Calories are a measure of the amount of energy in food, essential for powering all bodily functions. All of the cells in your body require energy in order to work properly, just like a car needs fuel. They get that energy from the foods that you eat. Your body breaks down that food during digestion, releasing the energy that it contains. Those food calories - now converted to energy - power everything that you do: breathing, thinking, walking, sleeping, digesting, you name it. When calorie consumption exceeds expenditure, the body stores these extra calories, primarily as fat and carbohydrates, for later use. Conversely, weight loss occurs when the body burns more calories than it consumes, creating a calorie deficit that forces the body to tap into its fat reserves. In fact, you won’t lose weight without a calorie deficit.
Understanding Calorie Deficit and Weight Loss
To lose weight, creating a calorie deficit is essential. This means burning more calories than you consume. This forces your body to burn through the stores of fat that you have built up. This leads to weight loss. In fact, you won’t lose weight without a calorie deficit. A good rule of thumb for healthy weight loss is a deficit of about 500 calories per day. That should put you on course to lose about 1 pound per week. This is based on a starting point of at least 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for women and those assigned female at birth, and 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day for men and those assigned male at birth. It can be unhealthy to take in less than that per day. Talk to your doctor about the minimum calories you need.
Reaching a calorie deficit sounds simple: Eat fewer calories than your body needs. But to do that, you must first find out what those needs amount to: How many calories do you burn each day? Once you have established that, you take that total number of calories and subtract from it the number of calories necessary to achieve the calorie deficit you desire. An example: Let’s say you find that you need roughly 2,000 calories a day, and you want to lose about 1 pound per week. You could do this by eating about 500 fewer calories every day. Your goal, then, is to eat 1,500 calories daily. That creates a 500-calorie deficit.
There’s another way. Instead of eating fewer calories on a daily basis, you instead increase the amount of exercise you do so that you burn 500 more calories every day. The result: You need 2,500 calories daily, but you keep consuming 2,000 calories. You have created that same 500-calorie deficit.
You also can mix and match: Increase the amount of exercise you do daily to burn, say, 200 more calories while cutting 300 calories from your daily diet. Your calorie deficit: 500.
Read also: The Power of 100 Calories
These basic examples simply explain how it’s done. The best way to create - and maintain - your calorie deficit is the way that works for you. Keep in mind that your calorie needs depend on several things: your age, sex, height, weight, and exercise habits. This calculator can help you figure out your daily calorie requirements. Other things that determine your calorie needs: Your metabolic rate. This is how quickly or slowly you burn calories at rest. It varies widely from person to person. Some health conditions. Hypothyroidism, in which your thyroid gland is underactive, slows metabolism. So does Cushing’s syndrome, a condition that’s caused by having too much of the hormone cortisol.
Remember, creating too much of a calorie deficit is a bad idea. It can cause several side effects, including: Constipation, Dehydration, Fatigue, Headaches, Nausea. It may also leave you feeling "hangry": angry because you’re hungry.
Along with those side effects, an oversized calorie deficit will be harder for your body to adjust to and harder for you to maintain. You’ll likely be more successful over the long haul with a significant but sustainable calorie deficit.
Strategies for Cutting Calories
There’s no single best approach to cutting calories. In general, as long as you cut the calories and maintain a minimum amount, you will lose weight.
One proven method is to replace all sugar-sweetened beverages with water, which has no calories. That means soda, sports drinks, energy drinks, sweetened waters and iced teas, and other high-calorie beverages. And don’t forget: Fruit juice contains abundant calories. A 6-ounce serving has 60 to 120 calories.
Read also: Keto Calorie Counting: A Detailed Guide
Water not only keeps you hydrated. It may help you adapt to a lower-calorie diet. And keep in mind: When you feel hungry, it may actually be a sign you're thirsty, so reach for a glass of water rather than a caloric snack.
The DASH and Mediterranean diets also show some success. These focus on eating: Fresh fruits and vegetables, Lean proteins, Whole grains, Nuts, Seeds. These types of foods help you feel full longer, so you may be less likely to snack between meals. Just be sure to count your calories. Smaller portions can help, too, along with careful planning of your meals. A registered dietitian can help you figure out healthy ways to manage your portions and lower your daily calories.
