OK, so people all know that in order to lose weight you have to drop calories. But how many? How many calories should I be eating? Here's the deal: It takes 3500 calories to equal one pound. Therefore if you were over consuming 500 calories more than your body needs then you could be gaining a pound a week. On the other hand, cut 3500 calories a week, and you can lose a pound a week! Now the beauty of this is that those 500 calories a day don't have to just be from less calories eaten, but also calories burned in exercise. So if you were to burn 200 calories from walking for 30 minutes, you'd only need to drop 300 calories to lose a pound a week. Now if you've been overconsuming for a while now, you may be able to cut more than 500 calories out pretty easily.
So, how many calories to eat?? This is very individualized, but here's a general rule to go by:
Take what weight you want to be, and multiply by 10. So say you want to get down to 130 pounds...you should shoot for 1300 calories. It may not be a great idea to go straight from 2000-3000 calories per day to 1300, but you can work your way down. Plus, if you start getting more active, this whole process is a lot easier.
The "reasonable" goal is 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week. To begin, many people lose more than this, and that's a great boost to the motivation. But when it drops to just 1-2 pounds a week, that is still excellent progress. So you may say, "1-2 pounds a week is too damned slow!" but I say, hold on a minute Miss Impatient. By losing weight in the "slow and steady" manner, you're body is less likely to gain weight back, the ever-dreaded Yo-Yo effect. Think of it like this, if you starve yourself, that is exactly how your body will react accordingly. Your body will say, "Holy crap, I'm not getting much energy (aka calories), so maybe I should slow down my metabolism and conserve what energy I am getting." Your body conserving energy = calories stored as fat rather than being burned for energy. Think of a hibernating bear and you'll be on the right track. So you may lose decent weight initially, but you won't be able to maintain it. Depressing right? Well not if you remember: slow and steady wins the race. :)
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At first, 3500 calories a week sounds like a lot, but it does break down to just 500 calories a day. Still, you might think that sounds like a hefty cut. It isn't, if you're honest about the starting point. Chances are that if you're like me, and you need to lose a significant amount of weight, honesty and accountability about what you've put in your mouth aren't probably your strong points. You've more than likely ingested a lot more calories in a day than you'd care to admit. The number of true calories you've eaten per day might just shock you as much as stepping on the scale. How is this good, you might ask? Well, when you start counting them, or at least making your best attempt to, you are probably going to cut out 500 calories or more easily, just from the accountability factor. If you thought you were eating 2000 calories a day, you may, after eating for a week or so at the 1500 calorie a day level, realize that your true calorie count was most likely over 3000. Mine surely was, and that's a conservative estimate.
ReplyDeleteAs for the slowness of losing weight, as someone who has yo-yo dieted since at least age 17, I would rather lose it slow and right. I'm seeing these coming months as an investment in my health, sort of like getting an advanced degree, that the benefits will occur slowly, and I'll learn a little day by day to increase my life skills after I "graduate." After I do, I shouldn't stop using my education. If I had tried to cram for an exam, I probably wouldn't retain any of that information.
And, I try to remember that two pounds a week is 8 pounds a month - 8 pounds a month times 6 months equals 48 pounds. Losing 50 pounds is a significant amount. So what if it takes six months.