Summer is coming! Lose weight get fit? Ask here.

[James]

Ok I am seriously over tired but I wanted to start this thread before I drink a cup of coffee and head to the gym.

Before we begin with questions or specifics lets cover some basics.

The only obvious way to lose fat is to burn off more calories than you take in, steadily, and over time.

So the first thing to calculate is maintenance calories (MC). Maintenance calories are the amount of calories it takes to maintain your current weight without change, at your current level of activity.

For people that are moderately active, say someone that goes to the gym about 4-5 days a week, or has a really active job, its aproximately 14cal/pound for females and 15cal/pound males.

So a 150 pound female that is moderately active has maintainence calories usually around 2100 calories a day. She won't suddenly start gaining weight at 2300 but she generally needs to go below 2100 to start seeing fat loss.

A pound of fat is approximately 3500 calories. So you need to drop 500 calories below maintainence per day to drop a pound of fat a week. 1000 per day to drop 2 pounds per week. That can be done with a combination of diet and excercise.

The other important element to your diet program is protein.

Adequate amounts of protein prevents the loss of lean body mass (LBM). A good rule of thumb for most people is one gram per pound of body weight, or one gram per pound of lean body weight if you are really heavy. LEan body weight doesn't have to be precise, just estimate your ideal weight and use that number. And use some common sense.

So that 150 pound female would get 150 grams of protein daily equalling 600 calories.

So lets take a quick look at her. Lets say we want her to lose 2 pounds of fat a week. 2 pounds a week is a 7,000 calorie deficit or 1,000 calories a day.

Maintenance calories = 150 X 14 = 2100

If she eats 1400 calories a day and burns off another 300 calories a day that totals to a 1000 calorie per day deficit.

2100 - 1400 = 700

700 calorie defict + 300 calories burned from excercise = 1000 calories.

1,000 calorie deficit per day X 7 days = 7,000 calories or 2 pounds.

Now out of the 1400 calories she is eating 150 grams or 600 calories should be protein. Which leaves 800 calories she can get from a combination of fats and carbs. She should make sure her fat stays at least 20 percent of her total calories.

Ok we all good so far?

So the two most important thing so far are total calories and amount of protein.

Random facts:

1 gram carbohydrate = 4 calories
1 gram protein = 4 calories
1 gram fat = 9 calories
Fiber is almost negligible.