What is a calorie deficit?
Are you trying to lose weight? You need to be low in calories, which means you eat and drink less calories than you burn.
There are two ways to cause a calorie deficiency.
- Reduce calorie intake – change what you eat and how much you eat
- Increased calorie consumption – in the form of exercise
How can a calorie deficiency help you lose weight? When the body is breaking down muscles and fats for energy, it puts you in a “catabolic” state.
If you reduce 500 calories a day from what you normally eat, you can expect to lose about £ 1 – 0.5 kg – a week. This is a healthy amount. CDC guidelines (Opens in a new tab).. The The best exercise machine to lose weight (Opens in a new tab) It also helps reduce body fat.
This is what researchers and experts have to say about calorie deficiency.
What is a calorie deficiency?
Calories are the unit of energy we get from food and drink. To reduce body fat, you need a lack of calories. This means eating less calories than burning.
Alex Palen, a nutritionist and PT, said: “Calories deficiency means consuming less calories than you consume in a day. Every human has a unique basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is breathing, food digestion, and waste products. It shows the number of calories burned by the body simply by performing normal daily functions such as elimination and cognitive function.
“Factors that affect BMR include age, gender, height, and weight. Imagine your BMR as the amount of calories you would burn if you stayed in bed and slept all day. Please. It doesn’t take your lifestyle into account and most people have a fairly low BMR, which is about 1,500 calories for adults. “
On average days, you burn more calories when you get up and move around. In general, the average woman needs about 2,000 calories a day to maintain weight and 1,500 calories to lose one pound a week. The average man needs to spend about 2,500 to maintain the same weight and 2,000 to lose £ 1 a week.
Research published in Physiology frontier (Opens in a new tab) It is suggested that doing muscle building exercises along with calorie deficiency helps the body to prioritize the loss of body fat as well as muscle.
What role does it play in weight loss?
The body uses the calories it gets from food to promote metabolism, digestion, and physical activity. Your weight remains stable when the number of calories you are eating is equal to the number of calories you are burning for energy.
When the body’s energy needs are met, extra calories are stored. Some are stored in the muscles as glycogen (the main source of fuel for cells), but most are stored as fat. Therefore, if you eat more calories than you burn (known as calorie surplus), this causes weight gain. In contrast, eating less food than you need for energy will cause you to lose weight.
Palen said: “There are some studies that prove that being deficient in calories is the only way to lose weight. Diets of all kinds – it’s Paleo diet (Opens in a new tab), Dash diet (Opens in a new tab)Also Keto (Opens in a new tab) – Depends on lack of calories to work. We recommend that you do not exceed a daily shortage of 500 calories.
“But I would like to advise people to achieve this deficit by burning more calories rather than limiting their food intake. That is, rather than eating less, you have. Aerobic exercise and strength training burn 500 calories a day because it’s unlikely to lead to thirst or eating disorders, “she says.
How can I achieve a calorie deficit?
To achieve a calorie deficiency, you first need to calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR). This is the amount of calories your body needs to meet your most basic (basic) life-supporting needs at rest. There are many online calculators that can help you do this.
“Once you know your BMR, you need to include factors such as how active you are and how much exercise you are doing,” says Parren. This calculation is your total daily energy expenditure or TDEE, which is a more accurate representation of the number of calories you actually burn in a day.
“TDEE takes into account the number of steps you take each day, your work activity (whether you’re sitting at your desk all day or working in manual labor), as well as activities such as gardening and dog walking. Once you have a number for, you can calculate how many calories you need to eat to run out.
“There are many calorie deficiencies. under Your TDEE and 1 pound of fat is equivalent to approximately 3,500 calories. So if you have a shortage of 500 calories a day in 7 days, you will lose about £ 1 a week.
“More specifically, if your TDEE is 2,500 calories, you need to eat 2,000 calories a day to lose £ 1 a week.”
Remember that if you start losing weight, you need to recalculate your TDEE to calculate a new daily calorie deficit number. “If you lose weight, eat at the same calorie maintenance level as TDEE so that you don’t lose weight,” says Parren.
