While healthy eating habits or an aggressive exercise program alone can cause you to burn fat, by combining both techniques, it's possible to lose about 1 to 2 pounds a week. The amount of weight you actually lose will depend on how strictly you adhere to your diet and exercise regimen. The amount of weight you lose is also likely to fluctuate from week to week.
Need for Caloric Deficit
In order to lose weight, you must create a caloric deficit within your body. A caloric deficit means you're consuming fewer calories than you burn. When you're using more calories than you're taking in via food and drink, your create fuel by breaking down the fat you've stored in your body. As a result, you burn body fat and lose weight. Every pound of fat loss requires a deficit of 3,500 calories.
Creating a Caloric Deficit
You can create a caloric deficit by limiting the calories you take in from food and increasing the calories you burn with exercise. It's important to make adjustments to your nutritional habits, so that you're taking in the appropriate number of calories to facilitate weight loss. Determine the number of calories you naturally burn throughout the day, which you can estimate by using an online calorie calculator. Consuming fewer calories than that value will cause you to lose fat. A healthy and safe number to cut is 250 to 500 calories from your daily intake total.
Any additional calories you burn with exercise will contribute even further to your daily caloric deficit. The number of calories you burn from your workouts depends on the type and duration of our workout. Running is the most effective exercise for burning calories. According to the Mayo Clinic website, a 160-pound person will burn about 986 calories when running 60 minutes at 8 miles per hour.
Rate of Weight Loss
Although 3,500 calories may seem daunting, focus on the day-to-day steps necessary to create a calorie deficit and you'll likely lose weight. By consuming 250 calories less than the total you take in every day, you'll create a weekly deficit of 1,750, or half a pound of weight loss per week. Consuming 500 calories less would create a 3,500-calorie deficit.
The added caloric deficit created with exercise depends on how frequently and how long you work out. However, if a160-pound person ran 60 minutes at 8 miles per hour, four days a week, he'd end up burning 3,944 calories per week -- a pound of fat loss. Combining both a 3,500 calorie deficit from nutritional adjustments and a 3,944 deficit with exercise, you could lose a little over 2 pounds in a week.
Considerations
According to the Mayo Clinic website, a slower rate of weight loss is ideal, because you're more likely to keep the weight off. A healthy rate of weight loss is 1 to 2 pounds per week. However, the amount of weight you lose may vary from week to week, and it's typical to lose weight at a significantly faster rate at the beginning of any weight loss program. Consult your doctor before beginning any weight loss program.
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