All well known diets across recent times have directed us to reduce our fat or carbohydrate intake. Different levels of success have been attributed to each type of diet however the essential key to effective and long term weight loss is calories loss.



Are you ready to figure out how many calories that you should take in each day? There are several ways to decide what your ideal calorie intake should be. Some are complicated and involve calculating your Base Metabolic Rate and then adding the amount of energy you normally put into physical activity and adding in how efficiently your body processes food.

You can go to a nutritionist who has tools to measure those values and get a very precise figure of how many calories you should be eating each day. But if you want a simpler formula to figure out how many calories you should be taking in each day to keep your body functioning, there is an easier way. First, you need to assess your activity level.

You belong to the sedentary category if you have an office job and are no more active than getting to or from the car that takes you to you workplace. The formula for calculating your preferred calorie intake each day involves multiplying your weight by 14 and getting for example 150X14 if you weigh 150 pounds. This means that you need 2,100 calories a day to maintain your weight but you should factor in a calories loss with an intake below 2100 if you are planning to lose weight.

If you are moderately active, you don't work out every day, but you might hit the gym two or three times a week or walk or bike ride around the neighborhood at night. To figure out how many calories you need each day, take your weight and multiply it by 17 so the total will give you the number of calories you should take in to maintain your weight. To lose weight through calories loss your intake will need to be less than this.

You have an active life if you are a person who jogs daily and extensively or regularly takes part in aerobic and strength training exercises. Your body requires more calories each day and the formula for your math process is your body weight multiplied by 20. If you want to lose weight you should ensure a calories loss and drop your daily intake below 3000 calories.

One of the most successful ways of keeping a close eye on the calories contained in your daily menu is by using a food diary. These can be purchased and used to quickly identify the calorie content of a range of foods (even fast foods) and to chart these details. Food diary proponents find that they provide the additional benefit of assisting with decisions about how to change their menu to produce a calories loss and as a result a weight loss.

There are plenty of calorie counting websites that have the same information for free and will help you manage your calories loss and the impact of this on your overall weight loss. Counting calories may take a little time at the outset but you it becomes a lot easier and will help you control what you eat so you can lose weight and keep it off forever.