Counting calories is important. If you want to lose weight, you need to understand this. Even if you get all other the aspects on point, without managing this, it is possible you may still gain weight.
Counting calories is an integral part of long-term weight loss or maintaining your perfect weight, so let’s take a look at calories and what you need to know.
Firstly to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit as fat is basically stored energy. This is where many people may be going wrong, especially if they have a tendency to go off the rails quite regularly.
For instance, to maintain my current weight, let’s say I need to consume 1,800 calories per day, and to lose weight I then need to create a deficit. My calculations work out that I would need to consume 1,440 calories per day to lose weight, which is a weekly amount of 10,080 calories. So say I eat well for five days, hitting the 1,440 daily goal, amounting to 7,200 calories leaving 2,880 in total calories for the last two days. But say I consume 2,200 calories on both days, which is easy to do, I am then 1,520 calories over for the week - the result is fat storage and weight gain!
Basically, if you want to have two days of cake, booze and junk food, you need to count the calories. This is when most people think oh well I’ve blown it so I won’t worry about my calories today which is totally the wrong approach. We need to know what the damage is on those days particularly! Then we can adjust the rest of the week accordingly, meaning we could adjust the calories on all of the other five days to balance out the days of indulgence. We can then manage the damage and have a specific amount of calories left as to not go over our weekly weight loss amount.
Using this information alongside most of the other aspects of a healthy diet will give you a real chance of hitting those weight loss goals.
If you need any help to work out your specific calorie amounts and how to measure your daily calorie allowance, drop me a line.
Serious food for thought!
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