How many calories does it take to lose, maintain, or gain weight?
Learn how to calculate how many calories you have to cut to be able to lose weight, add to gain weight, or how many calories it takes to stay a certain weight.
Weight loss is a numbers game
Weight loss is a numbers game, at least when you first start out. You need to closely keep track of how many calories you consume (eat) and how many you expend (use up).
You have 3 options when it comes to weight:
- Lose it
- Maintain it
- Gain it
All 3 options depend on the amount of calories you eat: When you expend more calories than you consume, you create what’s called a caloric deficit. This caloric deficit will determine whether you lose, maintain, or gain weight and how fast you do this.
Creating a caloric deficit to lose weight
To lose 1 pound of fat, you have to create a caloric deficit of 3500 calories. This is just a guideline, not a rule! And please note that I did not say that you have to starve yourself to achieve a caloric deficit of 3500 calories.
In fact, your body needs a minimum amount of calories every day to be able to perform its normal bodily functions. This is called your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR for short.
There are 3 ways to create this caloric deficit:
- Eat less calories
- Increase your physical activity
- Increase your basal metabolic rate (BMR)
Most people choose the first option, but a combination of all 3 will produce the best results.
Because it is almost impossible to use up 3500 calories by only exercising, you will have to make dietary adjustments to be able to create a caloric deficit of 3500 calories.
Counting calories for weight loss success
Before you go on any weight loss program, you should know:
- How many calories you are currently eating
- How many calories you need at a minimum for your body to function properly (your BMR)
- How many calories you should be eating (your TDCI or Total Daily Caloric Intake)
Once you know these three amounts of calories, you can then adjust your the amount of calories you consume and/or increase your daily activity to start losing weight.
The best way to find out how many calories you are currently eating is to buy a calorie counter or to use inexpensive tools for counting calories, and then weigh, measure, and track everything you eat during 1 or 2 weeks. This will give you a total amount of calories, which you can then divide by 7 or 14 depending on whether you counted calories for 1 or 2 weeks. The division will give you the average daily amount of calories.
Both your BMR and Total Daily Calorie Intake can be calculated by using formulas.
The second half of the coin is counting how many calories you expend through exercise. There are energy expenditure charts for popular exercises available on the market and on the Internet, which you can use to determine how long you need to do a particular exercise to expend a certain amount of calories depending on your body weight.
Tip: If you do not want to buy a calorie counter, you can also search for the nutrient content of foods online via the web site of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Final words
You can use an exercise journal to keep track of the amount of calories you eat and the amount of exercise you do. By doing this, you will not only be able to track and count your calories, but also predict how much weight you could lose based on the 3500 calories guideline discussed earlier.
A simple example: If you want to lose 2 pounds, you would have to cut 7000 calories. You could spread this cutting of 7000 calories out over a period of 1 week. This way you would need to cut 1000 calories every day. You could go cycling (at a rapid pace) for 30 minutes, which would burn around 300 calories depending on your body weight. Then you could swap foods (substitute calorie dense foods with lighter meals) or exercise more to try to cut the rest of the calories.
You’d be surprised how many calories you can cut on a daily basis to lose weight just by making smart food choices. Go for it!
