How to Lose Weight by Counting Calories

If you want to lose weight, you must eat less than what your body needs for cell repair and to burn for energy. You eat more than what your body needs, the excess food may be stored as muscle, but mostly, it is stored as fat. In order to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit. It is easier and healthier to cut back your calorie intake a little bit at a time.

Decide how many calories you are going to consume for the day. This will depend on several factors, such as how quickly you would like to lose weight and how many calories you are burning through physical activity. In general, women should not consume fewer than 1200 calories per day and men should not consume fewer than 1800 calories per day.

In order to successfully lose weight by counting calories, you’ll need to know how many calories are in your food. Here are some guidelines:

Carbohydrates contain 4 calories per gram.
Proteins contain 4 calories per gram.

Fats contain 9 calories per gram.
Alcohol contains 7 calories per gram.

You need to focus on losing 3500 calories every week, and the way that you do this is you cut out 500 calories from your daily eating. Focus on losing 500 calories from your daily eating and burning 500 calories through exercise. Doing this will help you lose at least 1000 calories on a daily basis, and by the end of the week you will have lost 7000 calories equating to 3 to 6 pounds.

Use a calorie counter and exercise estimator. These can either be done along with your food diary or separately. These resources, which can be found online, will help you estimate how many calories your body burns per day as well as how many calories you can burn doing exercise.