Are You Calorie Clueless?
By Lauri Porten, ACSM Certified Personal Trainer
Understanding Your Daily Calorie Needs Is Key First Step for Weight Loss
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FACT: 66% of Americans are overweight or obese.
FACT: 88% of Americans have no idea how many calories they should consume in a day to maintain their current weight, according to a recent national survey.
Do you know your number? If you're like most Americans, you don't have a clue.
It's widely known that the key to losing weight is to consume fewer calories than you expend. Having a frame of reference for calorie consumption and expenditure is a critical first step in tackling your weight loss challenge.
Consider this example:
Joe is 57 years old and weighs 257 pounds and 6 feet tall. He is a sales manager and spends most of his time at a desk.
Using Graphite's free Calorie Profile tool, he enters his birthdate, gender, current weight and height. He selects an activity level that reflects his typical work day. In this case, “Deskbound/Sitting”.
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Joe's number is 2545. This number (Daily Calorie Baseline) reflects the amount of calories he can consume each day and maintain his current weight.
By knowing his number, Joe now has a frame of reference for determining how many calories he should eat and how many calories he should burn with exercise to lose weight.
As previously mentioned, the key to losing weight is to consume fewer calories than you expend.
A simple rule of thumb for losing 1 pound a week is to consume 500 fewer calories than you expend each day. To lose 2 pounds per week, consume 1000 fewer calorie than you expend each day.
1 lb/week = 500 calorie differential each day
2 lb/week = 1000 calorie differential each day
To lose 1 pound per week, Joe could eat 2000 calories each day, which is 545 calories less than his Daily calorie baseline.
To lose 2 pounds per week, Joe could still eat 2000 calories daily and burn 500 calories each day in exercise to create the 1000 calorie differential.
Weight loss is a math problem! It's not about the latest diet craze, magic diet pills or starvation. It's about managing the calories you eat and the calories you expend through exercise.
Using Graphite's free Calorie Profile tool to calculate your number is a excellent way to begin your weight loss adventure.
