Question of the Day

3500 calories is the rough estimate for the energy contained in one pound of fat.
This means that to lose one pound per week, you must create a deficit of 3500 calories per day. Since a week has 7 days, that means a deficit of 3500 / 7 = 500 calories per day.

This is a great starting point. The reality is much more complex .. for example, 3500 calories will not produce a pound of muscle, it actually takes more than that, etc etc ... but as a general rule of thumb, it gives you a starting point and then you can play with the numbers from there.

So how do you know how much you are burning per day?

For this, you really need to track your calories. I'm not saying this is a lifestyle change (who wants to track every calorie for the rest of their life?) but it's always good to have a reality check and see just what you're currently taking in. I find a lot of times people are told to "eat more" if they are stalling with weight loss. While in some cases when people eat the wrong types of foods, consuming more can raise their metabolism, a lot of times people are actually eating too much, but they're not keeping good track of it.

To see progress, you need to measure.

The most powerful software I've come across to track calories with is DietPower. If you click on the link, you'll be able to select a free trial to check out the software for yourself. Many people use this to get their baseline as it's a great, free way to track your progress for two weeks and get that baseline. If you really like the software, then you might do what I did almost ten years ago and invest in it.

DietPower will let you key in your calories that you consume, your weight, as well as your physical activity. Based on the actual changes to your weight and what you record, it will determine the exact amount of calories you'll need to reach your goal weight.

Don't want to do this with software? Grab a pencil and a calculator and do this:

1. Track your calories for an entire week (two weeks is even better) and call this "x"
2. Track your change in weight over that period and multiply by 3500 (if you are doing this in kilograms, multiply by 9000) and call this "y"
3. Now take (x - y) / #days ... this is important, because if you lost weight, you'll actually be adding y to x ... the result is the average calories you burn per day!

Let's take two examples to illustrate.

First, I eat 2,000 calories every day. At the end of two weeks, I've lost 1 pound.

x = 2,000 x 14 = 28,000 calories total
y = -1 x 3,500 = -3,500 calories

x - y = 28,000 - (-3,500) = 28,000 + 3,500 = 31,500
31,500 / 14 (# days) = 2,250

In this case, I know I burn, on average, including my meals and exercise, about 2,250 calories per day. If I wanted to drop a pound of fat every week, I'd take 2,250 - 500 = 1,750 calories per day. So I'd just have to back off about 250 calories from my current plan.

Let's say I eat 2400 calories every day and at the end of 1 week, I've gained 1/2 pound.

x = 2400 x 7 = 16,800 calories total
y = 0.5 x 3500 = 1,750 calories
x - y = 16,800 - 1,750 = 15,050
15,050 / 7 (#days) = 2,150

So in that case, I am burning 2,150 per day, so if I want to turn around my 1/2 pound per week weight gain, I'd drop 500 calories and consume 1,650 per day in order to lose 1 pound per week. Obviously this is fairly low so I'd want to consider adding some exercise so I could consume more!

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