Breaking it down for my parents.

      The title pretty much tells it all. My parents have recently told me that they want to join me in getting fit. The problem with this is that they don't really understand about calories or BMR, so this post is going to be a basic breakdown of what you need to know for healthy weight loss. It breaks down to this, it's all about the math.

My Dad's an engineer, that explains much of my nerdiness. 

       I'm going to break this down into 3 sections, calories, BMR, and the basic math for losing large amounts of weight versus the last 15lbs. 

Calories:

    A calorie is a unit of energy, and when it comes to calories within food 1 calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. 1 lb of fat is equal to 3500 calories, so if you want to lose 2 lbs a week you will need to have a deficit of 7000 calories. At it's basic level calories are fuel for your body, like gas is fuel for a car. A car only needs as much gas as the tank will hold, anymore has to be carried around in separate containers taking up space in the trunk. So, when you eat more calories than your body needs your body creates excess fat, which is often stored in your trunk. The amount of calories your body needs in a day is found in your BMR. You can easily find how many calories are in your food, there are books with the numbers listed as well as websites and aps that all provide this information. 

BMR:

     BMR stand for Base Metabolic Rate. What does this mean? Well if you were in a coma BMR is the amount of calories your body would burn to keep you alive and to sustain basic bodily function. BMR is determined by age, hight, and weight. Where the BMR proves most useful is when you use you age, hight, and goal weight to find your BMR you should be eating at. My personal BMR looks like this, Age: 29, Hight: 5' 4", Goal weight: 135lbs = 1778 calories per day. So long as I eat slightly less than 1778 calories per day I will lose weight even without exercise because I will need to burn my existing calories to maintain basic functions like breath. Exercise on top of this will accelerate you results which will help motivate to stick with this calorie limit.

    One important, the reason age is a factor in the BMR calculation is because as you age your BMR will decrease. Meaning when I can 39 my BMR to maintain a weight of 135lbs will be 1400 calories per day.  This explains how someone can eat everything in sight and be skinny as a rail in their 20's and suddenly find that they don't fit into the same size once they reach their 40's when they're still eating exactly the same. If you don't have time to go online and use a BMR calculator (LINK HERE -->  http://www.bmrcalculator.org/) 

      A quick and dirty way you can find how many calories you shouldn't eat below is this. For women 100 calories for the first 5 feet of hight, and 5 calories for every inch past that, then multiply by by 10. For men 106 calories for the first 5 feet of hight and 6 calories for every inch after, multiply by 10 and you have the number you should never eat below. Eating below this number will damage your body, and sabotage yourself in the long run. For more information feel free to check out the lecture found at the  link, http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/special/NutritionFreeLecture.aspx.

Math:

     The math is really what brings everything together to allow you to achieve health and effective weight loss, and maintain it in the long run. The basic mathematical formula for weight loss is this,

A + B - C = D

A = Is your BMR.

B = The number of calories burned outside of your BMR.

C = The calories you eat.

D = A positive number is how many calories you've burned. A negative number is the number of calories you have added.

    So long as D is in the positive numbers you will lose weight, the larger the number the more weight you will lose. When you have a large amount of weight to lose you can have a large end number without any problem. When you are at an unhealthy weight your body wants to shed access calories so you wont  freak it out. When you have a small amount of weight to lose the story is very different. If you have a small amount of weight to lose you're probably already healthy, this is something your body wants to maintain. Burning large amounts of calories in this situation will only make your n=body think it's in danger causing it to hang on to it's energy reserves. So, if you want to lose between 5 and 15 lbs you're better off keeping your end number around 500 calories per day, your body will give this weight up without being pushed into panic mode. 

    Your B number ca be figured out  a couple of ways, the most effective is via a heart rate monitor, or bodybugg type gadget. There are also aps that will calculate this for you, and websites that offer estimates on how many calories certain exercises burn. 

     There you are, everything you need to know for calories, BMR, and basic weight loss... or really as much as I understand. 

    Now for a treat for all of you who stuck around this long.

  

 

Tara