Calculate Yourself to Your Goal Weight

I'm really blessed by the support I've gotten during my Flab to Fab journey from family and friends to my e-friends. We all know what its like to want to lose weight whether it's 50lbs or five. I'm not a physician, nutritionist or a personal trainer. I'm just a woman trying to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle.

I want to share my journey with all of you and I promise to be honest about my journey, the good, the bad and the ugly. There won't be any GET-THIN-QUICK schemes during my FINERTHANAMUG2012 journey. As much as I want the weight to be gone within a drop of a hat, I will do it an a healthy way that has long-lasting results. I'm determined to eat healthy and exercise regularly.



Let's talk about Calories:
Start by calculating how many calories you need to eat per day just to maintain your current weight (let's do some math!) Take your current weight and multiply by an average metabolic factor to tell you how many calories you can eat per day just to maintain your current weight. A metabolic factor of 11 is used for women and 12 for men.

So let's use my heaviest weight. At my heaviest I weighed 285(wow its still hard to see that number!) anyway back to calculating. So for me to maintain a weight of 285 I would have to eat 285x11 = 3135 calories a day!  WOW....WOW!!!!! I never realize I was eating so many calories. Can you imagine the damage that I was doing to my heart, my liver...shoot, my whole body!






Okay, now let's talk about how many calories I need to eat a day to reach my goal weight of 150lbs, actually I have goal range of 150 - 175, but for the sake of the calculations I use 150lbs. To get down to 150lbs I will need to eat: 150x11 =1650 per day. The great thing about using this calculation approach is that from the start you will be eating the amount of calories you need to maintain your weight lose once you reach your goal.

Okay, so let's say you want to lose one pound per week. We will start by calculating how many calories you need to cut out of your diet to achieve that goal. One pound is equivalent to 3500 calories. To determine how many calories to cut out of your caloric intake per day: 3500/7 =500. 500 is the amount of calories you need to take out of your diet by eating 500 fewer calories, burning 500 calories through physical activity, or a combination of both.

Remember:

NOTHING TASTE AS GOOD AS LOSING WEIGHT FEELS