Weight loss tip #6: Determine how many calories you need to maintain
your current weight, and how many you need to reduce per day to meet
your weight loss goals. Step 1: Determine your basal metabolic rate.
This is how many calories your body burns just to maintain minimal
life-support functions and is about 75% of all the calories you burn.
The formula is simply your body weight ____ X 10= basal metabolic rate.
Now,
to determine how many calories you need each day to maintain your
current weight, multiply the base metabolic rate by a "lifestyle factor"
based on how active you are. A note on the formula: it is just a rough
estimate, females will need a few less calories (perhaps 200) than this
formula indicates. Males might need 100 more. As you age, you will
require fewer calories as well to maintain weight. So, use the formula
to get you started, then adjust your daily caloric needs based on your
results (this is where a nutrition log is important, see weight loss tip
#7).
For sedentary people (office workers, people who mostly sit
or drive all day) use 1.4. For moderately active people (people on
their feet all day like wait staff, service industry, moderate exercise)
use 1.6. For very active people (jobs with lots of physical labor,
movers etc., athletes) use 1.8. If you think you are in between two of
the examples, then you can split the difference.
Let's plug some
numbers in: Weight 195 pounds, office worker. 195X10 = 1950 calorie
basal metabolic rate. 1950 X 1.4 = 2730. This is roughly how many
calories they need to consume to stay at 195 pounds. It's not an exact
science, but should be very close and is a great starting point.
Now
you can set your weight loss goals based on how many pounds you want to
lose and in what time-frame. The maximum sustainable healthy weight
loss level is about 2 pounds per week. In order to lose 2 pounds per
week, you need to decrease your energy intake, and/or increase your
energy output, by 1000 calories per day. A 500 calorie per day reduction
will result in a loss of approximately one pound per week.
So,
losing 40 pounds will take 20 weeks, or about 5 months at 2lbs per week.
If you decrease your daily intake by 500 calories per day as well as
increase your energy expenditure by an average of 500 calories per day.
From our example above, to lose 2 lbs per week, they would either need
to eat 1730 calories per day (2730-1000) or 2230 calories with about 500
calories worth of exercise averaged out over each day.
↪ Weight loss tip #7: Keep a food log.
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