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Old 06-17-2010, 05:23 PM
Iridium Iridium is offline
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The simple fact is that if you want to loose fat you need to have a calorie deficit.

When I wanted to lose weight, I did it as follows:

Calculate your basal metabolic rate (not BMI). Calculators for this exist online, and it's a function of your sex, weight and age. This figure (usually measured in calories/day) is an indication of the amount of energy your body uses just being alive - i.e. doing absolutely nothing, not moving nor even digesting a meal.

If you consume fewer than this number of calories per day, you can't help losing weight.

I think at the time, my BMR was about 2000 calories/day. I decided I wanted to have (at least) a 1000 calorie/day deficit, so aimed to consume 2000 - 1000 = 1000 calories/day.

The choice of a 1000 calorie/day deficit wasn't entirely arbitrary either - 1kg of fat is approximately 7000 calories, and since there are 7 days in a week, by creating a 1000 calorie/day deficit, that's 7000 calories/week = 1kg weight loss.

Of course, eating just 1000 calories/day isn't easy so if possible it's worth supplementing some of it with exercise, (e.g. eat 1200 calories/day, but do 200 calories worth of exercise), but of course, the weight loss through fat will probably be masked to a degree by the weight gained through muscle build-up, but if you stick to it accurately and don't cheat then you will definitely be losing fat whatever the scales may say.

Don't forget though that BMR is weight dependent such that if you lose weight, your body needs fewer calories per day to live (since there's less mass to "power") so your BMR decreases too and your original limit on the number of calories consumed per day will actually result in a smaller deficit and slower weight loss.
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