All weight-loss simply boils down to burning more calories than you consume. This is the principle behind diet & exercise, bariatric surgery, and any other weight-loss methods. If you burn more calories than you consume your body will have to start burning fat stores for the energy it needs.
Exercise is important because it increases the number of calories that you burn daily, while eating less and maintaining a healthy diet helps to limit your calorie intake. Understanding these basic facts let’s us start looking at weight-loss from a more methodical and mathematical standpoint. A pound is 3500 calories. So for each pound you want to lose you will need to burn 3500 calories more than you intake.
Here are a couple of examples to show you how to think about your weight-loss program mathematically.
Example #1
First, let’s say that Joe weighs about 350 pounds and wants to get down to 250. He has a Basal Metabolic Rate of 2920 calories per day. If he maintains a diet of 1800 calories per day then he will have a net loss of 1120 calories per day. And since there are 3500 calories in a pound, he can expect to lose about .32 pounds per day. So it would take him about 313 days to reach his weight-loss goals if he just maintains his diet of 1800 calories per day.
Example #2
If Joe is more aggressive and adds a daily workout to his weight-loss plan then he can accelerate the weight-loss. If he does a moderately intense workout and burns 750 calories each day, in addition to the 1800 calories diet, he can have a net loss of 1870 calories per day. With a calorie deficit of 2670 calories (.53 pounds) he can expect to reach his weight-loss goal in about 189 days.
Here is a simple formula to help you calculate your weight-loss and show you what you can realistically expect.
Ever wonder how contestants on The Biggest Loser lose so much weight? It’s simply because of the same formula. Contestants on the show spend about 6 hours per day in the gym, so they can burn 6000-7000 calories per day. Let’s look at an example.
Example #3
Jane is a contestant on the show and weighs 310 pounds. She has a BMR of 2140 and maintains a diet of 1800 calories. If she burns 6000 calories per day, then she can achieve a deficit of 6340 calories, which is about 1.81 pounds. So in a week she would be able to lose around 12.5 pounds.
It’s also important to note that your BMR will change as you lose weight. As you get smaller you will need less calories to maintain your weight, so the BMR will drop correspondingly.
All methods of weight-loss target one portion of the weight-loss equation. Diets and bariatric surgery focus on the calories consumed part, exercise increase the number of calories burned, and so on. Understanding what it actually takes to lose weight is an important part of the process and can show you the commitment that you need to make to be able to achieve your goals.
The Shrinking Team
Weight-Loss is Hard, We’re Here to Make it Easier
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