Required Calories To Lose Weight

Being active is an important part of any weight-loss or weight-maintenance program. Diet has a stronger effect on weight loss than exercise does, but best results are come from the combination of diet and exercise.

Sustained weight loss is difficult or close to impossible without regular exercise and physical activity. When you’re active, your body burns more calories and when you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight and fat.

Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose 1 pound. So if you cut 500 calories from your diet each day, you’d lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories). Because of changes that occur in the body over time your calories may need to be decreased further to continue losing weight.

If you want to lose fat, a useful guideline for lowering your calorie intake is to reduce your calories by at least 500, but not more than 1000 below your maintenance level. For people with only a small amount of weight to lose, 1000 calories will be too much of a deficit.

As a guide to minimum calorie intake, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 calories per day for men. Even these calorie levels are quite low.

An alternative way of calculating a safe minimum calorie-intake level is by reference to your body weight or current body weight. Reducing calories by 15-20% below your daily calorie maintenance needs is a useful start. You may increase this depending on your weight loss goals.

Total Calorie For Weight Loss Example:

If you are moderately active, multiply your BMR (1500) by 1.55 = 2325. This is the total number of calories you need in order to maintain your current weight. Calories required to lose one pound per week: 2325 – 500 calories = 1825 calories per day. Calories required to lose two pounds per week:  2325 – 1000 calories = 1325 calories per day.

NOTE: Make sure you insert your own personal basal metabolic rate and activity level number from the Harris Bennedict Formula that you previously calculated.