ESSENTIAL INFORMATION FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT (A MUST READ)

Metabolism is the rate at which your body uses up energy, the rate at which your body burns up food to provide energy. .As you all know the body stores excess food as fat. Once it has utilized the amount it needs, every excess is stored as fat for the rainy day, so that at any point in time it needs to utilize energy, it mobilizes fat from its stores.

If the total of calories you ingested is less than what it requires it would mobilize fat. If it is more than what it requires, it would store the rest as fat!
So to lose weight, you have to create a deficit in the body which would be done in two ways:

1. Doing more exercise, so that your metabolic requirements for the day increases.

2. Eating less, so that your body has to go to its fat stores to mobiles energy.

1 pound of fat is equivalent to 3500calories. For every additional 3500 calories you eat, your body gains 1 pound of weight. For every 3500 calories you work out, your body loses 1 pound. For the major food groups, this is an estimate of how much calories they contain:

Fat: 1 gram of fat contains 9calories

Carbs: 1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories

Protein: 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories

The factors which determine how much calories you burn per day depends on the following:
1. Your Basal Metabolic rate. The basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of calories your body would burn at rest, i.e. if you did not do any physical activity that day at all. At rest, your body still needs energy for everything it does, the pumping of the heart, breathing, urinating, every single thing,.

2. Activity: i.e the kind of lifestyle you live daily. If your work entails sitting down in a chair all day, you won’t expect to burn much, but if your daily activity involves moving around, exercising, etc, then you would burn more.

3. Health disorders: Some health disorders like hypothyroidsm might slow down your metabolism, while hyperthyroidism increases it.

4. Sex: Men usually have a higher metabolic rate than women

5. Body weight: Your body weight also influences your metabolism. Fatter people need more energy to sustain their daily activities than thinner people.

6. Age: The older you get the slower your metabolism goes!

7. Muscle composition: More muscle in the body burns more fat. So the more muscles you have, the more your metabolism.

I have added a BASAL METABOLIC RATE CALCULATOR widget in the sidebar, so you can calculate yours there. When you calculate it, you multiply the result by your activity factor which is as follows:

Multiply by 1.2 if you live a sedentary lifestyle and don’t exercise at all.
Multiply by 1.375 if you exercise moderately between one to three times a week.
Multiply by 1.55 if you exercise three to five times weekly
Multiply by 1.725 if you exercise six to seven times weekly.



After you have calculated this, you need to calculate the amount of food you eat, to ensure that you take in less than what you require, or exercise more than what you eat. For those who exercise, you do not need to over-starve yourselves, else you would faint. To lose weight effectively and healthy try not to eat less than a thousand calories daily. You could also use the BURN CALCULATOR at the sidebar to calculate how many calories you lose when you do certain exercises.

Take for example, my BMR is 1600calories, i would eat 1200 calories a day, so that my body burns the extra 400 from its stores. Alternatively, i could also exercise to burn 300 extra calories, so that a total of 700 is lost per day, and in 5 days, i would lose 3500 calories which is equivalent to 1 pound.

Get a journal, divide in two columns, record how much you ate at the end of the day, and how much exercise you did. You need to do this honestly. So that you can calculate how much weight you would lose.

REMEMBER, ONE POUND OF FAT EQUALS 3500 calories.