Number of calories you should eat to lose weight

The number of calories one should eat every day depends on various factors including age, sex, weight and activity level. It also majorly depends on your goals – if you are trying to lose weight, gain weight or maintain weight. Here is how many calories you need to consume daily and how you can figure out how much you need.

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The calories you should consume depend on two main factors – your physical activity and basal metabolic rate.

Your physical activity is divided into three different categories:

Sedentary: You fall in this category if you do daily activities but do not have a dedicated workout routine.

Moderately active: You fall in this category if you do light physical activity like walking for three to four hours a week.

Active: You fall in this category if you workout for an hour for most days of the week.

When determining the calories you need, it’s important to consider the basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR is the calories you need to perform the basic functions like breathing and pumping blood.

How to calculate BMR

Men: (10 x weight in kg) + (6.25 x height in cm) – (5 x age in years) + 5

Women: (10 x weight in kg) + (6.25 x height in cm) – (5 x age of years) – 161

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The first step towards losing weight is creating a calorie deficit, which means eating lesser calories than what you are burning in a day. You can create a calorie deficit in two ways:

Increasing physical activity

The Center for Disease Control Prevention recommends moderate physical activity for at least 150 minutes per week. But to create a calorie deficit, you need to be more active than this.

Decreasing food intake

Consult a doctor or a dietitian and get a plan to decrease calorie intake and lose weight.

If you want to lose around 0.25 kilos of weight in a week, you need to create a calorie deficit of 250 calories daily. If you want to lose around 1 kg of weight, you need to create a calorie deficit of 1000 calories daily.

Do not forget to discuss your calorie deficit diet with a registered dietitian. The greater the deficit, the rapid is the weight loss, but make sure not to restrict your calories to lesser than 1200 calories per day. Eating too few calories can slow down your metabolism and backfire.

Eating lesser calories can lead to the following issues:

– Low heart rate

– Vitamin and mineral deficiencies

– Menstrual cycle disturbance

– low blood pressure

– Hair loss

– Digestive problems

– Constipation and fatigue

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To gain weight, you need to be in a calorie surplus, which means you will have to eat more calories than you burn. Exactly how many calories you need to eat depends on how much weight you want to gain.

Adding 500 calories to your daily diet will make you gain around 1 kilo in a week. But just adding calories isn’t enough, you also need to build muscles.

When trying to gain weight, your body requires a proper stimulus before it can build muscle like strength training. You might need to add even more calories if you have an adaptive metabolism.

Make sure to eat an adequate amount of protein, while trying to gain weight and keep up with your regular workout. Protein is required to build and preserve muscles. One should include around 30 grams of protein in each meal while trying to gain weight.

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