How Many Calories Should I Eat To Lose Weight

One of the questions I get asked a lot is “how many calories should I eat to lose weight?” While there’s never really a simple answer to that question, there’s a lot you can do to get an idea of how much food you need to eat based of your lifestyle and the total calories per day to lose weight.

Calculate Your Calories Needed Per Day

We all need energy from the food we eat, but the amount of energy our bodies actually bum off each day and the calories needed per day depends on how physically active we are. Any calories we don’t burn off through our daily lives are laid down as body fat, and excess body fat is associated with health risks.

To help us get the balance right it’s important to establish a truer picture of our Current Energy Needs (CEN). Our CEN is the number of calories we need to do our everyday tasks. These needs will vary depending upon our weight, our metabolism and how we move our bodies during each day. If you are watching your weight it is essential you establish what your CEN is.

How Many Calories Should I Eat A Day

Studies have shown that we often overestimate how physically active we are by up to 45 per cent, and underestimate how much we eat by just over 50 per cent – so we are introducing a large potential error right from the beginning.

The bottom line for weight loss is that you need to make sure you are expending more energy than you are consuming. So until you have a true picture of your CEN, which will be dependent upon how much physical activity you are doing, you will be making it harder for yourself to adjust your habits effectively and lose weight.

How To Calculate Your CEN

To establish your CEN, and determine exactly how many calories should I eat to lose weight, follow these three steps:

1. Step 1: Decide which physical activity category best fits your current lifestyle (see table below). Remember to think about your daily accumulated activity as well as any structured exercise you may take when working out your calories needed per day.
2. Step 2: Find your activity factor for your physical activity category from the table below.
3. Step 3: Multiply your activity factor by your current weight in pounds. The resulting number is the approximate number of calories you need to maintain your weight.

The maths looks like this:

activity factor x weight in pounds = current energy needs.

Step 1: Which Physical Activity Category Applies to You?

You are Sedentary if:

• your job or lifestyle involves mostly sitting, standing or light walking
• you take structured exercise once a week or less
• your daily step total with a pedometer is 5,000 or less.

You are Moderately Active if

• your job or lifestyle requires more physical activity than light walking (such as full-time house-cleaning o
• some sort of manual work)
• you get 45-60 minutes of structured exercise three times a week
• your daily step total with a pedometer is 8,000-10,000.

You are Active if:

• you take structured exercise for 45-60 minutes, four or more times a week
• your daily step total with a pedometer is in excess of 12,500.

Step 2: What’s Your Activity Factor?