Losing weight is logically a lot simpler than it may feel.

Basically, all you need to do is burn more calories than you take in. You can do that simply by reducing the number of calories you intake from food and drink and increasing the number of calories you burn from physical activities. If you do this, your body needs to find another source of energy. It finds the energy it needs within your stored fat and uses the calories from the fat to keep you energized. After a certain amount of calories are burned from the fat you lose that fat, causing you to lose weight. If you take in more calories than you burn your body stores the extra calories as fat, causing you to gain weight. Make sense?

Some people misconceive the simplicity of weight loss. They become really confused because there is so much different information on weight loss out there. Some include things like diet fads, and weird tips or tell you that all you need to do is swallow pills, eat marshmallows, or drink cayenne pepper and you’ll lose 50 pounds in X amount of weeks. All that stuff is bull; it’s proper diet and exercise that will make the person in the mirror smaller.

If you are looking to lose just one pound of fat, you are going to need to burn about 3,500 calories. This seems like a boatload of calories, and it kind of is. You can’t burn this in one day because one, it would be really hard, and two, would be extremely unhealthy. In reality, to lose weight in a healthy way you should lose no more than 2-3 pounds a week. If you try to lose more than that, which I don’t recommend, you may have unwanted extra skin and there is no way to get rid of that except for surgery.

How to Determine if You Will Lose Weight

First off, you are going to need to calculate your BMR. BMR is your basal metabolic rate, which is the minimum amount of calories you need to provide your body with in a day. You need these calories to do basic functions, like breath and digest food.

Next, you are going to calculate the amount of calories that you burn when doing activities that you do on a daily basis. This is your activity level. Examples would be sitting, standing, walking, any exercise you do, etc…

Now, find out how many calories you eat in a day. You can do this by keeping a journal of what you eat with the amount of calories written in next to it. Start measuring what you eat, look up nutritional information. If you often eat out you can ask someone who works at the restaurant for the nutritional information. I’m sure they would be happy to provide that to you.

So, now you have three different numbers, your BMR, your activity levels, and your calorie intake. Add up the BMR and activity level. This is the amount of calories you are burning. Now, look at your calorie intake number. If that number is bigger than the amount you are burning, you are going to be gaining weight. If that number is smaller, congrats, you are going to lose weight because your body is using the calories in the fat to power you.

How can you get number of calories you are burning larger, and get the number of calories you intake smaller? There is a simple answer to that simple question, my friend. You need to exercise more, and eat healthier.

Interested in Losing Weight?

If you are thinking about losing weight, you need to be able to work hard for your goals. Weight loss programs help you stay on task and measure your progress. They provide you with exact workouts and diets that you can follow to accomplish your goal quickly and easily. If you are interested in going the weight loss program route, I highly suggest checking out the ever-so-successful Custom Keto Diet.