On paper losing weight is an easy thing, all you need to do is create a calorie deficit. Use more calories than you consume and you should lose weight.
If you eat more than you burn then your body stores those extra calories as fat ready for when food is scarce. Burn more than you eat and your body uses those fat reserves for energy.
Sounds simple doesn’t it. It’s probably the simplest thing about losing weight. But then people complicate it as they start to talk about all the various ways of losing weight, all the different types of exercises and all the other nutritional considerations you need to make. They’re right in a way, there is a lot you need to consider in terms of nutrition but get your calorie deficit right and you’ve got a good solid foundation to work on.
Since I’m working towards a set point during a set time here’s how I worked out my calorie deficit.
1 gram of fat is equal to 9 calories
1kilogram of fat is equal to 9000 calories
15 kilograms of fat is equal to 135000 calories
A 15kg weight loss over 22 weeks is equivalent to burning 6200 calories per week more than I eat.
That means a calorie deficit of 877 calories per day.
877 calories per day! That’s loads. I hadn’t figured on it being that much.
So I need to burn 877 calories more in a day than I eat. So how to do it? Well put simply I need to exercise more and eat less.
I’ve already mentioned that without exercise I burn just under 2000 calories so I’ll be needing to do exercise otherwise I’ll be reduced to eating less than a nutrional amount of food, that’s around 1200 calories. So I’m going to aim for about 1500 calories worth of food a day and then I’ll need to make sure I burn 2377 calories a day through exercise and sitting around at work.
The scary thing is the amount of discipline it’s going to take to stick to around 1500 calories. There’s not really much room for slip ups or treats there.
I best get off and start sorting out menus and stuff and figuring out what 1500 calories looks like!