HOW do I lose weight?!

What can I do?

There are approximately 3500 calories in 1 pound of stored body fat. So, you will need to create a negative caloric expenditure through diet, exercise, or a combination. In other words, you need to burn more calories than you consume. Let’s get very specific.

How to lose one pound per week

So, if you want to lose 1 pound per week, your calorie deficit will need to be 3500 fewer calories that week or 500 calories per day. You can do that with total diet restriction of 500 calories or 250 fewer calories and 250 calories of exercise.

The combination calorie reduction AND exercise is best for sustained weight loss for two reasons:

1. That amount of calorie restriction is hard to maintain.
2. You will not be building the lean muscle mass needed to help keep the weight off.

How to lose two pounds per week

To lose 2 pounds per week, you need to consume 7,000 fewer calories in a week or 1,000 fewer calories per day. Again, this is best accomplished through a combination of a 500 calorie deficit with 500 calories burned in exercise per day.

Another method is taking 15-20% of your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) and reducing your calories by that amount. You can increase this percentage based on your weight loss goals. ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) recommends women never get below 1200 calories per day.

Does muscle weigh more than fat?

This question is asked ALL the time. So let’s be totally obvious: one pound of muscle weighs the same as one pound of fat. However, if you put one pound of muscle next to one pound of fat, the fat will take up twice as much space as the muscle!

Muscle is less dense than fat; that’s why you will look leaner if you are 140 pounds and have 20% total body fat versus being 140 pounds with 40% total body fat.

That is an important reason NOT to focus solely on the scales when you begin an exercise program with strength training. A reduction in body fat with an increase in lean muscle mass will show with inches lost and clothes fitting a little looser. That is exciting!