One of the best ways to lose weight and keep it off is by cutting calories from your diet. If you want to lose 40 pounds, consider how many calories a day or week you need to cut to safely reach your goal.
Basal Metabolic Rate
Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the number of calories you burn in one day while completely at rest. Your BMR does not take into account any activities or exercise, but provides the minimum number of calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight. For women, BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years). For men, BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years).
Weight Loss
There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. MedlinePlus and the National Institutes of Health do not recommend losing more than 2 pounds per week. If you want to lose 40 pounds at the maximum weight-loss rate, you would need to cut 1,000 calories per day from your diet, which would allow you to lose 40 pounds in 20 weeks. Use your BMR to determine how many calories you should have per day.
Exercise
Cutting calories from your BMR alone can leave you with a dangerous daily caloric intake. For instance, a woman with a BMR of 1,500 calories who cuts 1,000 calories a day, would only be allowed 500 a day. Men should eat a minimum of 1,500 calories per day and women 1,200. To make up for the deficit, you should exercise to burn additional calories. Add any calories you burn with exercise to your BMR to find your daily caloric allowance. For example, if you burn 500 calories with exercise and have a BMR of 2,000 calories, your daily caloric allowance would be 2,500. Cutting 1,000 calories to lose 2 pounds per week would leave you with a daily caloric allowance of 1,500.
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