Other tips for maintaining a calorie deficit: Curb your simple carbs. White bread, white rice, regular pasta, and other low-fiber, high-carb foods won’t help you feel as full as high-fiber complex carbs like brown rice and other whole grains as well as whole fruits and vegetables. Go light at restaurants. Avoid large portions and high-fat menu offerings. Start with a small salad or a light soup to fill you up, so you don’t overdo it. Have fresh fruit or sorbet for dessert. Read food labels. Important info, like calorie counts and sugar content, can help guide your choices. Take time to compare. For example, some yogurts contain more sugar than others, even if they have less fat. Limit prepackaged meals. These often contain more fat, sugar, and salt than you want. Cooking meals made from whole foods puts you in greater control.
Breakfast Options for a Calorie Deficit
What are the best calorie-deficit breakfast options? For your first meal of the day, focus on fiber and animal or plant protein, which both promote fullness. That may help you avoid snacking throughout the day. Here are a few examples: Plain Greek yogurt, with added berries, nuts, or seeds; A two- or three-egg or egg white omelet with mixed vegetables and quarter-cup of feta cheese or shredded low fat-cheese; A smoothie heavy on the protein, with a half-cup of Greek yogurt or a scoop of protein powder, a cup of frozen fruit, a cup of leafy green veggies like spinach or kale, and low fat-milk or an unsweetened milk alternative.
Exercise and Calorie Expenditure
Research shows that diet changes alone raise your calorie deficit more easily than exercise alone. Still, you often get the best weight loss results if you combine diet changes with moderate to vigorous exercise.
Read also: Your guide to a healthy keto meal at Chipotle.
Shoot for 30 minutes or more on most days of the week, though 45 minutes or more may be better for keeping the weight off. You don’t have to do it all at once. You can do shorter bouts throughout the day. Think 10-minute spurts. For a brief moderate workout, take a walk around the block or do a bit of gardening or lawn mowing in the afternoon. Bike riding and swimming are also great options. More vigorous exercise includes running, heavy yard work, and aerobic dancing, like Zumba.
Strength training also can help with weight loss. Make a plan to lift weights at least twice a week. You can use dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, exercise machines, and even your own body weight (think pushups and planks).
Burning 200 calories is a great daily goal: it can help you stay in shape, and it’s an achievable goal for people who can't always dedicate time to a long workout. You can easily burn 200 (or more!) calories in 15-30 minutes, and best of all, you can do most of these exercises at home with little to no equipment! Keep reading to learn what workouts will help you torch unwanted calories, including an estimate of how long you’ll have to do each of them to burn 200 calories. A vigorous walk is a perfect and low-impact way to help you get in shape. Running is a simple and effective way to shed pounds. Best of all, you don’t need anything but a pair of sneakers and the open road (or treadmill). Carving time out of your morning for a nice jog is a great way to burn calories and bring positive energy into the rest of your day. If you're just starting out jogging, keep it simple: aim to jog 2 days a week, or start with brisk walking and work your way up to walking and jogging in intervals. Hit the open road, enjoy a nice breeze and beautiful scenery, and burn some major calories at the same time. Jump-rope your way to better health! Jump-roping is a great way to burn calories and stay in shape-and it’s fun, too. Short on time? A simple water exercise to start off with is just walking. Swim laps for a full-body workout. Work your arm muscles with some underwater arm lifts. Stand in shoulder-high water, hands at your sides. Raise your arms to the surface with your palms face-up. Rotate your palms face-down and lower them again. Stand in the water at waist-level for some jumping jacks to get a full-body workout. Dancing is a fun way to let loose and get fit. Whether you take a class or have dance parties in your living room, you can dance your way to better health while burning some major calories. Rowing is a terrific workout for your upper body, and it’s another exercise that can help you burn some unwanted calories. HIIT stands for High-Intensity Interval Training. In a HIIT workout, you alternate short bursts of intense anaerobic exercise with short recovery periods. The exercises in a HIIT workout vary, but they often include planking, jumping jacks, squats, and push-ups. Circuit training is a workout in which you alternate brief bouts of different exercises with brief periods of recovery-sound familiar? Circuit training is a bit like HIIT, except that while a HIIT workout is designed to be performed at maximum effort, circuit training allows for more flexibility. Grab your rackets and tennis balls and take ’em down to the court for a calorie-burning game! It’s the perfect weekend activity: it’s fun, and it’s a great way to stay active and burn calories. Invite your friends or your date for an evening at the local lanes. In other words, if you weigh 132 lbs. Exercising for 15 minutes to an hour can help you burn 200 calories in the moment.
Be sure to talk to your doctor before you start a new exercise program, particularly if you’re over 50, overweight, pregnant, or have other health conditions or are on certain medications, such as those that treat diabetes.
