Many people are interested in losing weight and this often
results in people asking the question "how many calories should I eat to
lose weight?". Ultimately the answer to this question is fewer than you expend.
If you are indeed eating more calories than you expend then this
creates a calorie deficit which is fundamental to losing weight and
given time your body will adjust by losing weight.
Calculating the calories that you expend is a useful exercise when trying to answer this question, as eating any number of calories fewer than this will ultimately lead to weight-loss. Unfortunately this is a fairly difficult thing to do accurately without expensive medical equipment, but you can get a fairly good estimate using a calorie calculator, many of which can be found online. The calculators use your height, weight, age and gender plus an equation (either Harris-Benedict or Milton's) and return an approximation of how many calories you likely burn if you were doing nothing all day, a number called your BMR or "basal metabolic rate". This is then multiplied by a certain factor between 1.2 and 1.9 depending on how much activity you do each day, which then gives your AMR or "active metabolic rate", which is a best guess at how many calories you actually burn each day.
It's worth noting that whilst these calculators are easy to use, they can easily be wrong. Their fundamental problem is that they don't take into account how much lean mass you have, which is much more metabolically active (i.e. burns more calories) versus non-lean mass. Because of this particularly muscular people are likely to have fairly inaccurate results from these sorts of calculators.
Once your active metabolic rate is known, any number less than that is just how many calories you should eat to lose weight. Exactly how many less determines the rate at which you will lose weight. A general rule of thumb says that for every 500 calories under your AMR, each week you will lose 1lb (or 450g), so if you were eating 1000 calories less, you would lose 2lbs per week, and so on.
These methods can be a great tool for helping you set goals for weight-loss and improving your general health and there are many benefits to both. However far too many people see dieting as a short term solution to a long term problem and this really shouldn't be the case. Eating healthily and in moderation is something that everyone should do all of the time, not just when we're worried that we're getting fat. Answering the question "How many calories should I eat to lose weight?" is usually a step in the right direction however.
Calculating the calories that you expend is a useful exercise when trying to answer this question, as eating any number of calories fewer than this will ultimately lead to weight-loss. Unfortunately this is a fairly difficult thing to do accurately without expensive medical equipment, but you can get a fairly good estimate using a calorie calculator, many of which can be found online. The calculators use your height, weight, age and gender plus an equation (either Harris-Benedict or Milton's) and return an approximation of how many calories you likely burn if you were doing nothing all day, a number called your BMR or "basal metabolic rate". This is then multiplied by a certain factor between 1.2 and 1.9 depending on how much activity you do each day, which then gives your AMR or "active metabolic rate", which is a best guess at how many calories you actually burn each day.
It's worth noting that whilst these calculators are easy to use, they can easily be wrong. Their fundamental problem is that they don't take into account how much lean mass you have, which is much more metabolically active (i.e. burns more calories) versus non-lean mass. Because of this particularly muscular people are likely to have fairly inaccurate results from these sorts of calculators.
Once your active metabolic rate is known, any number less than that is just how many calories you should eat to lose weight. Exactly how many less determines the rate at which you will lose weight. A general rule of thumb says that for every 500 calories under your AMR, each week you will lose 1lb (or 450g), so if you were eating 1000 calories less, you would lose 2lbs per week, and so on.
These methods can be a great tool for helping you set goals for weight-loss and improving your general health and there are many benefits to both. However far too many people see dieting as a short term solution to a long term problem and this really shouldn't be the case. Eating healthily and in moderation is something that everyone should do all of the time, not just when we're worried that we're getting fat. Answering the question "How many calories should I eat to lose weight?" is usually a step in the right direction however.
Thanks for reading my article, if you're interested in answering the question How Many Calories Eat Lose Weight for yourself then I'd definitely recommend having a look at www.howmanycaloriesshouldieattoloseweight.co
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_A_Euan
No comments:
Post a Comment