How do I lose weight? | Diet and Exercise | Real Life Fitness | PhitZone

“How do I lose weight?” Is this not the hot question of the day? With good reason too. We’re hit on an hourly basis with commercials for various products ranging from diets to pills. Exercise equipment to surgery. The list goes on and on. Frankly, it makes my head spin.

All of these products sell an “easy fix” for obesity. The concept of weight loss is not difficult to grasp. Losing weight could be described as simple, but never as easy. The old adage of something seeming to be good to be true, it applies here. Some wise decisions go a very long way.

Weight loss in the simplest sense is a math equation. Your body requires a given amount of calories in order to maintain your current weight. This number is represented by your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Good news here. There are calculators online that allow you to plug in your given information, and viola, you have your BMR. That is NOT your calorie requirements. Just jot down the number, and put it someplace safe.

Google “Harris Benedict Formula“. Now, get that piece of scratch paper with the BMR out from under your coffee cup, and enter the number into the new calculator, along with the assigned number based upon your activity level. Be honest with the activity number. It does make a difference. The number that the calculator spits out is the number of calories that your body needs just to maintain your current weight.

Sorry,we’re not done with the math just yet. Take the number of maintenance calories, and subtract 500. This is good for weight loss of one pound of fat per week. Over a one year period, that’s a whopping 52 lbs.

If you have the room, subtract 1000 calories per day, and you are looking at 2 pounds of weight loss per week. With that said, never go below 1200 calories per day. Never, ever.

This is not an over night venture. It is a long haul project. The important thing to remember is that it only requires you to take in 500 fewer calories than you need per day.

Throw in some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) on the treadmill, some weight training, and you are golden.

Really, when you look at it in this light, the answer to your “How do I lose weight” question is pretty simple.