No matter what diet you choose there is one rule that you cannot break if you want to lose weight. You have to eat fewer calories than you can burn in a day. Any diet, from Atkins to South Beach to The Zone to Weight Watchers, is only a tool to design your eating plan, but the bottom line is that none of these will work if you are taking in too many calories.
Despite the hype of many of these plans about food choices and how you can transform your metabolism or that choosing the right foods will allow you to eat more, you cannot escape the basic science of calories in versus calories burned. The total calories you eat minus the total calories you burn equals the total calories your body will store as fat at the end of the day. Fat storage is a complex science of course, but the basic equation is sound.
If you want to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you eat. For every pound of body weight, the average person burns about 12 calories per day at rest. So if you weigh 140 pounds you burn about 1680 calories per day just for basic body function.
Any activity you do burns more calories, so that most people can maintain their weight at about 2200 calories even if they don’t exercise much. The problem, however, is that most people have no idea the real amount of calories they consume, nor do they understand how few calories they burn through daily activities.
Running a mile at average speed only burns about 100 calories. Even someone who works out five times a week only burns about 2500 calories a day. Someone who is mostly inactive or exercises moderately only burns about 2000 calories a day depending on age and sex.
Unfortunately for anyone who wants to lose weight, the human body is an incredibly efficient machine. It gets a lot out of every calorie we consume, so controlling calorie intake is crucial for any successful diet. In addition, as we age, we need fewer calories to maintain basic needs. This is why many people tend to gain weight when approaching middle age. Also, for women, who naturally tend to store more fat and have less muscle mass than men, it can be even harder to lose weight.
You have to eat 3500 more calories than you burn to store a pound of fat. So if you burn about 3500 more calories that you eat, your body should metabolize about a pound of fat and you will start to lose weight. In theory this is true, but in reality metabolism is complicated and can be affected by many factors including what you eat, when you eat, your overall fitness level, your age, and your basal metabolism rate.
Even though you may take in the 3500 less calories than you burn, you body will not burn only fat. Your body tends to favor burning carbohydrates and converting proteins to carbohydrates for quick energy fixes. This is why people who religiously stick to a diet, but do not work on increasing their fitness level tend to lose weight very slowly, if at all. Any successful diet should include at least a moderate increase in physical activity. You do not have to start working out several times a week to see an improvement, even little things can help. You can start with just moving around more in general and doing a little light weight training to help you start building more muscle.
In order to be successful using a weight loss program, you need to have an idea how many calories you are consuming regardless of other plan guidelines. A 35-year-old man who is about six feet tall and weighs 210 pounds burns about 2310 calories during a sedentary day. So, in order to lose one pound per week, his daily caloric intake should be about 500 calories less than 2260 per day or about 1800 calories.
A 35-year-old woman who is about five feet six inches tall and weighs 160 pounds burn about 1730 calories during a sedentary day, so her target caloric range is about 1200 calories to lose one pound per week. These numbers are only one example, you can calculate your basic calories needs by finding a calorie calculator online. There are several calorie counters referenced in the sources at the end of this article.
Counting calories should be a key part of any diet strategy. Determine how many average calories you burn in day, and plan to eat about 500 less calories per day in order to start a moderate weight loss program. In you wish to accelerate weight loss it is better to add physical activity to your day rather than cutting calories further. By determining how many calories you can consume, while still having a chance to lose weight, you can make any diet plan you choose a more successful endeavor.
Sources:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/fat-cell.htm
http://www.weightlossforall.com/calories-per-pound.htm
http://www.ehow.com/how_4470014_starvation-mode-trying-lose-weight.html
Calorie Counters:
http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/calories-burned.php
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calorie-calculator/NU00598
