The Facts About Diets and Losing Weight

There are some essential facts about losing weight regardless of your age, gender, or whatever diet you have chosen to be on. Each one of us can never change the fact that it takes 3500 calories to essentially make one pound. The huge factor in losing weight is to what extend, plus or minus of that 3500 calories we are on?

A quick look at the Calorie factor can help you understand the nuts and bolts of weight loss better. But before we do we need to know about what our BMR is. Basal Metabolic Rate is the rate at which our body uses calories on a daily basis to survive. Most people are up over the 2000 calorie per day mark so we’ll use 2000 as out teaching point.

If we were to go on a meal replacement diet by drinking a Slim-Fast or other similar shake for breakfast, then have another for lunch along with an apple, banana, orange, and a nutrition bar for a snack between lunch and dinner we would be at about 850 calories; 200 for each of the power-shakes, and 100 each for the different fruits. The power bar can range from 140-260 calories. So that puts us at 850 calories before dinner. Most people vary on their dependence for fuel from this point on.

Those who have sedentary lives after work, or afternoon, will not need more than a few hundred more calories before bedtime. But that is hardly ever the case with those who diet. Those who have active lives after work which ranges from running kids around to practices, recitals, or after school activities or to those who are active themselves and either go to the gym, or find time to bike, walk, run, or whatever activity suits them. For a list that tells you how many calories you burn during each activity, go to http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist4.htm to help you figure out how many calories you are burning.

So, if you are able to add the 850 calories to your almost 1000 calories from lunch to bedtime you would only be cutting back on 150 calories from your daily requirements. That 150 calories not gained would be subtracted from the 3500 calories it takes to produce a pound of energy. That 150 calories saved a day would take you a little over 23 days to lose a pound. Remember though, that is without doing any calorie burning activities.

So, if you didn’t want to wait 23 days to lose a pound by simply just starving, you could slowly jog a mile in 12 minutes and burn 600 or so calories. Check out the nutristrategy site above for other activities. Subtract 600 calories (from jogging) away from 1850 calories you achieved from the two power shake and fruit diet, and you have 1250 which is 750 less than your daily BMR of 2000. This means that 750 less calories per day would only take you 4.5 days to lose one pound.

In conclusion, take the daily amount of calories you eat, subtract it from your BMR, and reduce that number by the number of calories you burned while exercising to illustrate how many calories you were under from your BMR. This figure will show you how many more calories you can burn away from your body to lose a pound or what is remaining of the 3500 it takes to make one pound. Calories in must be smaller you’re your BMR and your calories burned. Those are the facts of weight loss.