Losing weight is a widespread goal, as many Americans are currently overweight. Knowing how many calories you need to burn in order to lose weight can make this easier to do. It is best to lose weight at a rate of no more than 1 to 2 lbs. per week, so you will need to determine how many calories you want to cut out of your diet and how many you want to burn through exercise in order to achieve this.
Caloric Balance
Those who are maintaining their weight are said to be in caloric balance. This means that they are eating the same number of calories that their body uses each day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. In order to lose weight, you need to be in caloric deficit; that is, you need to burn more calories than you eat.
Significance
You need to have a 3,500-calorie deficit in order to lose 1 lb. For a weight loss of 1 to 2 lbs. per week, that means you need to have a deficit of 3,500 to 7,000 calories each week, or 500 to 1,000 each day. You can either eat less, exercise more or do a combination of eating less and exercising to accomplish this.
Daily Needs
Sometimes it is easier to think about what you can eat rather than what you can't eat. Using your age, activity level, gender and weight, you can calculate how many calories you would need in order to maintain your weight. You can do this by using the resources available at the website for the Department of Health and Human Services. Once you know how much you need to eat to maintain your weight, you can subtract 500 to 1,000 calories to come up with the amount you should eat to lose weight.
Considerations
Becoming more physically active can help you to burn more calories without having to cut out quite so many calories from your diet.
Pay attention to portion sizes when you look at labels to see how many calories a food contains. It is easy to eat more than one portion of some foods and thereby eat many more calories than you intended.
Expert Insight
Exercising at moderate intensity at least 2.5 hours per week and doing strength training exercises at least twice a week is recommended by the CDC. The CDC also recommends keeping a food diary and then going to MyPyramid.gov to determine how closely you are meeting your caloric and nutritional needs. This can help you to figure out what changes to make to get the caloric deficit necessary to lose weight.
Member Comments