subject: How To Eat Your Cake And Have It Too [print this page] If you are an overweight adult, you probably eat too much. By "too much," we mean more than you need. Your body needs a certain amount of calories to keep it going, and if you eat more than that amount, you will gain weight. If you consume fewer calories than you expend, you will lose weight. It's that simple, and you must not allow charlatans and mountebanks to persuade you otherwise. Unless you have some sort of illness, this method will work for you. So read what I have to say, discuss it with your doctor, and follow it if he or she approves.
A pound of fat represents approximately 3500 calories of stored energy. In order to lose a pound of fat, you have to use 3500 more calories than you consume. It's best not to do this over the course of a day; you'd probably hurt yourself, and your body (knowing it, the uncooperative creature) would probably have some extreme reaction which does not involve you losing any actual weight. It's better to spread this out over a week, so that you aim to exceed your caloric requirements by 3500 to 7000 calories per week, resulting in weight loss of one to two pounds per week. It's not healthy to try to lose more than two pounds in a week, and if you do attempt to do so you're unlikely to be successful.
Not sure how much weight you need to lose? Check a BMI calculator. Make it your goal to hit the right BMI and body fat percentage for your height.
Let's say you want to lose two pounds per week. To do so, you need to figure out how many calories a person of your age, sex, and weight usually needs in a day, subtract 500 from that amount, and follow a diet that provides you with that many calories. For example, if you would ordinarily need 3000 calories in a day, you would follow a 2500 calorie per day diet. Then you figure out how much exercise a person of your weight would need to do to burn 500 calories per day. The result is simple. 500 fewer calories consumed plus (minus, actually, but I don't want to confuse you) 500 more calories expended equals a 1000 calorie per day deficit, which, over the course of a week adds up to 7000 calories, or two pounds. Your mileage may vary, but there's no getting around it. If your body is consuming fewer calories than it's expending, something's got to go.
Body mass index (BMI) is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to both adult men and women.
