Archive for October 3rd, 2012

Whether you need to drop a few pounds, or lose some serious weight, reducing you daily calorie intake is the most reliable way to achieve your goals.

Sure, there are plenty of quick fad diets out there, that work to help you drop weight quickly, but the fix is usually temporary. If you do a fad diet and then go back to eating like you were before, you will put the weight back on just as quickly. Quick weight loss solutions can also be harmful to your health. Your best bet for losing weight and keeping it off is to reduce your daily calorie intake.

Consuming and Using Energy

When we eat, we consume calories, which are then burned or converted into energy. When the energy is used, your net calorie intake goes down. Basically, the when you calculate the difference between the calories you consume and the calories you find out your net calories. Even the most sedentary body is constantly burning calories just to function. Consuming more calories than you burn is a surefire way to put on the pounds. Extra calories are stored as ‘reserves’ in our fat cells. The key to losing weight is to burn more calories than you consume. Once you even out, in a day, and have burned as many calories as you have eaten that day, you begin siphoning energy from your reserves. Everything burned after you have broken even goes towards your weight loss.

How Many Calories do I Need to Burn?

In order to lose one pound, you need to burn roughly 3500 calories. This means all the calories you burned after breaking even on a daily basis. Now, this is much harder when you are consuming a ton of calories. When you reduce your calorie intake to something like 1500 calories a day, you can do half as much exercise than you would if you were to consume 3000 calories. It makes it easier to reach the point where you break even and start burning calories where it counts. If you were to eat 1500 calories in a day, and then burn off 2000 calories, you would end up with 500 calories that counted towards your weight loss goal. Since there are seven days in a week, you multiply your daily calories burned by seven and you will have the amount you burned in a week. At this rate, you end up with exactly 3500 calories burned, meaning you should lose one pound that week. The great thing about a low calorie diet plan is that it is math, and math problems always work out in the end. A 1500 calorie diet is a healthy way to lose weight and keep it off.

A Written Plan

The best way to get on a diet and stick with it is so lay out a plan in advance. Making a step by step guide of your daily consumptions and activities is a great way to wrap your mind around the changes you are about to make which will help you better implement them into your daily life. Creating a plan is the best way to motivate yourself to change your life. Make certain to set goals. Making small and reasonable goals, as well as your large ones, is a great way to keep yourself motivated. Seeing yourself reach your small goals will encourage you to keep pushing forward towards your big ones. Keeping your plan around in a place where you have access to it or it is in plain view is a great way to keep strong during a diet. Looking over the plan that you created, and remembering how motivated you were when you wrote it, is a great way to give you that boost you need.

A low 1500 calorie diet plan will help motivate you and keep you informed of all the specific changes you are making to lose that extra weight.

Consider Everything

When creating your diet plan, set your calorie intake to 1500 a day, but don’t stop there. The best way to lose weight is to change up your entire lifestyle, not just your diet. Drinking more water will flush your body of toxins and help your body function at its best. Plus, it will help you stay hydrated, which will benefit you greatly when you are doing any sort of physical activity. Exercising more will help you burn those calories you need to burn, and also helps to tone your body as it reshapes itself throughout your weight loss journey. Every kind of exercise burns calories, and those burned calories add up. Whether you are just doing a little more here and there, or working out every day at the gym, physical activity will help you reach your weight loss goals. Reducing your calorie intake may not be enough for you to start losing weight. Start moving, and see if that makes a difference in your weight loss journey.

So, in order to effectively begin to implement a low calorie diet, you need to:

• Get a good understanding of the science behind a low calorie diet.
• Figure out how many calories you are eating.
• Figure out how many calories you are burning.
• Set realistic weight loss goals.
• Write yourself a detailed diet plan.
• Keep track of everything you consume and all the calories you burn.

When you are doing a low calorie diet, keep track of everything you eat, drink, and all the exercises you do throughout the day. Keeping a log will help you become aware of what you are eating, and will encourage you to make the better decisions. Also, it helps you keep track of all your calories, consumed, burned, and those important extra ones that make all the difference. Whether you keep a logbook, or download an app for your phone, keeping track of things will help you stay on the right track. And, remember, losing weight doesn’t have to be a magic trick. Keeping track of the numbers and making the right choices makes your weight loss plan into a simple equation, which, when done correctly, always works out in the end.