Many people try to lose weight by keeping track of their food consumption. Some avoid eating highly fattening foods, others do not eat during certain periods, and there are those who limit their food intake. But whatever your dieting methods are, you are sure to come across the concept of calorie counting. It is a proven tactic in weight loss and getting a good grasp of this is important if you want to get back in shape.
Basically, you try to figure out the number behind your daily food intake and compute it against the amount of calories you burn each day. You see, anything you ingest has a corresponding amount of calories that your body will be able to use throughout the day. Note that just for your body to function, it already consumes calories. It becomes a problem when we consume more than what our body uses up. The extra calories become extra weight in our body.
To counter this, one way is to control the amount of calories you consume. If your body burns more calories than you consume in a day, it will slowly have to use up energy that is stored in fat and muscle. Done repeatedly, you will experience weight loss. Another way is through exercise. If you live a very active lifestyle and you are religiously going to the gym, playing a sport or jogging then the calculation of calories is different than those with sedentary lifestyle. This is because your body uses more calories when it is working. Thus, if you eat the same amount of food everyday but exercise more, you will lose weight much faster.
To give you an idea of how fast you can lose weight, one pound is equal to roughly 3500 calories. Also, on average, a typical person will burn 2000 calories on any given day. If you consume 1300 calories per day, you will lose one pound of dry weight in five days. This is as simple as it gets. If you noticed, you may eat as much as you want as long as you exercise more. So if you are bent on losing weight, figure out how many calories you need each day to lose weight as the number varies between body type and lifestyle. Adjusting your lifestyle changes your caloric needs, too.
