HOW MANY CALORIES IN A DAY?

How many calories do we need to consume each day? Good question. Well, there are a lot of variables to consider. Things like gender, height, weight, age, and physical activity. Thankfully,  there are a lot of web sites you can go to and find out how many calories you need to eat each day. From there you can find out how many calories you need to eat to lose weight.

The first you thing you'll want to find out is how many calories do you need to maintain your current weight. You can actually type that into your search engine. That should provide you with an ample list of web sites to find the answer. Now don't worry, a lot of these sites are free, won't ask you to register or won't ask you for any personal information. You might want to get your "daily minimum requirement of calories"  information from at least 3 sites to make sure the numbers are close (each site may differ slightly). Just be honest, plug in you weight, height, age, gender and realistic physical activity level.

The next thing you'll want to know is your BMR (no not BMI), BMR is your Basal Metabolic Rate or the amount of calories you naturally burn while you are resting. BMI is your Body Mass Index (which I personally  feel is something insurance companies came up with to charge us higher premiums). So type that into your search engine and find a BMR calculator.

Once you know your daily requirement and BMR, type how many calories to lose weight into your search and from there you can choose from a list of sites where you can plug in the numbers above and find out. Your objective should be to lose around 2 pounds a week. That's the safe way to do it.

That's it. That's the big secrete. If you want to lose weight spend more calories than you take in (calorie deficit). It's simple math. This works. I avoided it for a long time and I wish I hadn't.

Tip:  As you lose weight your BMR goes down (you'll naturally burn less calories) so you'll slowly want to decrease your calorie intake and check back every so often to find out what your new BMR is.

Once you know how much weight you want to lose, and you know how many calories you need to lose 2 pounds a week, you can determine how long it will take you and then you can set your goal and write it down. Goals are very important in this process, I suggest 2 sets of goals: short term goals and long term goals. But again, do what works best  for you.