Weight Loss
I believe completely that weight loss has to be a lifestyle change. If you are constantly “on” and “off” different diets your weight will always yo-yo. It makes sense that your body TODAY is the direct result of how you have been eating and exercising. Diets always work! Going “off” a diet will ALWAYS put you right back where you started from and usually worse. “If you always do what you always do, you’ll always get what you always get.” It’s all about lifestyle.
Weight Loss: On paper it’s easy - Eat less do more.
We all have an individual Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) that’s the amount of calories we need a day just to, breath, blink, keep our heart pumping, etc. Our BMR is calculated by our height, weight, age and gender. Keeping track of your BMR is a valuable tool for any weight loss program.
So, a 5 foot 6 inch, 33 year old woman weighing 145 pounds needs 1440.85 calories a day to lay on a couch doing nothing! Of course, we all move - and every time we move we need more calories so we add them to our BMR. And that’s how many calories we need to stay the way we are. Simple! Now we want to lose weight.
First: There are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat! Scary, but don’t worry we know what we are doing!
Let’s use those food labels and say we need an average of 2,000 calories a day. We need to eat about 500 calories a day less (not going lower than 1,200) and we need to up our movement (formal exercise and simple things like taking the stairs) by about 500 calories a day. That gives us a deficit of 1,000 calories a day which equals 7,000 calories a week, approximately two pounds of fat. So, of course we are extremely happy with a constant loss of anywhere from ½ to 2 pounds a week which equals 2 to 8 pounds a month. Yes, I know 2 pounds doesn’t sound much but if you are constant that’s 25 pounds a year! Plus you have stopped gaining. Also, our bodies are exceedingly kind at the beginning, losing lots of water so we see big loses at first, before we slow to a reasonable rate.
Clear up Confusion About Calories
Check on Calories Burned During Exercise
Helen Clark is ACE Certified for over 10 years.