

The reason for this is that an active muscle burns extra calories, and if we do not eat enough calories to fuel the muscle, fat loss will slow down. They cut back on their calories but they forget that they will also need more if they are exercise. Now this is where many people seeking weight loss go wrong. You can cut back on calories each day by watching portion sizes, minimising mindless munching and cutting back on high calorie foods such as cakes, biscuits, chocolate and alcohol which contain at least 200-300 calories per serve. It is for this reason that weight loss diets often focus on 12 calories – they are roughly 200-300 calories less than the person needs to function.

To lose ½ – 1 kg of body fat each week, you will need to create a calorie deficit of 200-300 calories each day. As a rough guide, a female will need a minimum of 1200-1400 calories each day, whereas a male who generally has more muscle mass will need 1400-1800 calories. There are some online applications such as MyFitnessPal that can help you calculate this based on your height, weight, age and gender although there will always be slight inaccuracies depending on how much muscle mass each individual has. We all have a baseline number of calories that we will approximately burn each day, known as our resting metabolic rate. So without needing to spend 24 hours in a calorimeter, here are the easiest steps to take to work out how many calories you are likely to need each day to support slow but sustainable weight loss, and what those calories should be made up of. In saying that, having some knowledge about your daily calorie requirements can be exceptionally helpful when learning how to eat to lose or even maintain our weight. Many of us know that we eat calories, and we know that we burn them off when we exercise yet knowing exactly how many calories we need each day can be a complicated calculation.
