If you're embarking on a journey to lose weight, it helps to set realistic goals. Knowing a normal rate for weight loss per week can help you determine how many pounds you can lose. Healthy weight loss will help you reap many health benefits, from reducing your risk of diseases such as diabetes to increasing energy. A healthy rate of weight loss will also help you keep the pounds off.
Weight-loss Basics
The formula for losing weight is burning more calories than you consume each day. One pound of fat is equivalent to about 3,500 calories, so if a person burns an extra 500 calories a week, he will lose about one pound.
Your metabolism also affects how quickly you burn calories, which is influenced by your basal metabolic rate, or BMR. BMR is a measure of the rate at which your body burns calories while resting.
BMR Basics
Your BMR is influenced by your age, gender, size and muscle mass. In general, larger people tend to burn more calories. Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat, so people with more muscle mass burn more calories as well.
Resistance-training exercises and cardiovascular exercise can help build muscle mass, raising your BMR so you burn more calories while resting. You can calculate your BMR using a formula that factors in your age, weight and height, or use a BMR calculator online.
Exercise for Weight Loss
Exercise can speed up your metabolism, burn calories and help you lose weight. How many calories you burn while exercising depends on the activity you are doing, the duration and intensity, as well as on your weight. A 200-lb. person burns 1,229 calories during one hour of running at 8 miles per hour, for instance, and a 160-lb. person burns 986 calories during the same workout.
Adding time or intensity to your workout will help you burn more calories. The 200-lb. person would burn less calories -- 728 per hour -- for a lower-intensity run at a pace of 5 miles per hour, for instance.
Weight-loss Guidelines
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends losing 1 to 2 lbs. per week for a healthy, sustainable rate of weight loss. Losing weight faster can contribute to weight fluctuations and ultimately result in weight gain. Many fad diet and exercise plans cause quick weight loss by using unhealthy starvation or deprivation techniques or cause temporary weight loss in water weight from excessive sweating or dehydration. Weight loss that stems from dehydration will not last.
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