If you eat fewer calories than you use, your body burns stored fat calories and you lose weight.
If you eat the same amount of calories that you use, you will maintain your current weight.
If you eat more calories than you use, your body stores those calories as fat and you gain weight.
Your body sees food as energy. To your body, life is a matter of thermo-chemical interactions, and the transfer of energy.
The basic unit of energy we use to measure food energy is the calorie.
One pound of FAT equals 3,500 CALORIES of stored ENERGY. To lose one pound of FAT, your BODY needs to use 3,500 more CALORIES than it consumes.
If you use 500 CALORIES more than you consume every day for one week, you will lose one pound of FAT. (500 CALORIES per day x 7 days)
For most people, it is safe to lose up to 2 pounds of fat per week, which would mean tipping the ENERGY BALANCE so that you used 7,000 CALORIES (3,500 CALORIES x 2 lbs) more than you consumed in the week.
You can do it simply by consuming fewer CALORIES, but for most people the best option is to reduce CALORIES and increase ACTIVITY.
For a more in depth look at energy balance, download a copy of A Few Simple Facts.
The key to achieving and maintaining your weight loss goals is learning how your body operates, and balancing the amount of energy you take in with the amount you use up.
According to the 2008 Kaiser Permanente center for Health Research study — the largest study of weight loss ever conducted in North America — the number one predictor of weight loss success is whether or not you track your energy balance.
Graphite gives you the support to track your energy balance. We have made Graphite simple and easy-to-understand and easy-to-use. Without clutter and other distractions — such as advertisements — Graphite allows you to focus on the most important thing of all… YOU.
You are worth the effort!
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