The average healthy male and female in their mid-thirties only needs to eat between 2100 and 2260 calories each day, according to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. Minimizing calorie intake by only 500 calories a day can slash one pound a week. Burning 500 calories a day through exercise will cut another pound. Those who live on an extremely high calorie diet can conceivably shed 20 pounds in less than 10 weeks.
Burn Calories
The American Academy of Family Physicians indicates that to lose one pound a week, a person needs to burn 500 calories a day. Achieving this goal is easier by keeping an exercise diary and calculating the number of calories burned for every activity. CalorieLab.com (see Resources) has a Calories Burned by Exercise counter that can determine calories burned for everything from household chores to playing with the kids to vigorous aerobic activity. Light office work, for example, burns about 29 calories an hour. After seven hours, that amounts to about 200 calories burned. Walking briskly, at a moderate pace for less than two hours--which can be split into increments like a half hour before work, a half hour at lunch and less than an hour after work--will burn just over 300 calories.
Cut Calories
One of the easiest ways to drop a few pounds is by controlling portion size and eating only the amount of calories needed. ShapeFit.com has a Calories Per Day Calculator that will determine, based on height and age, the number of calories a person should eat each day. Recording calorie intake in a food diary helps to track how much food and how many calories a person is really eating. It's important to track the small stuff, such as cream added to coffee and butter slathered on a dinner roll. The USDA has a nutrient database for thousands of different foods (see Resources), including those that are packaged and fresh.
For people who drink a few cups of coffee a day and add half and half to each cup, they could be adding upwards of 250 calories to their diet. Two slices of toast and butter can also add up to 250 calories. Eliminating these two items from a diet will automatically slash 500 calories a day.
Change Your Beverage of Choice
Americans drink about 1.6 cans of soda each day, or 597 cans a year, according to Eduplace.com. At about 96 calories in an eight-ounce can of Pepsi, that amounts to about 1,075 calories a week. Further, the Framington Heart Study, conducted by lead researcher Ravi Dhingra, found that Americans who consumed more than one soft drink each day, including diet drinks, were at higher risk for developing metabolic syndrome--a condition that significantly increases waist circumference. By replacing two or three colas and sports drinks each day with beverages like carbonated water or iced tea, a person can cut hundreds of calories from her diet and ultimately drop several pounds.
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