How to lose weight: Weightloss 101

The one question that pops up at least a thousand times, no matter what conference, seminar or talk show you go to:

How can I lose weight?

 The one question that pops up at least a thousand times, no matter what conference, seminar or talk show you go.

Today, let's get this mystery resolved once and for all. Losing weight, like most things in life, is very simple. Simple, not easy.

EAT LESS! 

To be able to lose weight, all you need to do is eat fewer calories than you eat. 

Do this every day for a month and I (and several other researchers) guarantee that you will lose weight. 

Let's put this in an equation: 

Caloric deficit = Daily Calorie requirement - Calories consumed + Calories burnt

Let's analyze the three parts of this equation one by one:

• Caloric deficit: This is the deficit in the number of calories that you feed to your body. The greater the deficit, the quicker youo will lose weight, however, if the deficit is too big, you might feel weak. You could also lose focus and have a very bad mood. Therefore, do not go overboard with being in a caloric deficit. At the end of this article, I prescribe a plan that you can follow to get the exact number of calories you need to eat and to keep a deficit.
• Daily caloric requirement: This is the number of calories that you need to eat per day, to maintain your current weight. To find out your daily caloric requirement, simply take your body weight (in lbs) and multiply that with 13. These are the exact number of calories that you need to eat to NEITHER LOSE NOR GAIN weight.
• Calories consumed: Self-explanatory. The total number of calories that you eat in a day. Keep track of everything that you eat - ALL food items, your tea, coffee, juice, even candy (bad for you, but that's for another day). Nothing should go amiss.
• Calories burnt: This is the number of calories you burn through exercise or physical activity. This includes things like doing a set of heavy squats at the gym to playing a sport or going for a run or a walk. Google the number of calories you burn in whichever activity you do. If you come across a variety of different numbers, choose the lesser one, conservatively. This means if you see 3 sources that say 15 minutes of heavy squatting burns 300/450/500 calories, just take 300 in your calculation. 

How less to eat?

Now that you have the entire equation figured out, how much should your caloric deficit ideally be?

TO find out your ideal caloric deficit, take your body weight (in lbs) and multiply that by 1.25. That is the caloric deficit you need to maintain for the first three weeks in the program.

Important Notes:

1. Weigh yourself at the same time, every day. Tracking progress (or the lack thereof, is important)
2. Be accurate in tracking your caloric intake.
3. Avoid sugars and unhealthy processed food. This is not a hard rule, as you WILL get slimmer, even you eat candy all day but keep in deficit. However, healthy food is filling, keeps your hormones in check and helps your well-being in general.

An example calculation

Take the case of a 24-year-old male, Matt who is 170cm and is slightly overweight at 180lbs (no muscle).

Here's how the 4 values above will look like for him:

Required caloric deficit = 1.25 x 180 = 225
Daily requirement = 13 x 180 = 2340 cal
Now, Matt will have to adjust his intake and calorie burnt in such a way that he hits 2115 calories for each day (2340 - 225).
This can be done as follows:
Calories consumed = 2400 (let's say)
Calories burnt = 300

Yep, this totals to around 2100, but this much variation is acceptable.

That's all there is to be able to lose weight. No rocket science, no fad diets, no weird exercises.

Al you need is some discipline and consistency to be able to stick to your numbers over time.

Until next time,