To fully understand how to lose FAT and not just weight, you need to understand a bit about how your body functions. If you achieve this after reading this article you should be able to answer the following questions.

1) How do you lose fat as opposed to weight that might include glycogen supplies, muscle including heart muscle and water.

2) What is meant by PHYSICAL ACTIVITY?

3) What is METABOLISM, and how many calories does it burn each day?

4) Based on your personal metabolic rate, how can you lose one pound of fat per week?

5) What is a weight loss plateau? What do you do about it?

Non-metric formula to calculate your resting metabolic rate. (RMR or BMR)

Men:

66 + (6.2 X__weight in pounds) + (12.7 X __Height in inches) – (6.8 X age in years)

Women:

655 + (4.4 X ___weight in pounds) + (4.3 X ___height in inches) – (4.7 X age in years)

Activity factors:

1.1 = sedentary = daily activity of living only

1.2 = light = 30 minutes of intentional lifestyle activity or exercise 3-5 days per week

1.3 = moderate = brisk walking, aerobic dance, yard work of 30 minutes 5 days per week

1.4 = vigorous = running, fast bicycling or other vigorous intensity activity 30 min/day for 5 or more days per week

Multiply your activity factor times your RMR to get the number of calories required per day to maintain your weight.

Negative energy balance is taking in less than the number of calories per day needed for your RMR and activity level required to maintain your weight now. So to lose 1 pound of fat per week you would have to take in 500 calories per day less that you need to maintain your weight. Woman weighs 200lb., is 66inches tall and is 50 years old.

Use the woman’s RMR formula above to calculate her RMR. If she is sedentary, use the sedentary activity factor and multiply it times her RMR. You now have the number of calories per day needed to maintain her weight.

She must use exercise or reduced food consumption or a combination of the two for a caloric deficit or negative energy balance of 500 calories per day.

Never reduce calories per day below 1200 calories per day without the direct supervision of a physician experienced in this method of weight loss.

What is required to maintain the weight loss? When a person is neither gaining or loosing weight they are in energy balance. When the weight loss goal is not met this is called a plateau. It means your calories match your activity plus RMR and you “maintain”. To lose, go back to RMR times the activity factor minus 250 calories per day to lose 1/2 pound per week or 500 calories/day to lose 1 pound per week.

If our woman in the above example were to lose 10% of her weight she would lose 20 pounds. How fast is reasonable? One pound per week is 20 weeks or 5-6 months. One-half pound per day is 40 weeks or 9-10 months. Most of us want to lose 20 pounds in 1-2 months.

WEIGHT loss of that kind can not be only fat. You have to burn 3500 calories per pound of fat to lose it. 500 calories per day times 7 days equals 3500 calories or one pound of fat. To lose 20 pounds in one month, you would have to decrease calories by 2333 calories per day. If you weigh200 lb and are sedentary you need 1750 calories per day to maintain 200 pounds. To lose 1lb. per week means eating only 1250 calories per day. There is no way to lose just fat, so the scale may say 20 pounds lost after one month but is has to be the glycogen stores in your liver and muscles plus the water needed to keep it there. That is going to make you very tired, very hungry and unable to maintain that diet and lifestyle. You are going to gain that weight, or at least some of it back quickly and be very disappointed.

References for BMI and PARQ can be found in this article.

If you can not answer the above questions, ask me questions in the comments section so I can clarify the answer for you.

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