Tom Venuto

Most fitness conscious people know that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so if you create a deficit of 3500 calories in a week, you lose a pound of weight. If you create a deficit of 7000 calories in a week, you lose two pounds a week, and so on. Right? Well, not so fast...

Dr. Kevin Hall, an investigator at the National Institute of Health has done some interesting research about the mechanisms regulating human body weight. He recently published a new paper in the International Journal of Obesity that throws a wrench in works of the "3500 calories to lose a pound" idea...

Some of the equations in his paper made my head hurt, but despite the complex math he used to come to his conclusions, his article clearly prompts the question, "3500 calories to lose a pound of WHAT?" His paper also contained a lot of simple and practical tips you can use to properly balance your caloric intake with output, fine tune your calorie deficit and help you retain more muscle when you diet.

Below, I've distilled some of the information into a simple bullet-point summary that any non-scientist can understand. Then I wrap up with my interpretation of how you can apply this in your own fat loss program:

Calculating the calories required to lose a pound and fine-tuning your caloric deficit

* 3500 calories to lose a pound has always been the rule of thumb. However, this 3500 calories figure goes back to research which assumed that all the weight lost would be adipose tissue (which would be ideal, of course).

* But as we all know (unfortunately), lean body mass is lost along with body fat, which would indicate that the 3500 calorie figure could be an oversimplification.

* The amount of lean body mass lost is based on initial body fat level and size of the calorie deficit

* Lean people tend to lose more lean body mass and retain more fat.

* Fat people tend to lose more body fat and retain more lean tissue (revealing why obese people can tolerate aggressive low calorie diets better than already lean people)

* Very aggressive low calorie diets tend to erode lean body mass to a greater degree than more conservative diets.

* whether the weight loss is lean or fat gives you the real answer of what is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss

* The metabolizable energy in fat is different than the metabolizable energy in muscle tissue. A pound of muscle is not 3500 calories. A pound of muscle yields about 600 calories. • If you lose lean body mass, then you lose more weight than if you lose fat.

* If you create a 3500 calorie deficit in one week and you lose 100% body fat, you will lose one pound. •

* But if you create a 3500 calorie weekly deficit and as a result of that deficit, lose 100% muscle, you would lose almost 6 pounds of body weight! (of course, if you manage to lose 100% muscle, you will be forced to wear the Dieter's Dunce cap)

* If you have a high initial body fat percentage, then you are going to lose more fat relative to lean, so you may need a larger deficit to lose the same amount of weight as compared to a lean person

* Creating a calorie deficit once at the beginning of a diet and maintaining that same caloric intake for the duration of the diet after major weight loss fails to account for how your body decreases energy expenditure with reduced body weight

* Weight loss typically slows down over time for a prescribed constant diet (the "plateau"). This is either due to the decreased metabolism mentioned above, or a relaxing of the diet compliance, or both (most people just can't hack aggressive calorie reductions for long)

* Progressive resistance training and or high protein diets can modify the proportion of weight lost from body fat versus lean tissue (which is why weight training and sufficient protein while on calorie restricted diets are absolute musts!)

So, based on this info, should you throw out the old calorie formulas?

Well, not necessarily. You can still use the standard calorie formulas to figure out how much you should eat, and you can use a 500-1000 calorie per day deficit (below maintenance) as a generic guideline to figure where to set your calories to lose one or two pounds per week respectively (at least that works "on paper" anyway).

Even better however, you could use this info to fine tune your caloric deficit using a percentage method and also base your deficit on your starting body fat level, to get a much more personalized and effective approach:

15-20% below maintenance calories = conservative deficit

20-25% below maintenance calories = moderate deficit

25-30% below maintenance calories = aggressive deficit

31-40% below maintenance calories = very aggressive deficit (risky)

50%+ below maintenance calories = semi starvation/starvation (potentially dangerous and unhealthy)

(Note: According to exercise physiologists Katch & Mcardle, the average female between the ages of 23 and 50 has a maintenance level of about 2000-2100 calories per day and the average male about 2700-2900 calories per day)

Usually, we would suggest starting with a conservative deficit of around 15-20% below maintenance. Based on this research, however, we see that there can be a big difference between lean and overweight people in how many calories they can or should cut.

