Do you know how to balance your calories? Weight loss begins with knowing what foods to eat and in what amounts, depending on your specific calorie requirements.
To lose one pound a week, you have to burn an extra 500 calories a day.
To hit the 500 calorie target, you will have to determine how much you burn from your daily routine. Find out what you burn moving around at work and at home, as well as exercise – if that’s part of your day. You can make that 500 calories disappear by dieting or exercising. Ideally you should do both.
First, you have to note that everyone’s body is different. If you are an averagely active man weighing 150 pounds, you burn about 2000 calories each day. If you weigh 200 pounds, you would be burning 2300 calories each day. On the other hand, a 150-pound woman will burn about 1700 calories a day.
Yes, men and women have different bodies and weight loss patterns. Compared to men, women tend to have a higher fat percentage. Men tend to have more lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have the more you burn calories even at rest.
So women – and men as well, for that matter – should see that it is worth the effort to tone up your muscles if you want to lose weight.
So, going back to calories and weight loss… if you are a 150-pound woman and you don’t want to do any exercise, you need to eat no more than 1200 calories a day.
However, if you are willing to put in some work, you can eat a little bit more, provided you engage in more calorie-burning activities.
For instance, housework can make you burn calories. Heavy cleaning burns 432 calories an hour. Do that for 70 minutes a day and you will have 500 calories burnt. Mowing the lawn for an hour with a push mower burns 324 calories. But there are fun ways to burn calories too. An hour of singles tennis burns 549 calories an hour. And, an hour of skiing burns a whopping 740 calories.
If you are serious about controlling calories, weight loss will follow. One way to do this is to control your portion sizes. Meals, both at home and at restaurants have been growing in size for decades. For instance, in the 1930s, the average dinner plate size had an 8 or 9 inch diameter. Now, the average diameter is 10 to 12 inches. Switch to salad plates for dinner and watch the pounds disappear.
Along with portion size, calorie content has been growing. At Romano’s Macaroni Grill, the Teriyaki Salmon dinner alone is worth 1240 calories. That’s more than enough calories for an entire day! If you have to eat out, split that dinner. Or have half immediately boxed up for take home. You can clean up your plate but you won’t be ruining your diet.
Remember the magic number is 500 calories. Burn this off through exercise or take it away from your calorie intake. A little knowledge, some discipline to apply this principle will make you lose a pound a week – guaranteed.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for checking out my site dedicated to health, weight loss and muscle building. I created this site to document my progress and to tell you what has worked best for me.