Calorie cutting and weight loss

[Gina]

I'm wondering how many calories I will need to cut out of my diet to lose weight. I don't want to do anything extreme and I don't need to lose weight super fast. I'm trying to be realistic about my weight loss goals. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

[bigbobby]

It really depends on the person, but perhaps this will put things into some perspective for you. In order to lose 1 pound you need to burn 3,500 fewer calories. Therefore, you would have to eat 3,500 less calories than you typically do, over a period of time in order to lose 1 pound.

As for how many calories you should eat in a day, essentially you need to cut out 500 - 1000 calories from your total calorie requirements to lose up to 2 pounds a week. It's not a matter of burning more calories in a day than you eat.

[ffviifan]

Really??? You have to burn 3,500 calories to burn 1 pound of fat! I thought it would be way fewer calories than that! Geeze, no wonder weight loss always feels like a constant uphill battle

[CuJo1992]

Try cutting 100 calories per day from your normal diet. If you do this every day for a week (7 days) that would mean cutting 700 calories from your diet, which should help you to drop at least 1 pound per week. While this may not seem like a lot, if you keep this up, eventually all of the pounds lost will start to add up, especially if you work on eating well and exercising :)

[Gina]

Thank you for your awesome suggestions! I think I'll try starting with cutting out 100 calories a day. That seems very achievable. I just don't want to make my life too difficult so I'll fall off the wagon. I'm trying extra hard this time to stick to my goals!

[tammybear]

That's awesome! You should be proud of yourself Gina! I hope you let us know about your progress. I'm curious to see how easy you found it to cut out that amount of calories and if you noticed a difference!

[Gina]

That's awesome! You should be proud of yourself Gina! I hope you let us know about your progress. I'm curious to see how easy you found it to cut out that amount of calories and if you noticed a difference!

Thanks so much Tammybear! Actually, after a week I've managed to lose two pounds. I'm really proud of myself and I'm going to keep it up. Thanks so muc for asking and being interested :D