If you have very high body fat to begin with, the typical rule of thumb on calorie deficits may underestimate the deficit required to lose a pound. It may also be too conservative, and you can probably use a more aggressive deficit safely without as much worry about muscle loss or metabolic slowdown.

If you are extremely lean, like a bodybuilder trying to get ready for competition, you would want to be very cautious about using aggressive calorie deficits. You'd be better off keeping the deficit conservative and starting your diet/cutting phase earlier to allow for a slow, but safe rate of fat loss, with maximum retention of muscle tissue.

The bottom line is that it's not quite so simple as 3,500 calories being the deficit to lose a pound. Like lots of other things in nutrition that vary from person to person, the ideal amount of calories to cut "depends"...

References:

Forbes GB. Body fat content influences the body composition response to nutrition and exercise. Ann NY Acad Sci. 904: 359-365. 2000

Hall, KD., What is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss? Int J Obesity. 2007 Epub ahead of print.

McArdle WD. Exercise physiology: Energy, Nutrition, and Human performance. 4td ed. Williams & Wilkins. 1996.

Wishnofsky M. Caloric equivalents of gained or lost weight. Am J Clin Nutr. 6: 542-546.

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Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom teaches you how to lose fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting http://www.BurnTheFat.comhttp://www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.Com , the Internet's premier members-only fat loss support community. , home of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle and

By: Jaks Lloyd

You have heard and read about it so many times; your doctor has told you, you hear it on television and read it in every magazine you pick up: EXERCISE IS GOOD FOR YOU.

You must have drawn the conclusion that exercising can help you to lose those unwanted pounds and tighten up your wobbly bits.

But how does it work?

All depends on metabolism. Why? The answer is simple. Because metabolism is the process by which your body makes use of the food you eat in order to provide the necessary quantity of energy to your body.

There are three ways to spend your energy daily: basic needs, food processing and physical activity.

Not only an activity can burn calories, but also the moments when your body is passive, at rest. Even then there exist biochemical processes occurring that require energy to drive them.

Calorie metabolism provides the energy for basic bodily needs such as breathing, blood circulation and cellular growth and repair.

The most intense process of your body is food digestion. The digestive processes are maintained with almost ten percent of the calories you eat each day.

More than that, the last but not least, the daily physical activities, such as running, swimming or walking, also require calories.

Unlike the basic, digestive needs of your body, the physical activity you do depends only on your choices. If you want to burn more calories and lose weight, you need to exercise hard.

The amount of calories you burn while exercising depends on your age, sex and body composition.

Older people tend to have a slower metabolism and also less muscle , which is one of the most "active" calorie-burning tissues.

Women burn less calories than men when performing equivalent exercise, also because men tend to have more muscle mass.

People with bigger weight can burn calories at a higher rate than smaller people, because their bodies require more energy for movements.

Let's take for example a person with a weight of 130 pounds, racing a bicycle at more than 20 miles/hour would burn 944 calories an hour.

For the same amount of exercise, a person who has a weight of 155 pounds would burn 1125 calories/hour.

The number of calories you burn is also influenced by the intensity with which you exercise – in general the harder the exercise, the more calories burnt.

Running at 5mph burns 472 calories per hour, whereas at 11mph you can burn 1062 calories per hour.

High impact aerobics also burns more calories than a lower impact workout (413 calories versus 295 calories/hour).

It is said that sports that require intermittent running, such as:

basketball (472 calories/hour), tennis (472 calories/hour), football (531 calories/hour), soccer (590 calories/hour)

give you the ability to burn more calories than less active sports such as:

golf (236 calories/hour), cricket (295 calories/hour).

Never try to find excuses for not doing housework, because the household chores are a good way to lose some calories fast and easy, without even thinking about them:

Cleaning your house will burn 207 calories/hour, while carrying heavy loads around the garden can burn up to 472 calories/hour. Painting or plastering your home burns about 266 calories/hour; also scrubbing a dirty floor will make you lose calories - about 325 calories/hour.

Only 30 minutes spent on engaging in physical activity each day, can help you burn calories, beat the battle of the bulge and gain fitness.

Go for it!

