much fat,
not too many carbohydrates, not too much sugar, not too much alcohol but too many calories.

In order to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit. In other words you must burn more calories than you take in. Simply put, a calorie is a unit of energy. The number of calories in food is a measure of how much potential energy that food possesses. A gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories, a gram of
protein also as 4 calories, and a gram of fat has 9 calories. Foods are a compilation of these three building blocks, i.e. carbohydrate, protein and fat. So, if you know how many carbohydrates, proteins and fats are in any one given food, you know how many calories or how much energy that food contains.

Our bodies burn the calories through metabolic processes, by which enzymes break the carbohydrates into glucose and other sugars, the fats into glycerol and fatty acids and the proteins into amino acids. These substances are then transported through the bloodstream into the cells where they are either absorbed for immediate use or sent onto the final stage of metabolism where they are reacted with oxygen to release their stored energy.

So what happens if we take in more calories than our body burns. We gain fat. An accumulation of 3500 extra calories will be stored by our body as 1 lb of fat. Fat is how the body stores energy for a rainy day. But on the other hand, if we burn 3500 more calories than we eat, 1 lb of stored fat is converted into energy and our overall fat stores are reduced by 1lb. So there it is, to lose 1lb of fat per week, we have to burn 3,500 calories more than we eat. How do we ensure that we do this?

We have 3 options.

Option 1: Take in fewer calories by adopting a healthier diet.

Option 2: Increase the number of calories that we burn by being more active.

Option 3: Do both of the above.

Where do we start when deciding how many calories we need to lose weight? First we need to know how many calories we need to maintain our present weight.There are many factors which affect this figure, like age, body type, environment, etc but a very good rule of thumb is to assume that each pound of weight in our bodies takes 15 calories to maintain it (13 cals for women) So a 200lb man needs 3000 calories per day to maintain his present weight.

Once we have established our starting point, we can begin to understand where we need to go. We must reduce our calorie intake by 500 calories per day to lose 1lb of fat, because 1lb of stored fat is equal to 3500 calories.

By reducing our daily calorie intake by 500 calories per day we will lose 1lb of fat per week, safely and healthily. By losing the fat slowly, our bodies will adapt slowly, thus ensuring that it is easier to keep the weight off in the longer term.

So, if we take our 200lb man as our example, he will need to reduce his daily calorie intake by 500 calories. His daily target now becomes 2500 calories. He may be tempted to reduce this figure much further, say to 2000 calories but this will only make the diet much more difficult to stick to because it will mean he will have to drastically reduce certain food groups from his diet which will tend to increase hunger pangs and cravings. It is much more preferable to further reduce our calorie figure by incorporating exercise in order to burn off the calories.

We now know that we need to establish our starting point and we need to reduce our calorie intake by 500 calories, each and every day for the rest of our lives. It is no good to go on an eight week diet and then go back to our old eating habits. The weight will simply go back on again. Permanent change requires permanent changes!