Ok so you did it, Part II

Let’s take a step back for a moment, I talked alot about calories in my last article, but what is a calorie? To put it in simple terms a calorie is a unit of energy. It is the amount of energy contained in food and expended in physical activity. About 70% of the calories you use everyday are used to get you through life, meaning your body requires a certain number of calories to perform duties we take for granted; like breathing, the beating of your heart, the pumping of your blood through your body, everything that goes on in your body automatically without us even thinking about it requires energy. Another name for this that you may have heard before is resting metabolic rate (RMR).

So if you do nothing for a whole day and just sat still, your body would burn between 1200-1700 calories. Everyone burns energy at a different rate. So without getting technical, if your body burned 1200 calories just due to the mechanics of living and you eat 2000 calories in a day, then your body is going to store that additional 800 calories as fat if you do nothing in terms of expending those extra calories through exercise or additional daily tasks like getting up off that couch.

Bottom line – Burn more calories than you consume.

All it takes is to make small daily changes in your lifestyle. There is nothing magical about it and no drastic diets to follow. Here is a simple way to get started.

First, you need to calculate everything you eat in an average day; in fact I would do it for several days and then average it out, because if you only do one day, it will be the best day you’ve probably eaten healthy in a long time. Why do I say that? Because when you are conscious about writing it down you tend to eat better for that day.

Second, keep a tally of your daily exercise; you will be surprised how much you actually move around. Find a website that gives you a calorie count for daily activities.

So now that you’ve done the first two steps, you have a baseline you can now increase your activity level and decrease how much you eat. Remember that you need decrease your calories by 500 in order to lose that one pound. So that could mean taking an extra brisk walk for 30 minutes for about 150 calories and eating a granola bar instead of that bag of candy and add a possible 180 calories so those two activities alone just added to 330 calories less.

So you begin to get the idea just how easy it can be by changing the smallest of details to reach your goal for the week. You didn’t have to starve yourself and feel like you can never eat your favorite foods again. The point I always try to get across to my clients is everything in moderation. Use the 90/10 rule; 90% of the time you eat healthy and 10% of the time, be bad if you need to. Combine that with exercise and you will succeed and reach your goals.