Two things are necessary to determine how we calculate the number of calories we need to take in and burn off in order to lose weight . . . and maintain our goal weight.
Firstly, it’s important to get a status of your current health and caloric intake. To do so you should visit with a dietitian and/or your healthcare provider. With their feedback and guidance you can determine how many calories you are currently consuming and how many you will need to consume each day to reach your weight loss goal. They can also establish a proper diet and meal plan to follow each day. This will take the guess-work out of planning your daily meals.
Secondly, it’s a good idea to start keeping a food journal where you can log your daily food intake. Your dietitian will probably recommend you do this anyway. Your journal will allow you to see what foods are sabotaging your diet. It will also make it easy for you to track the number of calories you consume each day . . . and adjust accordingly.
Product labels make it easy to track your calorie intake. As per the FDA (Food and Drug Association), “food labeling is required for most prepared foods, such as breads, cereals, canned and frozen foods, snacks, desserts, drinks, etc. Nutrition labeling for raw produce (fruits and vegetables) and fish is voluntary.”
You can get calorie-counting books, such as the one by Dr. Atkins, at reasonable prices from your local bookstore or library. Or follow my blog posts for up-to-date information on the right foods to eat for proper weight maintenance.
Reduce caloric intake
If you are taking in 3000 calories per day and you want to lose weight then cut your caloric intake by 500-1000 per day. Do this gradually over a period of a week in order to get your body adjusted to the reduced amount. This simple dietary adjustment will lead to an average calorie deficit of 4,500 K-cals per week without any physical effort to accomplish this loss.
To compliment your dietary changes you will need to start a daily activity routine to raise your core temperature and force your body to burn excess calories.
How many calories does your routine use up?
To determine how much you need to exercise in order to lose weight you will want to figure out the amount of energy that a particular exercise uses up in a certain amount of time. One way of doing this is to use metabolic equivalent units of an activity or METs. Think of these as multiples of your resting metabolic rate or (RMR).
Your RMR is the number of calories you use while resting (e.g. sitting quietly reading a book or watching TV or lying in bed). The resting metabolic rate for the average person is one calorie per kilogram of body weight per hour. (A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.). In terms of oxygen used, it is 3.5 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute.
(To convert pounds to kilograms, simple divide your body weight by 2.2. For example, if you weigh 170 pounds your weight in kilograms would be 77.3 Kg (170 LBs / 2.2 = 77.3 Kg).)
Use the following formula to calculate the number of calories burned
Researchers have devised the following formula to calculate the amount of calories burned during an activity:
1 calorie per minute = METS x Body Wt. (kilogram) x 3.5 (constant)/200 (constant).
Let’s say, for example, you were interested in swimming laps, at a moderate rate for exercise. We will calculate the number of calories that a 170 LB man would burn per minute based on the following:
1) Body weight of 170 pounds or 77.3 kilograms
2) The metabolic equivalent unit of swimming laps at a moderate rate is 8.
8 x 77.3 x 3.5 / 200 = 10.8 calories per minute.
If your goal were to burn-up 2000 calories per week you can easily figure out how much you need to exercise each day to meet that goal. Do this by taking your weekly goal of 2000 and divide by 10.8 calories to determine how many minutes you must exercise per week to meet your goal. In this case it would be 185 (2000/10.8) minutes or a little over three hours per week. You then take the number of minutes per week and divide it into daily exercise sessions. So if you plan to exercise 5 days per week it would average out to be 37 minutes per day.
Combine the above caloric expenditure with a proper diet and nutrition program and in 6 to 8 weeks you can transform the way your body looks now into the new you.
Don’t expect to lose more than 1 – 2 pounds per week. You didn’t gain the extra weight quickly, so you shouldn’t lose it as fast as many diet plans would have you do.
