Health & Fitness

Why should you care about calories?

If you are someone that wants to take things to the next level with your health and well-being, having a great understanding of calories will definitely help.

To start with you have to understand your energy balance, which is a simple equation of calories in versus calories out.

Calories in are made up from everything you eat and drink during the day, while calories out is made up from the following:

Now we understand the basics of calories in versus calories out we can talk about the variations.

1. If you were to consume more calories than you burned in a day you would GAIN weight – this is known as a calorie surplus

2. If you consume the same amount of calories as you burn you would MAINTAIN your weight – known as being at maintenance

3. If you burn more calories than you eat you would LOSE

Calories burned from digesting food

Any planned exercise session

Unplanned exercise such as step counts, how active your job is etc.

How many calories your body burns at rest Percentage of calories burned

8-15%

15-30%

15-50% Example of someone that burns 2600kcal a day

208-390

390-780

390-1300

60-70% 1560-1820

weight – this is known as a calorie deficit.

Any diet that you have ever used and lost weight on is based on being in a calorie deficit, most of the different diets out you’re someone that burns a total of 2600 calories throughout

the day – for you to lose weight you’d need to eat less than that, simple right?

Weight loss on paper is simple, but there are so many factors which make it difficult in this day and age but I will save that for another article.

Step 1 - Workout your how many calories you burn - Total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) How? Google TDEE calculator and workout how many calories you burn each day- www.tdeecalculator.net Step 2 - Workout your calorie deficit For you to lose approximately 1lb of fat each week you’d need to consume 3500 less calories of the week or 500 less per day. Let’s use the above example of someone burning 2600kcals per day. 2600 – 500 = 2100kcal each day. Step 3 - Start tracking your calories How? Use a calorie counting app. The one that I usually go to is usually MyFitnessPal. Be aware of the calories they give you and change the goals to match your calculation from above! Step 4 - In the words of Nike ‘Just do it!’ You really don’t need to over complicate weight loss at the beginning. Give your everything into getting this right 80% (24 days out of 30) of the time and you will start to see results!

Keep it simple and remember to drop me an email or message on social media if you need any help!

Rich Blake is a co-founder of LVL 5, a business founded upon the vision of helping as many people as possible enjoy the process of becoming happier and healthier. For further information you can reach him on 07909 245472 or at rich@lvl5gyms.com