Burning more calories than you consume...?!
Question: I constantly hear people say that in order to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume. However, that isn't literal right? Are you actually supposed to be burning, say 1400 calories if you're taking in 1200 a day? That just doesn't sound realistic so I'm assuming "burning more calories than you consume" is meant a bit differently than it sounds.
Answers: I constantly hear people say that in order to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume. However, that isn't literal right? Are you actually supposed to be burning, say 1400 calories if you're taking in 1200 a day? That just doesn't sound realistic so I'm assuming "burning more calories than you consume" is meant a bit differently than it sounds.
u have forgotten that the body uses calories even when u are sleeping or sitting very still.
the amount of calories ur body burns daily even if all u did was sleep all day is called ur "basal metabolic rate" or BMR.
ur BMR can vary a lot, some people have BMRs as high as 3000 cal a day, others only 1000 cal a day.
if u have a lot of lean muscle mass (like a young man in great shape) u will have a fairly high BMR. if u are out of shape with very little muscle, like a little old lady age 85, u will have a low BMR.
my teenage friend had her BMR checked one time by a doctor and it came out to be 1800 cal a day or so. she also exercises a lot which burns another 500 cal a day. so if she eats 2000 cal a day she will lose weight.
but if my mom ate 1500 cal a day she would gain weight because her BMR is lower and she doesnt work out much.
bottom line, u do have to burn more than u consume, but what u burn is BMR + exercise, not just exercise alone.
But remember that we just don't burn calories from exercise. Its in everything we do reading, walking, sleeping even eating food. Exercise only burns about 1/3 of the calories we eat in a day. (that's if we eat probably for our body)
to stay the weight you are, you need to burn what you eat. to lose weight you need to burn more than you eat and to gain weight you need to eat more than you burn.
so you can burn your excess fats in your body
that is completely true. you have to have a calorie deficeit (in your example, it would be a deficit of 200 calories) in order to lose weight. you need to find out what your BMR is (basal metabolic rate) to see how many calories your body naturally burns on its own and do not eat more than that number. never go below 1200.
hope that helps you. i've always been confused by the math and how you're supposed to eat more calories if you work out? it seems that would cancel out the calories burned by working out??
good luck!
Your body naturally uses aprox 1200 calories a day to function.. walking, talking, chewing ect. That is why it is important not to starve yourself to lose weight. BUT to lose weight you need to up the caloric burn... people with a weight problem have habitually eaten too much. IF a person would only consume the recommended calorie count a day... then, they would lose weight slowly... if they eat only 1200 calories a day and burn 400 extra.. the weight will come off faster. And, yes... with overweight people it is a literal statement because they have so much excess fat for the body to use as fuel already.
If you're burning more calories than you consume, your body will enter starvation mode. You burn so many just to keep you alive, if you burn 500 calories a day, that's sufficient for weight loss.
Have a look at this website: htp://www.bellylosssecret.com
There is a free download that talks about food and exercise and how to lose weight from someone who has.
Have a look and good luck - it's free - what can you lose?
Well, think of it this way. You are a car, and you have a tank that holds 1200 gallons. You want to drive a long distance, so you fill the tank to the top. But for some reason, about 3/4 of the way to your destination, you run out of gas. But you happen to have a gas can in the trunk that has another 300 gallons in it (big spare can, there, and lots of trunk space). Now you dump that in the tank and off you go. In the case of the body, your spare can is called fat. Ordinarily you fill the tank- your stomach- with fuel from food, in the form of carbohydrates, aka sugars. If you fill the tank and reach your destination with fuel left, it gets converted to fat and stored in the body elsewhere. Then the day you don't fill the tank, but still insist on moving and living, your body retrieves some of that fat, converts it back into glucose for burning, and off you go. If you eat 1000 calories worth of carbohydrates, but you actually burn 1200, your body must pull 200 calories worth of fuel from storage. That 200 calories doesn't amount to a full pound worth of fat, but if you do it over enough days, eventually it will tally up to one and you will lost the pound of weight. Hope this clears the mist for you.