You don’t have to live in Massachusetts to want to maximize your weight loss. If you could drop an extra ten pounds a week, you’d be at your ideal weight in no time. Consistently losing ten pounds per week is not possible or healthy for most people. What is a healthy amount of weight to expect? It all starts with numbers, the number of calories your body burns, and the number of calories you consume.
How many calories do you burn each day?
The number of calories you burn each day varies. Every person is different, and even each day varies for the same individual. Men burn more calories than women. If you’re heavier or more active, you burn more calories. A 5’7″ 35-year-old female weighing 150 pounds and living a sedentary lifestyle would burn 1690 calories a day. If she becomes very active, she’ll burn 2429 calories a day. A sedentary male with the same height, weight, and age will burn 1889 calories and if he becomes more active, 2715 calories.
It takes a deficit of 3500 calories to lose one pound.
The most a sedentary woman could lose in a week if she ate NOTHING would be 3.4 pounds. A week of calories burned is 11,830. Divide that by 3500, and you get 3.4 pounds. For an active woman with a zero calorie intake, 4.9 pounds would be the maximum loss. The woman can only lose that number of pounds if she eats nothing. That isn’t possible for very long. If a sedentary woman cuts her daily calorie count by 500, she’ll lose a pound at the end of the week. If she increases activity to very active and cuts calories by 500, it increases the amount lost to two pounds weekly.
As you lose weight, your weight loss slows.
The more weight you lose, the harder it is to lose it. When you were ten pounds heavier, it was like walking around carrying a ten-pound weight. It causes your body to work harder and burn more calories. Most people aim for a pound or two by cutting calories and increasing activity. It doesn’t have to be a traditional gym program, just adding an extra half-hour of walking will do.
- You may lose more than one or two pounds a week occasionally. Many things can cause it. Often, it’s loss of water weight, not fat loss, and only temporary. Don’t be dismayed if your loss is less the following week.
- When you eat healthier, you’ll lose weight slowly but more consistently than with an extreme diet. The bonus is that you can continue healthy eating for the rest of your life and keep weight off permanently.
- You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Focus on healthy eating first and then increasing your activity. A Big Mac combo meal is 1120 calories. The average person would have to run at top speed for an hour and a half to offset that number of calories.
- Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat tissue does. If you increase your muscle tissue with strength training, you’ll burn more calories 24/7. It makes weight loss faster and easier.
For more information, contact us today at ProWeightLoss