No matter how much you weigh, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn every day in order to lose weight. If you weigh 240 lbs., chances are you're eating more than your body needs and have gained too much weight. Cutting down on calories will help you drop the weight. However, make sure you don't cut down your calorie intake too much or too quickly. This might result in muscle loss, rather than fat loss.
Calculating Calorie Needs
According to MedLine Plus, an easy way to calculate your calorie needs is to estimate them based on how much you would like to weigh. If you're sedentary, you should be eating about 10 calories per pound based on the weight you want to be. So if you're 240 lbs. but want to be 170, your goal should be to eat 1,700 calories per day. You might have to reduce your calorie intake slowly. If you're currently eating 3,000 or 4,000 calories, cutting down to 1,700 might leave you feeling tired and hungry. So cut down slowly, reducing your intake by 300 or 400 each week until you reach your goal of 1,700 calories per day.
Current Calorie Needs
Another way to calculate calorie needs is to base your intake on your current weight. Start with your current weight. If you exercise very little to nothing, multiply your current weight by 12. For a 240 lb. person, that would mean 2,880 calories. If you exercise one to three days a week, multiply your weight by 13.5, for a total of 3,240 calories. This is the number of calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight.
Calorie Deficiency
To lose weight, cut down the amount of calories needed for weight maintenance. So if you need 3,240 calories to maintain your current weight, eating any less than that will result in weight loss. You need to cut down 3,500 calories from your week in order to lose 1 lb. every seven days. Cutting down just 250 calories per day would result in a half pound weight loss every week.
Muscle Form
Just because you weigh 240 lbs. doesn't mean you're necessarily obese. A bodybuilder, wrestler or somebody who does a lot of weight training might end up with a weight of 240 lbs. because of a high amount of muscle. If you regularly engage in strenuous activity, you can eat more calories and still lose weight. For example, you can multiply your goal weight by 18 instead of 10 or 13.5 and still lose weight steadily and effectively. A 240 lb. person who exercises heavily could eat up to 4,320 calories and not gain any weight.
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