And remember: Regular exercise goes a long way in protecting your health even if you don’t lose weight. It stops your body from packing on the pounds. And if you have lost weight, it helps you maintain your weight loss.
Addressing Eating Disorders
Certain eating disorders, like binge eating disorder, can prevent you from achieving a calorie deficit to help with your efforts at healthy weight loss. Such disorders lead to or are caused by complex relations to food and eating, and treating them requires more than just addressing the way you eat. Different approaches work for different people. A therapist may be able to help you change thought patterns about food and exercise. Methods include: Cognitive behavioral therapy, Motivational interviewing, Acceptance and commitment therapy.
Risks of Unhealthy Calorie Restriction
While a calorie deficit can help you achieve your weight loss goals, it can be harmful if you don’t do it in a healthy way. The risks include: Too little nutrition. If you cut too many calories or if you don’t eat the right foods, your body won’t get all the nutrients it needs. For example, if you don’t eat enough calcium-rich food, you put your bone health at risk. Low energy. As you cut calories, your body tries to conserve its energy stores by slowing your metabolism. This can make you feel cold and sluggish. It also can lead to constipation. Brain drain. Just like the rest of your body, your brain needs calories for energy. Cutting too many calories may impact your brain function. Gallstones. Severely restricting calories can lead to rapid weight loss, a risk factor for painful gallstones. Disordered eating. Dieting can make you focus too much on food and bring other negative feelings, which may lead to problematic eating and, potentially, an eating disorder.
Building Muscle in a Calorie Deficit
Can you build muscle in a calorie deficit? Yes. But keep in mind that you build muscle with strength training exercises. Such workouts require energy, which means calories, so you may need to maintain only a small deficit. That will allow you to burn fat while still building muscle. Also, your calorie needs will be greater on the days you work out, so you’ll have to plan for that. Finally, make sure you don’t skimp on muscle-building protein when you cut calories. Instead, reduce the calories you get from carbs and fats.
Calculating Your Calorie Needs
Maintaining a calorie deficit will lead to weight loss. But don’t go overboard. You will struggle to keep up with an oversized calorie deficit, and you will put your health at risk. Instead, aim for a reasonable deficit that allows you lose weight slowly but steadily.
How do I calculate my calorie deficit? It’s based on things like your age, sex, activity level, and more. So, if you normally eat 1,500 calories a day, for example, then 1,200 would be a deficit. What calorie deficit do I need to lose 2 pounds a week? You should eat about 1,000 fewer calories per day. That’s a safe amount of calorie restriction, but a smaller calorie restriction, such as 500 calories, may be easier to maintain over the long term. How many calories should I eat a day to lose weight? It depends on how many calories you eat every day to maintain your current weight. For example, if you normally eat 2,500 calories daily, then eating fewer calories will lead to weight loss. The number of calories you burn each day depends on several factors, including your height, weight, and activity level. Determining your daily calorie needs can help you reach your health goals.
You burn calories daily when you move around, exercise, and do your daily tasks. Most female adults need 1,600-2,200 calories per day. Most male adults need 2,200-3,000 calories per day. However, the number of calories you need daily is unique to your body and activity levels.
This article teaches you how to calculate your calorie needs based on your health goals. The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is a way to calculate how many calories you need to eat per day. It’s adjusted based on your sex, age, height, and weight to give a personalized estimation. The starting point of the calculation is to find out your resting metabolic rate (RMR). Your RMR is the number of calories your body needs to function. It does not include your daily physical activity and other movements. Once you calculate your RMR, you can multiply this figure by an activity factor based on your daily activity level - ranging from sedentary to very active - to determine the number of calories you need daily to maintain your weight.
Steps to Calculate Your Daily Calorie Needs
Step 1: Calculate RMR
To calculate your RMR, use your sex, age, height, and weight to adjust the formula. The formulas for calculating this number are kilograms for weight, centimeters for height, and years for age.
For people assigned male at birth: 9.99 × weight + 6.25 × height - 4.92 × age + 5For people assigned female at birth: 9.99 × weight + 6.25 × height - 4.92 × age - 161
Step 2: Work out your activity level
Then, figure out your activity level. The activity levels the equation uses are as follows:
- 1.2: Sedentary (little to no exercise)
- 1.375: Lightly active (light exercise 1-3 days per week)
- 1.55: Moderately active (moderate exercise 3-5 days per week)
- 1.725: Very active (hard exercise 6-7 days per week)
- 1.9: Extra active (very hard exercise two or more times per day, training, or a physical job)
Step 3: Use the full equation
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is: RMR × activity level = calories needed to maintain weight
Simply multiplying the two values will produce an estimate of daily caloric expenditure.
