How to Lose Weight by Counting Calories

Although fad diets may sound appealing, they're not exactly safe, or, well...effective! Sure, they might be allright to jumpstart some weight loss, but unless you permanently change your eating habits, your weight will also not premanently change.

1. Step 1

   Figure out your BMR (http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/). This is the number of calories you burn doing nothing. To lose weight, eat less or as many calories as your BMR.

2. Step 2

   Make an exercise plan. Decide when you'll do what, and figure out how many calories that will burn (Living healthy)

3. Step 3

   Figure out how much weight you want to lose and how many calories you need to eat to do so: Say your BMR is 1400 and you want to lose 10lbs. Say you will go swimming leisurely 3 times a week for an hour and a half each time, burning about 1500 calories altogether. You would multiply your BMR (1400) by 7 (you burn 1400 calories each day of the week), and that gives you 9800. This means you will burn 9800 calories a week doing absolutely nothing. Add the 1,500 calories you burn exercising, and you're already burning 11,300 calories a week. Say you will eat 1,300 calories a day. You want to multiply that by 7, too. You get 9100, which represents the total number of calories you ate for a week. Subtract the number of calories you eat per week (9100) from the number of calories you burn per week (11,300) to find the total caloric loss during the week (2,200) and divide that number by 3500 (the number of calorie in a lb). You would lose approx. 0.6 lbs per week.

4. Step 4

   Following the example above, find out how many calories you want to eat and how much weight you would lose. The above is purely an example, and you can actually lose a lot more or a lot less depending on your weight, height, age, amount of exercise, amount you eat, etc.

5. Step 5

   Keep following this because to lose permanent weight, you need to make permanent changes. Be sure to be healthy. You would theoretically lose the same amount of weight eating 1,300 calories of ice cream and oreos than you would eating 1,300 of lettuce; I assure you, you will be much happier balancing everything out, and letting yourself have a variety of foods while staying in your caloric range.

This is a site which gives you a way to count calories to lose weight using an online calculator: Calorie Calculator Online

How to Count Calories to Lose Weight

If you want to lose weight, you must eat less than what your body needs for cell repair and to burn for energy. If you eat more than what your body needs, the excess food may be stored as muscle, but, mostly, it is stored as fat. Counting calories will make it easier to lose weight during a diet. If you know the calorie content of food, you can avoid high-calorie foods and select lower-calorie foods that allow you to lose weight and satisfy your nutritional requirements. Read more on caounting calories here: Online calorie counter

What is a Calorie?

A calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. The calories in food are really kilocalories or 1000 calories. When we say that a carbohydrate like sugar has 4 calories per gram, we really mean that it has 4 kilocalories per gram. This means that one gram of sugar has enough energy to raise the temperature of 1000 grams of water by 4 degrees Celsius. The calories in food provide a measure of the energy content of the food.

How many calories does your body burn?

The number of calories that you need depends on the size of your body and your level of activity. A large person requires more calories than a small person, an active person requires more calories than a sedentary person, and men require more calories than women. The minimum amount of energy required when resting, called the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) can be calculated using the Mifflin-St Jeor equations. These equations require the weight in kilograms, the height in centimeters, and the age in years. The BMR has to be multiplied by an activity factor to estimate the daily calorie requirements. The following calculator can provide an estimate of your daily caloric requirement, but it is important to provide a good estimate of your activity. "Sedentary" means that you don't exercise at all. "Lightly active" means that you engage in light exercise or sports 1-3 days per week. "Moderately active" means that you exercise hard at least half an hour per day, five days per week. "Very active" means that you engage in fairly strenuous exercise or sports 6-7 days a week, and "extra active" means that you have a physical job where you are very active throughout the day.
Male: BMR = 10×weight + 6.25×height - 5×age + 5
Female: BMR = 10×weight + 6.25×height - 5×age - 161


Setting a Target Body Weight

Once you have calculated your current calorie requirements, you have to calculate the calorie requirements for the body that you would like to have. Your target weight should be such, that your Body Mass Index falls within the normal range of 18.5 to 24.9. For example, if you are a 35-year old, lightly-active female with a height of 5 feet, 6 inches and a weight of 160 pounds, you need 1,978 calories per day to maintain your weight. If you want to weigh 145 pounds, set the weight in the calculator to 145. The calculator shows that you should eat 1,884 calories per day to maintain a weight of 145 pounds. This difference of about 100 calories per day is equivalent to a slice of toast with a pat of butter.

Since one pound of body fat has about 3,500 calories, a reduction of 100 calories per day will cause the loss of one pound of weight in 35 days. By just cutting out the calories equivalent to one slice of buttered toast from your diet, you can lose 15 pounds in one year and a half. Similarly, you can gain 15 pounds in a year and a half by eating 100 calories extra per day.

