Calories Needed To Lose Weight

Many people think that not eating a lot is a quick way to lose weight. However, the fact of the matter is that calories are needed to lose weight in the long term. Without eating food, the body will go into starvation mode and weight loss will actually stop instead of move forward.

Although some people realize that starvation is actually a counterproductive way to lose weight, they don't know how many calories that they need to eat to lose weight.

The best way to do this is for an individual to track how many calories they eat on a daily basis. Many people say that 2000 calories are a typical day's worth of calories. In actuality, though, that really depends on the weight and size of each individual. Women usually eat around 2000 and men around 2700. Most people are shocked when they find out how much (or how little, but usually the former) they eat once they actually write everything down.

Common practice is to figure out how many calories one eats per day, and then subtract a certain amount of calories during the "diet period". As a general rule, if one reduces 500 calories per day, at the end of 7 days, they will lose one pound (3500 calories).

While the body does respond to eating the same amount of lower-calories every day for the short-term, it plateaus after a while. A good tactic to fight back is to calorie cycle. By calorie cycling, you might eat 2000 calories one day, 2500 the next, and 1500 the next. This constantly keeps your body "on its toes".

The general rule of calorie cycling is to figure out how many calories that you were going to eat if you were going to go on a traditional diet, multiply it by 7, and divvy the calories out for the week. For example, if one was going to eat 1800 calories a day that would be 12,600 calories for the week. Calorie cycling would be eating, for example, 1600, 1800, 1600, 2000, 2200, 1600, and 1800.

You can check out more about calorie cycling on my website at http://tinyurl.com/yayFOODlifestyle