Daily Calorie Needs For Weight Loss

If you want to maintain your weight, you must take in neither more nor fewer calories than your body needs to maintain basic metabolism and to fuel any additional activity. If you want to lose weight, you must take in fewer calories than needed. You can do this by eating less, being more active, or better, a combination of both.

You will lose 1 pound for every 3,500 calories you are in debt to your body. If your daily intake is 35 calories less than your output, it will take you 100 days to lose that pound. Reduce your intake or increase your output by 350 calories daily and it will take 10 clays to lose that pound.

The digestion bonus

One of the metabolic processes your body spends energy on is digesting the food you eat. That's right, it takes energy to make energy. As you know, different nutrients take different amounts of energy to digest, but on average 10 percent of your daily energy is spent on digestion.

Just because you expend energy on digestion doesn't mean you should eat more as a way to burn more calories. (Nice try.)

You shouldn't eat more overall, but there is a definitely a case for eating more frequent but smaller meals. Digesting four to six small meals a day burns more calories than digesting three big ones.

Just bear in mind that calories still count. If the four to six small meals contain more calories than the three larger ones, all those extra calories have to be burned with activity or they will be stored you-know-where.

Balancing intake and output

Ideally, any fitness and weight-loss program balances caloric intake and output. No matter how much or how little weight you want to lose, cutting calories alone just won't do it. Not long after it "figures out" that you are taking in fewer calories, your body will respond by decreasing calorie demand. In its wisdom, your body is trying to balance intake and output. The only way to "fool" your body is to increase your level of activity.

The nifty thing about that is you get two for your money when you exercise more. Not only does the energy expenditure burn calories, but your metabolic rate increases, burning even more. If you have been leading a sedentary lifestyle, this does not mean you have to become an exercise freak. Begin with a little more exercise, but do it every day. Gradually add on time or intensity or both.

Stepping up activity even one notch will tell your body to speed up metabolism by about 10 percent.

However active you are, there is normally room for improvement, so remember:

If you've been sedentary, try to become somewhat active.

If you've been somewhat active, try to become moderately active.

If you've been moderately active, try to become very active.

If you've been very active, keep it up.

When you start being more active, don't overdo it.

If you have been a major couch potato, don't throw yourself into activity with abandon. You may wake up the next day with a serious charley horse or worse, and you will certainly not be able to sustain that level of activity. Start modestly and work your way up to a reasonable level over the course of several weeks or a month. Let it become a habit you don't want to break.

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