How Fast should I lose weight

Depending on age, height, gender and weight you burn so many calories a day just by living. It’s called your Base Metabolism Rate or BMR. You burn more if you exercise and are active. The link below will calculate you BMR and there is also a link to the Harris Benedict equation to figure out your total calorie need

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

You can also use the apps I mentioned before

http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/account/index.php

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

A pound of fat has 3500 calories. That means in order to lose 1lb of fat you have to burn 3500 more calories than you eat.  A typical female will burn 1800-2000 calories per day assuming moderate activity. Let’s assume 1800 to make this example easy. If she eats 1300 calories per day she will have a 500 calorie per day deficit. After 7 days they will have lost 1 pound of fat.

It is unrealistic to expect to lose more than 0.5 to 2.0 lbs per week.  It is also not healthy to lose weight so quickly. I mentioned before when we lose weight 75% is fat and 25% is lean tissue. The faster we lose the weight, the more lean tissue we will lose, The less lean tissue we have the fewer calories we will burn.  So where does that fat go when we burn it off? It does not leave through excretion (sorry if that is too graphic but we are all adults here). If it is not lost through number one or two, where does the fat go?

We get energy (calories) from 3 sources: Carbohydrates, Protein and Fat. (We get some from alcohol as well, but that’s not exactly a good source of other nutrition so let’s skip it).  Carbs and fats are made of mostly carbon and hydrogen with some oxygen.  Protein is also carbon, hydrogen and oxygen but it also has nitrogen.  Your cells burn carbons and hydrogen and make carbon dioxide and water. The water we pee out and we breathe out the carbon dioxide. So most of the fat we lose we breathe out. Crazy but true. When you exercise your breathing increases because you need more oxygen and you need to exhale more carbon dioxide. You are breathing out the fat you burn.

As I look back on my weight loss, I may have lost weight too quickly. I lost 3 pounds per week for 3 months. However I was eating very healthy and exercising vigorously and I felt good so I am not too worried about it. With the exercise I had a daily calorie deficit of about 1500 calories per day so my weight loss was in line with my food and exercise. The bad news is guys lose faster than girls and I am 6’2” which means I naturally burn more calories. Not fair, but it is what it is.

My wife had a good general and reachable plan to exercise about 200-300 calories per day. That would be added to a BMR of 1800 calories per day to make her metabolism at 2000-2100 calories per day. She ate 1200 calories causing her to lose about 1-2 pounds per week.  If 1200 calories per day is not realistic for you, eat 1500 calories per day and you should lose about 1 pound per week.  How much is 1500 calories per day? I will save that for the next post, “How much food should I eat?”