How Many Calories Do You Need Each Day to Help You Lose Weight?
One of the best things you can do to lose weight is to start tracking your calories. Every day you take in somewhere between 1500 and 2000 calories and each and every one of them counts. Calories are what your body needs to function. As much as 60% of the calories you eat everyday are used to take care of your bodily functions, so it is important to make sure you get enough calories every day. Unfortunately though, most Americans take in far too many calories, often exceeding 2000 a day.
How many calories do you need to eat each day to lose weight though? This will depend largely on your activity level. If you are sedentary you will need fewer calories, if you're very active, an athlete, for example, you will require more calories. Based on the 1500-2000 calories, you will require around 1200 a day for a sedentary lifestyle and close to 2000 if you are an athlete in training.
For this example, let's assume you are normally active and you should eat around 1700 calories. Just because you know you need 1700 calories a day, doesn't mean any 1700 calories will do. In fact you need to eat them specifically so that your body gets all of the nutrients, vitamins and minerals you need. This is just to maintain your current body weight though.
To lose weight you can take out about 500 calories a day to lose 1 pound a week. Additionally you can exercise off another 500 calories a day for another pound of weight loss. You should be careful how you are eating and exercising because you need to maintain your health as well.
You should be eating protein, complex carbohydrates, fiber, and drinking plenty of water. These all play a large part in your weight loss. How you exercise is important too. You should be changing up your routine at least every week. Start by having a lot of cardio workouts in your routine. This is the best way to burn off the fat you have built up.
As you start to lose weight and notice you need to tone up, you should start adding more strength training to your workouts. Always keep both of these exercises in your routine, but balance them out, so that you are getting enough of each to reach your goals. In the beginning try 75% cardio and 25% strength, and then slowly balance the two, until you are ready to tone up and switch to 75% strength and 25% cardio.
There are a lot of different exercises you will do in order to lose weight. One week you can stick with a routine of the same exercises, but the next week you should target another form of cardio, and maybe some additional strength training exercises. This will help you avoid plateauing, and you will continue to your goal weight without problems.