Weight loss can be accelerated by reducing the calories further, but a diet should not reduce intake below 1,300 calories per day because such diets are not sustainable and it is very difficult to obtain all the necessary nutrients with very low calorie diets. Another adverse effect of very low calorie diets is that the body goes into starvation mode and decreases the BMR. A decrease in BMR reduces weight loss and has the unfortunate consequence that you will gain weight faster if you overeat because you will be consuming more excess calories above your new, lower BMR.

The best diet is one that can be maintained for many months or years until healthy eating habits become a way of life. As a general rule, your daily calories should not be reduced below 15 percent of the calories required by your target weight and activity level. In our example above, the target weight for the lightly active female requires 1,884 calories per day. Fifteen percent of this amount is 282 calories, i.e, 1884×(15/100). Subtracting 282 from 1,884 we get 1,602 calories per day. This reduction of 282 calories per day should result in the loss of one pound every twelve days, or about 2 pounds per month, at the beginning of the diet. As the body weight decreases, the rate of weight loss will also decrease. When you approach your target weight, you can increase your calories gradually until you reach a mainenance level.

Just how much food is 282 calories? This is approximately one slice of apple pie (1/6 of an 8-inch pie), or one jelly-filled doughnut, or two scoops of vanilla ice cream, or two regular sodas. You can normalize your weight by just skipping dessert and sweet drinks! It also helps if you can exercise vigorously 30 minutes per day. Vigorous exercise can burn 200 calories in half an hour. Just walking burns approximately 150 calories in half an hour. see an online calorie calculator here: Counting calories

Determining the Calories in Food

Once you know how many calories you need to achieve your target weight, you have to figure out how many calories are in the food that you eat. The following table shows the calories of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and alcohol. Fiber consists of carbohydrates that are not digestible and can be subtracted from the amount of total carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates 4 Calories per gram
Proteins 4 Calories per gram
Fats 9 Calories per gram
Alcohol 7 Calories per gram

Since most foods consist of complex mixtures of the basic food components, you will need to interpret nutrition labels to determine the calories in packaged foods, and you will need five basic tools:

* Food Scale
* Measuring Cup
* List of foods and calories per gram
* Calculator
* A journal to record everything that you eat

Establish a baseline: If you are not used to dieting and measuring food, the best way to start is to just eat normally for about one week, but weigh and measure everything that you eat or drink. This will establish a baseline of your normal eating habits and your ad libitum caloric intake.

As an example, let us say that you would like to eat some sunflower seeds. The nutrition label says that one serving consists of one ounce or 28 grams, and that the one-pound package has 16 servings. This 28-gram serving has 190 calories. Grab a handful containing all the sunflower seeds that you are going to eat, and before eating a single kernel, weigh them. Suppose that they weigh 30 grams. You know that there are 190 calories in 28 grams, so you calculate:

one handful = 30 grams × (190 calories/28 grams) = 204 calories

You write this in your journal and then you can enjoy the seeds.

Once your diet starts: You will want to know how many grams of food have a specific number of calories. If you want to eat only 100 calories of sunflower seeds, how many grams should you eat? Since you know that 28 grams have 190 calories, you can calculate:

weight needed = 100 calories × (28 grams/190 calories) = 14.7 grams

Round this figure to 15 grams, weigh that amount of seeds, write it in your journal, and enjoy knowing that you are eating only half of your previous calories. You may still feel hungry, but that is life. You have to sacrifice for what you want. You won't starve.

The first few days of keeping track of your calories are the hardest because you have to look up the number of calories of each new food. It may seem that you are spending more time writing down what you eat than eating. Don't be discouraged.

Scales and Software to make your life easier

There are scales such as the Newline Digital Nutrition Diet Scale that weigh and track nutritional intake for many foods. All you have to do is select the name of the food, and the scale calculates the calories, fat, cholesterol, fiber, and protein based on the weight. The scale can store in its memory multiple food entries to keep a record of what you have eaten.

There are several web sites and computer programs that you can use absolutely free to determine the calories in food and to track your daily calories and nutrients. This is one such calorie calculator site: Online Calorie Calculator here

Counting Calories to Lose Weight Faster: Ways to Count Calories and Lose Weight

How to Lose Weight Counting Calories with a Calorie Calculator

Many people are struggling to lose weight and unfortunately many have failed on several occasions. I personally had weight issues and had tried all the diets there are out there since I could not afford to go into a gym or buy the weight loss pills like hoodia. I finally knew why I had failed to lose weight when I learnt the science behind successful weight loss. Simply put, this is a body process that is called metabolism, which means the burning down of food calories into energy for use in your body. This is the main reason that you need to learn the art of counting calories to lose weight fast and effectively. Counting calories and losing weight is actually made easy by using an online calorie calculator found here: Counting Calories to Lose Weight calculator

Why count Calories manually?

