Understanding calory and fat

Understanding Calory and fat

Before diving into a weight loss approach (or you may think of it as a fat reduction approach), I think we should understand how our body works and produces fat. Every day, we consume food and our body receives calories. Let's ask a simple question: "What does our body do with these calories?" Well, the answer is simple: our body uses these calories to fuel our organs, then expends energy for all our activities such as walking, running, and lifting weights. If any calories remain after this, our body stores them as our beloved (really??!!) fat.

We can formulate a simple equation for this: Calories from food = calories required by the body (i.e., calories used for operating organs + calories used for physical activity) - calories used to digest the food + fat stored in the body. To simplify, if we want to reduce the fat portion in our body, we need to decrease calorie intake from food and/or increase the calorie expenditure of our body.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Well, the equation is easy, but how do I calculate this for myself?" This is the trickiest part of this writing. I will provide an approximate method for you to calculate this yourself. You can research further, but you will likely end up with a number close to the one generated by this magic formula.

Here, I present to you a magic formula for fat reduction:

Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) = BMR*activity multiplier

BMR = 10 * your weight in pounds

Calories used to digest food = 10% of the calories you consume

Activity multiplier:

• Little or no active: 1.2

• Light exercise (1-3 days/week): 1.375

• Moderate exercise (3-5 days/week): 1.55

• Very hard exercise (6-7 days): 1.725

• Extra hard exercise (hard daily exercise & physical job): 1.9

If you consume just ~500 calories less than you require per day, you will lose ~1 pound of fat a week. Let's see this with a simple example. If your weight is 200 pounds and you do light exercise, your TDEE will be 200 10 1.375 = 2750 calories. Consuming this many calories will simply maintain your body weight. Next, if our target is to reduce 1 pound a week, we can consume 2750 - 500 = 2250 calories.

I always prefer baby steps for any lifestyle change. If you can simply reduce 500 calories from your food intake (which is actually easy to do), you may lose 24 pounds within 6 months. Isn't it amazing?

Before we move on, just remember, don’t cheat when considering the activity multiplier. We usually have less idea about the calories we consume during eating. So, please be conservative (lol).

Summary:

1. TDEE = weight (in pounds) 10 * activity multiplier

2. Just consume 500 fewer calories each day from TDEE to achieve long-term, easy results.