The number of calories you should burn in a day depends on your personal health and fitness goals as well as other factors, like: age, sex, height, weight, activity levels
Calorie Needs Based on Goals
- To lose weight: Losing weight requires a calorie deficit. This means eating fewer calories than your body needs, burning additional calories, or combining both.
- To maintain weight: If you want to maintain your weight, you’ll want to ensure your calorie intake matches your expenditure. You’ll need to calculate your TDEE, which is the number of calories your body needs to sustain your current weight.
- To gain weight: To gain weight, you need to be in a calorie surplus. This means you’re eating more calories than your body needs, expending fewer calories, or combining both. As with a calorie deficit, you’ll want to do this slowly to ensure it’s healthy and sustainable. A mild daily calorie surplus of around 300-500 calories allows for slow, gradual weight gain.
Factors Affecting Calorie Burn
A person’s activity level has much to do with the number of calories they need daily. Many people think they must exercise hard to burn calories throughout the day. While exercise burns many calories, your body also burns calories as you do daily tasks. How much you burn has to do with how much you weigh.
For example, people may burn close to the following in 30 minutes of doing these tasks based on their weight: Calories burned in 30 minutes Note that your exercise habits affect how many calories you burn at rest. While aerobic activity may burn more calories during the training session, researchers have found that resistance exercise increases resting metabolic rate for up to 14 hours after exercising. You can use an interactive online calculator to find out how many calories you’ll burn while doing different activities. To use it, simply input your activity, the time spent doing it, and weight.
Gender and Calorie Burn
Yes, men and women burn calories at different rates. This is why sex is included as a variable in the equation, along with age and weight, which also affect the number of calories a person burns.
Men generally have less body fat than women. They also typically have more muscle mass, which means the body burns more calories at rest. Men generally burn more calories than women overall. But a person’s body composition plays an important role, as do hormone levels.
Natural Calorie Burn
How many calories do I naturally burn per day? The number of calories you burn daily can vary based on many factors, including your sex assigned at birth, height, and weight.
For people assigned male at birth: 9.99 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) - 4.92 × age + 5 = RMRFor people assigned female at birth: 9.99 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) - 4.92 × age - 161 = RMR
Calories Burned by Walking
How many calories do 10,000 steps burn? The number of calories burned by walking 10,000 steps can vary depending on your sex, weight, and how long it takes. Walking faster generally burns more calories.
The Impact of Moderate Calorie Restriction and Exercise on Vascular Health
DALLAS, August 2, 2021 - Cutting just 200 calories a day with moderate exercise reaped bigger rewards than exercise alone for older, obese adults. Modifiable lifestyle factors such as a healthy diet and regular physical activity may help offset age-related increases in aortic stiffness.
“This is the first study to assess the effects of aerobic exercise training with and without reducing calories on aortic stiffness, which was measured via cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) to obtain detailed images of the aorta,” said Tina E. Brinkley, Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at the Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
This randomized controlled trial included 160 sedentary adults, ages 65-79 years with obesity (BMI=30-45 kg/m2). The average age of the participants was 69 years; 74% were female; and 73% were white. The two calorie-restricted groups received pre-made lunches and dinners with less than 30% of calories from fat and at least 0.8 grams of protein per kg of their ideal body weight, prepared under the direction of a registered dietitian for the study; they made their own breakfasts according to the dietitian-approved menu.
The structure and function of the aorta were assessed with cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging to measure aortic arch pulse wave velocity (PWV) (the speed at which blood travels through the aorta) and distensibility, or the ability of the aorta to expand and contract.
The results found that weight loss of nearly 10% of total body weight or about 20 pounds over the five-month study period was associated with significant improvements in aortic stiffness - only in the participants assigned to the exercise plus moderate calorie restriction group. Weight loss was similar between the calorie-restricted groups despite nearly two times fewer calories (26.7% reduction in calories vs.
“Our findings indicate that lifestyle changes designed to increase aerobic activity and moderately decrease daily calorie intake may help to reduce aortic stiffness and improve overall vascular health,” said Brinkley. Brinkley added, “These results suggest that combining exercise with modest calorie restriction - as opposed to more intensive calorie restriction or no-calorie restriction - likely maximizes the benefits on vascular health, while also optimizing weight loss and improvements in body composition and body fat distribution.