Calories Required to Start Losing Weight

Weight loss can be really simple: just burn more calories than you eat. But knowing how many calories you need for a normal day, knowing how many you eat normally, and knowing how to burn more or eat less, when you try to bring it all together, can get complicated.

The first thing you have to remember is that if you want to lose weight, but stay healthy and keep the weight off, you have to lose it slowly. Losing weight too fast can be very harmful for your health. It can also put your body in starvation mode, which means your body will make you constantly crave high fat foods, and then store all the fat you eat on your body. That is because your body thinks you are in danger of starving to death, so instead of burning off calories, it saves them.

The general consensus from health professionals is that losing one pound a week is healthy. So, how do you do that? One pound of fat is 3,500 calories. So you need to either eat 3,500 calories less per week, or burn 3,500 calories more per week, or some combination of that (eat less and exercise more).

To eat 3,500 calories less per week means eating 500 less per day, but you need to still be getting enough calories to have enough energy for your normal daily activities. You need to assess the amount of calories you normally eat, compared to the amount of calories that someone your age needs. The following chart shows how many calories women need, at different ages, with different levels of activity.

Then you need to take an honest look at your normal caloric intake. If you usually eat several hundred more calories than the chart says that you need, then the first step is to cut back on calories. Eating low-fat, high-protein foods is helpful, because protein has less than half the calories per ounce than fat does. Start to pay attention to how many calories are in the foods you consume, and choose foods that have less calories than the ones you usually eat. Portion control is very important, also. Eating a low-calorie food only helps if you have a normal serving. If you eat a low-calorie food, but then eat twice as much, you are still getting too many calories.

You should also notice on the chart that for adults, not teenagers who are still developing, adding more exercise to your life does not increase your calorie needs by more than a couple hundred calories per day. It is important to have enough calories, especially from protein if you are trying to build muscle, to get you through your work out, but don’t overeat just because you went to the gym. Follow the guidelines for the chart to find your normal calorie needs. If you find out that you usually eat more than needed, which is true for most people who are trying to lose weight, then just cutting out the extra calories should start your weight loss.

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