Counting calories to lose weight effectively is a thing most people do manually and it can take a lot of your time and before you know it, you have burned out and off the diet. With a simple calorie calculator and the understanding of how the body’s metabolism works, you can work your way to losing weight without too much suffering. The main reason to count calories to lose weight is to be able to control your metabolism rate to burn more than usual.

How Calories affect your Metabolism

Metabolism works in such a way that it will burn just the right amount of calories contained in your meals. It has an intelligent process that establishes the average amount of calories in your normal diet and it will set itself at that exact rate. However, and in order to be able to start losing weight, you need your body metabolism to burn a little extra to be able to break down the stored fat in your body hence weight loss. If you go on a starvation diet, the metabolism will again notice the abrupt reduction in calories intake and readjust itself establish another average rate just enough for the new calorie intake. In effect, the process is not burning any extra to allow the usage of fatty tissue, and you will therefore not lose any weight.

An example is when you are used to taking 4000calories of food every day, your metabolism is set at that rate. You decide to go on a starvation diet of about 1500 cal and your body thinks that you are going through a drought; it will adjust its metabolism and will again start burning at 1500cal/day. This means the body process is not burning any extra stored fats and you are not losing any weight. This is called the weight loss plateau and your only way out is to learn how to trick your metabolism through randomly changing your calorie intakes.

How to work with your Body Metabolism, Calories and Lose Weight Permanently

The trick in harnessing your metabolism by eating a random amount of calories such that the process gets confused enough to start burning extra fat in your body. This will mean that, due to your irregular calorie intake, the body’s metabolism is unable to establish a daily average of your calories intake. It will then start burning haphazard amounts of calories even more than what you had taken in your previous meal. Slowly, this will start to burn the fat deposits on your tummy, under the skin, between your thighs, and you will gradually start losing weight, while not starving yourself.

Find an Online Calorie Calculator

This is the main trick I learnt and started tricking my metabolism by counting calories to lose weight faster and permanently. You however don’t have to manually count the amount of calories in your food since there are many online diet calories calculators that you can use. Find one weight loss calories calculator and start counting calories to lose weight right now here: Counting Calories to Lose Weight calculator

You may want to know the best way to count calories lose weight fastest; or download the diet calories online calculator; to find it Click Here: Calculator For Counting Calories To Lose Weight

Counting Calories to Lose Weight Faster – How to Count Calories and Lose Weight Using a Calculator

Counting Calories Lose Weight Calculator

Over 64% of people in the US alone and more than 750million people worldwide are overweight. This creates a grim picture of how bad people want to lose some weight. The problem is that more than 80% of people that have tried to lose weight before have failed due to many reasons. However most of those who failed were due to lack of persistence in following through their weight loss plan. They could have been on the weight loss pills, exercising to lose weight or on a food diet plan. The best way to lose weight is to understand how your body metabolism works against the calories that you take in your food and get a calorie calculator to help you along here: Find it here: Count Calories to Lose Weight calculator

Why Count Calories to Lose Weight

Counting calories to lose weight is one of the sure ways to start losing weight fast and consistently over a period of few weeks. In order to be able to count calories and lose weight, you will need to learn about metabolism. Metabolism is the process that your body burns down calories taken in your food to energy. Metabolism is tricky since it usually burns just enough calories that you take in and nothing more. You can therefore see why you need to know the actual calories that are in your food so as to ensure that your body is able to burn the calories and hopefully some o the fat in your body.

Using Metabolism to Lose Weight

Stored fat tissue in your body is not burnt down through metabolism in normal cases unless you are experiencing some drought or starvation. Some people prefer to go on a starvation diet to lose weight and sure enough the metabolism starts to use the fat tissue and you seem to lose weight. Problem is that, immediately you step out and start eating little more, your body will over compensate and reduce the rate of metabolism. Your body will start to stack up fat again as a precautionary measure to lack of food in the future. The trick therefore is to work with your metabolism rate such that you are able to trick it to burn just a little extra fat.

This is the main reason why mastering to count calories to lose weight is very important but equally hard to perfect. It is however possible with some meal calories lose weight calculators that are available with some diet plans online. You can get one of these weight loss calories calculator and start counting calories to lose weight right now here: Count Calories to Lose Weight calculator

You may want to know the best way to count calories lose weight fastest; or download the diet calories online calculator; to find it Click Here: Calculator For Counting Calories To Lose Weight