Calories in Vs. Calories out
Written on: November 28, 2005
If your goal is to lose fat or build muscle mass, it is very important to understand the concept of calories in vs calories out that I'm going to discuss in this article. It is one of the most basic fundamental dieting principles amongst the industry of fitness training. You don't hear much about this principle in mainstream media however, because there's no money in helping people understand how to lose fat and keep it off. ;-) But fortunately for you, you've come across this article that will really help you understand what it takes to lose fat and / or build muscle.
First of all, let us assign some values. 1 pound of fat contains 3,500 calories while 1 pound of muscle contains 2,500 calories. We will come back to this shortly. The only way you will remove fat from your body is by consuming an amount of food (calories) that is insufficient to the amount that your body burns. Your body burns many calories per day on its own without the activity you put upon it. The calories your body burns alone is referred to as your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). The average person burns roughly 1,300 to 1,700 calories per day. Then there's the calories your body burns as result of the physical activity you place upon it. You can expect to burn roughly 300 to 500 calories by jogging at a moderate speed for 15-25 minutes depending on your physical condition.
So let's assume that your daily caloric expenditure (BMR + Physical Activity) is 2,300 calories and you want to lose fat. How then can you expect to lose 2 pound of fat a week? Give up? Well, 2 pounds of fat is 7,000 calories. Over the course of 7 days, you would need to create a caloric deficit of 7k calories. Now it's a matter of simple math. Our daily caloric expenditure is 2,300 calories, let's multiply that by 7 (assuming your body consumes 2.3k calories each day), which is 16,100 calories. We want to remove 2 pounds of fat (7,000 calories), so we subtract 7k from 16,100 calories = 9,100 calories. Let's take 9,100 calories and divide it by 7, which equals 1,300 calories. You would want to consume 1,300 calories per day to lose 2 pounds of fat a week.
But only consuming 1,300 calories isn't quite ideal. So what we need to do is increase your physical activity to raise your daily caloric expenditure. This will allow you to eat more food but also still lose fat. You can also raise your BMR by building muscle mass, because muscle requires more energy to operate and maintain size than fat does. You build muscle through resistance training which is covered in our other articles.
This is why exercise is so important, to burn calories which will give you leeway to eat more but also burn fat. You just have to remember to have a caloric deficit of at least 300 to 500 calories if you want to lose fat. If you want to build muscle mass, you would want to consume at least 300 to 500 calories more than your daily caloric expenditure as well as perform resistance training to force those excess calories to be directed to your muscles.
You can visit the HealthyGo Physical Analysis which will automatically compute your rough BMR, and Daily caloric expenditure and a suggested daily caloric intake.
