Whether you are morbidly obese or just trying to trim down and lose a few extra pounds the same principles apply to how much and how fast you lose that weight. You don’t have to follow any special diet plan or buy expensive pills for weight loss.

There is a very simple formula to weight loss: If your calorie intake is greater than the energy you exert in a day then you will gain weight. If the energy you exert is burning more calories than you take in then you will lose weight.

Healthy Lifestyle

Your lifestyle is partially responsible for how many calories you need to maintain your body weight. Someone that works a manual labor job will need more calories to maintain their current weight. Someone who sits at a desk and is mostly sedentary needs fewer calories to maintain their current body weight. Exercise or physical activity outside of the work place is necessary for people who work in an office or at a desk.

According to Medicinenet.com: “…an average woman 31-50 years of age who leads a sedentary lifestyle needs about 1,800 calories per day to maintain a normal weight. A man of the same age requires about 2,200 calories. Participating in a moderate level of physical activity (exercising three to five days per week) requires about 200 additional calories per day.”

How to Lose Weight

Based on what was just said above, the best way to lose weight is to decrease your daily calorie intake while increasing your physical activity. To lose 1 pound you need to burn about 3,500 calories.

If you do the math, consuming an extra 1000 calories per day for one week with out changing your daily physical exercise you will gain 2 pounds of weight. This is a rough estimate and is different depending on your body type. The opposite is true for losing weight. If you consume 1000 fewer calories per day for one week you will lose about 2 pounds that week.

Pay attention to food labels on everything you eat. If there is not a food label look up the item of food you are eating on the internet and find out how many calories it has.  You will dramatically improve your diet just by paying attention to what you are eating every day.