How Many Calories Lose Weight

When you are starting a weight loss diet , you know to eat well and healthy foods, but how do you work out how many calories you should eat?

We know that creating a calorie deficit will help us lose weight, but how much should be reducing our intake by for weight loss?

If we are not careful, we can over-reduce our calories and when you do that, you risk not losing weight, because your body is in starvation mode and holds on to fat and you could find yourself being lethargic and unwell, as you don’t have enough fuel to keep your body functioning optimally.

How Many Calories Should I Be Consuming To Lose Weight?

So how can you work out the right calorie balance for you on your weight loss diet, if you’re trying to lose a few lbs?

As a rule, we know that general NHS guidance states that women should eat about 2000 calories a day and men should eat 2500 to maintain weight.

This will be really dependent on each person, but the good news is, you can work it out and get a good idea of how many calories you should eat to lose weight.

How Many Calories You Should Be Eating To Lose Weight

To do this you need to work out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) – basically the number of calories your body burns just by functioning.

We know this could look a little complex, so here is an example using Susan, who is 36, she’s 167cm (about 5ft6) and weighs 81kg (about 12 and a half stone).

So, as a minimum, Susan should be eating 1834 calories per day to sustain her energy levels and standard of living as that is how many calories her body burns, roughly, just by simply existing!

How Many Calories Should I Eat To Lose Weight?

But it doesn’t end there, we also need to factor in movement and activity, and this helps us calculate our Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).

Your TDEE is the total number of calories you burn in a given day by simply moving around, doing things like taking the stairs, hoovering, walking to the car and any exercise you do.

In Susan’s case, she has a sedentary desk job, but does attend a few Zumba classes a week, so we are going to multiply her BMR by the lightly active category of 1.375.

How Many Calories Do I Need Every Day To Lose Weight?

Typically, if you want to lose weight, you would look to reduce your TDEE number by 20% and this should see you losing a sustainable 1-2lbs per week.

Using a 504-calorie deficit, Susan would lose just over 1lb per week, as we know that 1lb of weight loss = 3, 500 calorie deficit.

If you’ve been watching your calories, how many have you been having? Have you ever checked your TDEE numbers to see how many you should eat?

How Many Calories Should You Burn A Day To Lose Weight?

We have expert weight loss doctors who can give your medical-based advice on how to lose weight sustainably and sensibly, without putting your health in danger.Despite the claims of various misinformed people, diet cults, pseudoscientific nutjobs and the countless “experts” willing to say whatever is needed to make money selling you bullshit, calories are the most important part of your diet.

Whether you want to lose weight, gain muscle or simply maintain your current weight, how many calories you eat a day is always going to be the key determining factor.

The reason why your calorie intake is the most important part of your diet comes down to a very simple and scientifically proven concept best summed up as “calories in vs calories out.”

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When you consume more calories than you burn (i.e. “calories in” is greater than “calories out”), you have what’s known as a caloric surplus.

. They can’t just disappear into thin air. Rather, your body will be forced to store them somewhere in itself for potential later use.

Now, in some very specific cases when a person is properly training/eating for the purpose of gaining muscle (more about that later), the ideal outcome is for most of those surplus calories to be stored in the form of muscle. However, in all other cases – meaning the

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This is, after all, the one and only way that fat is EVER gained. So, if you or any other human on the planet has ever gained a single pound of fat, this is always what caused it. You consumed more calories than you burned (aka a surplus) and the excess was stored in the form of body fat.

When your body burns more calories than you consume (i.e. “calories out” is greater than “calories in”), you have what’s known as a caloric deficit.

This means that you didn’t consume enough calories to support the energy needs of your body. Rather, your body needed some number of calories to burn in order to do all of the stuff we mentioned earlier, and you consumed some degree less than this.

How Many Calories Do You Need?

When this happens, your body is forced to find some alternative fuel source to burn for energy instead. After all, new energy cannot just be created out of thin air. It has to come from

As it turns out, there are 2 fuel sources available within your body where leftover energy has been stored in preparation for this very scenario: fat cells and muscle tissue.

Of cases,  a caloric deficit will primarily result in fat being lost. Yes, even when people screw up various aspects of their diet and workout and therefore end up losing muscle along with fat (something you want to minimize as much as possible), fat will almost always continue to make up the majority of what’s being lost.

How Many Calories Do You Need To Lose Weight?

This is, after all, the one and only way that fat is EVER lost. So, if you or any other human on the planet has ever lost a single pound of fat, this is always what caused it. You consumed fewer calories than your body needed to burn (aka a deficit), which lead to stored body fat being burned for energy instead.

When you consume the same number of calories that you burn (i.e. “calories in” is equal to “calories out”), you’re at what’s known as a maintenance.

Since there is no surplus that needs to be stored anywhere, and no deficit that warrants burning off a backup fuel source, what happens is that you don’t lose or gain

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“I don’t want to maintain my current state bro, I want to improve it! Let’s skip this section and get to the good stuff.”

. This “maintenance” scenario is the one that’s going to help you figure out exactly how many calories you should eat a day to lose weight or gain muscle.

And that brings us to a very obvious question: what the hell is this “maintenance” amount that you need to be below or above?

Calories For Weight Loss: How Many Calories Should You Eat To Lose Weight?

It’s basically a much fancier term for your maintenance level, as it represents the TOTAL amount of calories your body burns each day doing EVERYTHING.

And all of this stuff varies from one person to the next. Hell, even when people are the same gender, height, weight and age, and they’re doing the same amount of exercise, you can still see

For this reason, it’s virtually impossible to tell you exactly what your maintenance level/TDEE is. Instead, the best we can really do here is come up with an estimated maintenance level.

Figuring Out How Many Calories You Burn Every Day

There are dozens of different methods, equations, formulas and calculators to use for this, some of which are more or less complicated than others and often more or less accurate as well. In fact, a method that is super accurate for one person can be extremely inaccurate for another.

For example, a 200lb person would do 200 x 12 and 200 x 18 and get an estimated daily maintenance level of somewhere between 2400-3600 calories.

Those who are female or less active both in terms of their job/overall lifestyle and how much exercise they do should usually stick more toward the lower half of their estimate. Those who are male or more active should usually stick more toward the upper half of their estimate. If you’re unsure, just pick a number somewhere in the middle.

How Many Calories You Should Burn Daily To Lose Weight?

Now that you have your estimated maintenance level, it’s time for the step you’ve been waiting for: determining exactly how many calories you should eat a day to lose weight or gain muscle.

Is the sole cause and requirement of fat loss. Which means, if your goal is to lose weight… your #1 focus must be to ensure that you are consistently below your maintenance level so that a deficit exists.

While there are certain rarer cases where something below or above this recommended range might be ideal, this tends to be the sweet spot for the vast majority of the population. This is because it will typically cause a rate of weight loss somewhere between 0.5-2lbs per week. For most people, this is ideal.

How Eating More Calories Can Help You Lose Weight

Let’s pretend some example person had a maintenance level of 2500 calories. If they were to then create a deficit of 20%, they’d figure out that 20% of 2500 is 500. They’d then subtract 500 from 2500 and get 2000. In this example, this person would eat 2000 calories a day to lose weight.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what determines whether you should create a 10% deficit, a 25% deficit, something in