Article Source: http://myarticlezine.com

by Ketty Johnson

Many people desire to enhance their metabolism so they can burn fat more successfully. Metabolism is the absolute set of chemical reactions that take place in living cells. These processes are the core of life, allowing cells to raise and reproduce, by keeping their structures, and act in response to their environments. Metabolism is mostly separated into two categories. Catabolism yields energy, an example being the breakdown of food in cellular respiration. Anabolism, on the other hand, uses this energy to create components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.

The prime reason that people are get overweight is because their BMR basal metabolic rate (basal metabolic rate) is lower than it should be. BMR is the rate at which our body burns calories to carry out its normal functions of digestion, breathing, circulation etc. Our body needs a minimum number of 1500 to 2000 calories a day to carry out its normal functions. When it does not get its daily requirement it slows down the metabolic rate. This means that they burn lesser calories in a day. That's why at over a period of months, this adds up to stored fat.

To counter with such situation we have take foods which have properties of burning calories like fat burning foods. This foods burn more calories than the calorie content of the foods itself. These fat burning foods or so called negative calorie foods are natural plant foods. Like fruits which is rich in vitamin C which are like limes, lemons, oranges, grapefruit and tangerines have fat burning properties. If you eat these fat burning foods along with some exercise, it will help to boost your metabolism and burn calories.

For fast results we can take some fat burner supplement which is proven by several studies that it is quite effective because Fat burners is help to raise your metabolism so you burn fat faster. Fat burners are essentially medicine which carries certain herbal ingredients such as Ephedra, HCA, Chitosan and Pyruvate, all of which claim to either enhance energy, raise your metabolism and/or suppress your appetite.

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source:www.goarticles.com

From Jennifer R. Scott,

Question:

How many calories should I eat if I want to lose weight?

Answer:

It's Relative

Why Estimate Your Caloric Needs?

(Then, to lose weight, you'll need to cut calories or burn extra calories and shoot for a level lower than the results you get with this formula.)

Calculate Your BMR

Other factors that influence your BMR are height, weight, age and sex.

Step one is to calculate your BMR with the following formula:

Women:
655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

Please note that this formula applies only to adults.

Calculate Activity

• If you are sedentary : BMR x 20 percent
• If you are lightly active: BMR x 30 percent
• If you are moderately active (You exercise most days a week.): BMR x 40 percent

• If you are very active (You exercise intensely on a daily basis or for prolonged periods.): BMR x 50 percent
• If you are extra active (You do hard labor or are in athletic training.): BMR x 60 percent

Add this number to your BMR.

The result of this formula will be the number of calories you can eat every day and maintain the weight you are currently at. In order to lose weight, you'll need to take in fewer calories than this result.

Create a Calorie Deficit

So, if you cut back 500 calories a day, you should lose about one pound per week. That said, If you exercise to burn off 500 calories a day you should lose approximately one pound per week. Do both, and ... you get the picture. Ideally, you should do a combination of both, (e.g. cut back 250 calories; burn an extra 250 calories).

Your weight loss will vary from week to week and at times you may even gain a little weight -- if you're working out you could be developing muscle, which weighs more than fat.

The long-term results are what matters.

Lose at a Healthy Rate

To find out how you are spending your current calorie intake, keep a detailed food diary for at least one week. (You can check the calorie content of most foods at calorie-count.com.)

Make the Cut(s)

Making little changes like these will really add up in the long run.

To assess your daily caloric intake, use calorie-count.com to look up the calorie content of the foods you recorded in your food diary. Pay attention to serving sizes -- if your portion consisted of two servings, then be sure you double the calories. Track your daily intake either online or in your food journal.

Next, find foods you can do without altogether, reduce portions of, or switch for lower-calorie alternatives.

And guess what? It's easier than you think. Take it one meal at a time. Or even one food at a time. And then, one day at a time.

Tomorrow, trade whole milk for reduced-fat milk The next day, try diet soda instead of regular. Three days in, switch to light wheat bread instead of white. All the calorie-reductions you make (and stick to) will add up in the long run.

Burn it Off!

Experts agree that it's easier to exercise than to cut the same number of calories that exercise shaves off. In other words, it's just plain easier for us to be a little more active than to do without more food to achieve the same calorie-reduction.

Please check with your doctor before significantly changing your diet or starting a new exercise regime.