Obviously, Calculating Calories is important to anyone involved in Bodybuilding and Personal Fitness. I’m sure you’ve heard the word calorie(s) thrown around in sentences and see it on labels for the foods you eat. But, what exactly is a calorie and what kind of effect does it have on weight loss.
- For food – A cup of oatmeal cooked with only water would have 300 calories.
- For body fat – A pound of stored body fat is 3500 calories
- Calculating Calories, The Foundation To Building A Good Diet
- A calorie is a measurement of energy for both the foods we consume and the different tissues in our body.
When you are looking to lose body fat, you need to consume fewer calories then what your body uses each day. Your body needs a certain number of calories each day to perform the basic operation of your daily activities. This would be calories used for the pumping of your heart, walking around or when you train in the gym. Basically, when you consume less calories then you use each day, you are tapping into the stored energy (body fat) to get the energy you need to perform your daily tasks.
Over time, your ideal number of pounds of fat you are looking to lose per week is one pound. However, one of the common mistakes people make when calculating calories is to reduce the amount of food they eat beyond a healthy limit. Let me say, starving yourself to achieve fat loss will work against you rather then work for you. Thinking that you can lose more weight by lowering your calorie count to an extreme number is totally wrong.
The first thing that will happen when you starve yourself is that your muscles will be used as fuel instead of the fat. Your body needs energy fast because it dips way low for fuel and the easiest form of energy that the body can get fast is your muscles.
In addition, the more muscle you have, the more calories you need to keep the muscle on. This is because your muscles are metabolically active all the time and burns calories all on its own without you having to do any activity at all. It is a tricky science to burn fat and keep the muscle on. I’ll explain how you can do it later in this article.
The second reason why you do not want to starve yourself is because your body goes into, you guessed it… Starvation Mode. This means all the food that you do consume, transports directly into your fat cells for later energy usage. Your body does everything it can to keep your stored body fat, instead of use it for energy.
Calculating Calories To Burn Fat And Keeping Muscle Mass
So, here is the trick to keeping both your muscle mass and burn fat through your calorie intake. You will have to consume enough calories to maintain your muscle mass but at the same time, you will have to keep it low enough so that your body uses your reserved energy (body fat) as fuel.
What is the magic number that will keep you in that fat burning stage? The secret is to consume 15 to 20 percent less calories per day then what your body needs to consume, to maintain your current weight. This means, if it takes 2500 calories for you to consume to maintain your current weight (keeping in mind that this includes all the other activities you perform each day), then you will need to consume 2000 calories to reach that 20 percent fat burning stage.
Calculating Calories Intake Per Day
The first step you need to take is to find out how many calories you burn each day, including the calories you use during your workout. To archive this, find out what your BMR (basal metabolic rate) is, and then add in your activity level to that equation.
As you try your best to count calories to restrict the fatty flab, working out should also be your priority. If you wish to improve your results pretty quickly, you should consider the best supplements. Testogen review blogs have proven it to be an effective companion to boost lean mass and reduce the accumulated fat in the body. You can surely try it out as it is no dietary product to add up extra calories!
