What does it mean to lose weight?
As a term, weight loss is incredibly misleading. Most people use it when talking about dropping some pounds of fat. You want to get rid of stubborn belly fat or tighten up your flabby areas. When you say you want to lose weight, you actually want to lose fat.
This is important because there are loads of ways to lose weight. Exercising helps you lose weight by sweating out some fluids. Weigh yourself before and after working out, and you'll see a difference on the scales. Have you lost any fat? No, not after one workout!
However, there is only one way to lose fat, and it's by entering a calorie deficit. Nothing else matters, so let's look at this in more detail.
What is a calorie deficit?
Calories are a unit of measurement for the energy we need every single day. Our food contains calories, and our body uses them to fuel daily activities. Each individual has a specific amount of energy that you need to consume every single day. This is based on your age, weight, gender, height, and general activity levels. So, we consume enough food to ensure our bodies are fueled.
A calorie deficit is when you consume less energy than you use. For example, let's say you eat 2,000 calories but burn 2,300. Here, you have a deficit of 300 calories because you've burned more than you've consumed.
How does a calorie deficit make you lose body fat?
This is where things get quite technical. When you eat food, your body turns it into energy. In the previous example, your body has burned 2,300 calories, but only ingested 2,000. So, 2,000 of the calories burned come from food, but what about the remaining 300? When you don't have any food left to turn into energy, your body uses fat cells. In essence, you are literally burning fat. By contrast, if you eat more calories than you burn, the extra calories get stored in the body as fat, so you gain weight.
How do you enter a calorie deficit?
Generally, it's as simple as burning more calories than you consume. However, you need to do this safely. A good rule of thumb is to aim for around a 500 calorie deficit per day. This is healthy and sustainable, ensuring you can lose fat without losing any muscle mass. To achieve this, you need an effective way to lose weight, which includes so many things.
Going to the gym and being active will help you burn calories. Walking instead of driving, will burn loads of extra calories per day. The more active you are, the more calories you will burn. It's better to focus on burning calories as this prevents you from entering a super restricted diet. For example, if you aren't active and only burn, say, 1,800 calories a day, you'd need a diet of 1,300 calories to lose weight. This is simply unachievable for most people!
There you have it; entering a calorie deficit is the only way you will lose fat. Forget any fad diets or restrictive eating patterns; all you need to worry about is that you're burning more calories than you consume. Keep doing this, and you will lose body fat.
*contributed post*
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