Counting Calories to Lose Weight
Do you need a calorie counter? Most people understand that if they burn more calories than they eat they will lose weight. The next problem then becomes working out how many calories you are eating and how much you are burning. It’s not always a simple question as your calorie burn depends on your metabolic rate, which is dictated by age, weight, height and gender. Then calculating how many calories you eat becomes a laborious task of weighting and then accounting for each and every food you eat. Surely there must be an easier way?
Well the good news is there certainly are easier ways to keep track of your calories. The most important point is to not get too bogged down in the details but focus broadly speaking on how much you should be eating and how much you should be exercising. For instance the average female will burn around 2000 calories a day and the average male 2500. This is a good guide to work with. Now, if you burn 500 calories a day more than you eat, you should be losing around 0.5kg a week. So now that means you just need to think about eating 1500 calories per day.
The next step is to get onto of your portion controls. You need to work out how many calories you should be eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. For a 1500 calorie a day diet plan the breakdown should be around 300 calories for breakfast, 400 calories for lunch, 500 calories for dinner and then 300 calories in snacks.
Next you need to start getting a feel for the number of calories in the food you eat. Australian Lifestyle & Fitness has a good calorie counter. They have a free food calorie counter and exercise calorie counter so you can start to get a good idea of all the calories in the food you eat and calories burn from exercise. They also have a Calorie Counter tools that enables you to keep a diary of all your food and exercise.
Whether or not you keep a diary of all the calories you are eating, the most important thing is to start to get a gauge of the calories in certain foods. Once you know there are 260 calories in a bottle of coke or 400 calories in some slices of cake, you quickly work out which items are going to blow your daily budget. So the key is to educate yourself with a calorie counter tool so you can make better food choices for sustained weight loss.
Article Source: HealthSnare.com
About the Author
Article Submitted By:
alfitness
Html View
Total views: 28
Word Count: 444
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 Time: 4:45 AM
Publish/Share this article
To use this article on your site click here to get the HTML code |Remember: The article body, title, author bio and links may not be changed or removed. By publishing this article, you agree to all the terms in our Terms of Service.
Rating: Not yet rated
