How to plan a diet to lose weight
Losing weight is something that can give really good health and wellness and fitness benefits. Losing weight can help many of your body systems - it can help offload your joints, it can help you be a better athlete, it can lower your cardiovascular risk profile, and can improve your body image and mental health. I imagine that many people have had this goal in mind at some point, but from my experience there are some people who succeed and many who do not. Having a solid plan that works will be helpful to give you realistic expectations regarding how fast you can lose weight, and can keep you on track and motivated when you know you are following a plan that will yield results.
Where to start?
Despite some confouding advice from unreliable sources, weight gain or loss is a function of calorie intake versus calorie expenditure. If you intake more calories (through eating) than you expend (through rest or activity), then you will increase your weight. You will lose weight if you expend more calories than you intake. This should be the goal of anyone trying to lose weight.
Some people think that they NEED to exercise in order to burn calories, but this is not true - your body is constantly using energy and burning calories even at rest. How many calories you burn at rest in a day is your basal metabolic rate. The amount of calories you burn at rest is largely determined by your age and gender. In general, males burn slightly more calories than females, and with older age people burn less calories. This is one reason why it is harder to lose weight as we get older. If you type in google “basal metabolic rate calculator”, there are many options to choose from that will help you estimate your personal basal metabolic rate.
You can then use exercise to increase the amount of calories you burn beyond your basal metabolic rate. This can help accelerate weight loss and also to ensure that you are maintaining muscle mass and strength as you lose weight. Exercising while losing weight can also help minimize food cravings if timed appropriately.
If you are planning on losing weight, it is important to know that a deficit of about 3500 calories will result in a pound lost. This is helpful when planning to know because this means that a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories will result in one pound lost in weight per week. If you follow this plan for a year, you can expect to lose over 50 pounds!
The larger the daily calorie deficit you choose to do, the harder it is likely to be to maintain. For those who are not in a huge rush to lose weight and want to do so comfortably and healthy, I would plan for a daily deficit of 500 calories.
To get started, just subtract 500 calories from your metabolic rate and then plan your daily diet to eat that number of calories! That will mean when you are starting out you will need to intensely look at nutrition labels for calorie counts and to measure food out according to serving sizes.
Working more specifically with a professional will help you figure out ways to modify this approach to meet your individual goals, and to help meal plan. Feel free to reach out to Dr. Paskewitz at jeff.paskewitz@jpptfitness.com if losing weight is one of your goals that you would like to commit to.
