Lose Weight Calculator Bodybuilding

The question How do I lose weight? gets typed into Google 150, 000 or so times per month. The question How do I lose weight fast? gets asked even more. Unfortunately, the so-called answers that pop up are usually ridiculous weight loss tips that don't actually explain what a person needs to do in order to lose what they don't want and keep it off. What's worse, they often conflict with one another, creating more lasting confusion than lasting results.

The truth is far simpler. You can lose weight with any number of approaches you may have heard of: IIFYM, paleo, low-carb, vegetarian, ketogenic, or intermittent fasting. It's also possible to lose by doing nothing more than eating good food in a moderate amount.

Sustainable physique transformation happens by making healthy alterations to your diet, controlling your overall calories (or portions, to think of it another way), and exercising regularly. Any other approach may work in the short term, but will the results last? Don't hold your breath.

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Why? Because the number on the scale isn't describing one thing, it's describing two things: fat mass and fat-free mass. One of them is fair game for burning, and the other is something you really want to hold on to! So the question we should be asking is: How do I lose fat while keeping, or increasing, fat-free mass?

Your fat-free mass includes your muscles, organs, bones, and connective tissue. It also includes water weight. In other words, this is what would be left if you removed every single fat cell from your body.

Muscle mass is a major component of your fat-free mass, and it should weigh more than your fat mass. Furthermore, muscle mass has a huge positive impact on your metabolism or metabolic rate which is how many calories your body burns for energy. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn, even when you're not exercising.

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However, muscle is also the physical engine that powers you through activity, both in the gym and in life. It also helps to support and strengthen your joints, helping to improve balance and reduce the risk of injury. Holding onto it should be a high priority, especially when dieting. And no, not just for bodybuilders!

But let's talk about fat. It gets a bad rap, but your body needs it, too! There is an essential amount that each body needs to be healthy. That amount will vary between body type, age, sex, physical activity level, and fitness goal.

For the general population, the levels accepted as healthy are 21-32 percent for women and 8-19 percent for men.[1] That's a big range!

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To be clear, you can be higher than the healthy range and still be healthy, or be lower than it and be unhealthy. But the range is a pretty good place to aim for. Spending most of your life at higher levels can put you at risk for weight-related health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Lower percentages can be fine for brief periods of time, but they can be very difficult to maintain and aren't ideal for long-term health.

So, the big question is: How do you lose fat while holding on to muscle? Pauline Nordin, in her article 6 Ways to Reduce Body Fat While Increasing Muscle, recommends two big approaches:

It's estimated that 45 million Americans go on a diet each year.[2] Given the current rates of obesity in this country, we can clearly see the success rate is low.

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So, we want you to ditch the word diet entirely. Not only does that word have negative connotations, it also usually means you're only doing it for a short period of time, often focusing primarily on cutting calories as low as possible.

This makes nutritionists like us want to shout from the rooftops that severe caloric restriction—aka dieting—is not the answer, explains registered dietician Susan Hewlings, Ph.D., in 's Foundations of Fitness Nutrition course. Yes, cutting calories leads to weight loss. Plenty of diets cut calories seriously low, at least at first, and they get results. But not forever.

Once you stop getting those short-term results, continuing to undereat can leave you feeling awful, dragging through (or skipping) workouts, and setting yourself up for disappointment.

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You need a more strategic approach than just eat less. And it starts with how you think. Instead of thinking of food as something to limit, think of the food you put in your body as fuel for the healthy lifestyle that you're building!

For many people, the changes needed to get there aren't as big as they think, Hewlings says. You might get great results from simply:

Maybe lunch is your weak spot because you leave the house in a rush and don't pack one, or because your workmates like to eat out. Maybe it's dinner, because you haven't eaten anything all day and you come home exhausted. Maybe breakfast is a sugar-bomb, and has been since you were a kid, Hewlings explains. No matter which meal is the biggest problem, fixing it—and just it—can be a huge win. What's better, it requires far less work on your part than trying to fix every meal all at once. In many cases, it's as simple as prioritizing protein in a meal that was otherwise going to be empty calories.

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Speaking of calories: yes, they definitely matter when your goal is to lose weight! But before you start cutting them, start by establishing where you're at right now, and simply tracking the way you eat now. Even if you just do it for a brief period of time, it can be a game-changer for the long term, explains registered dietician Paul Salter in the article Want to Lose Fat? Before You Change a Single Thing, Do This.

For some people, simply having that info is enough to make a meaningful change. But for many others, it can be helpful to compare it to a science-backed calorie recommendation, like you'll find in 's free calorie intake calculator.

That calculator will help you estimate how many calories you're burning during the day, both through normal body functions and other activities and exercise. Then, it'll give you a target caloric intake to aim for.

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Why bother with numbers at all? Because many of us overestimate, underestimate, or flat-out lie about how much we weigh or exercise—even if we don't realize we're doing it. And even if you're honest with the calculator, it still doesn't mean the number will be 100 percent accurate! In fact, we can pretty much guarantee that it isn't. But it's a good place to start.

Once you've established your daily caloric target, keep tracking it to determine if you need to adjust your calorie intake slightly—not too much!—because you're not losing body fat.

When we introduce a timeline into our fat-loss quest, things can quickly get tricky. How do I lose weight for health? is a very different question than How do I lose belly fat in two weeks? But television and the popularity of drastic stories sometimes alter our perception of what is realistic and sustainable.

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To add to that, our more is better mentality often tells us that if removing 300 calories from our daily nutrition leads to a small amount of physique change, then imagine what taking out 600 or 1000 calories can do!

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Cutting your daily calorie intake too low (for example, under 1200 calories) brings lots of risk and little reward. Yes, there are healthy ways to lose fat faster, but they are most effective once you have the basic healthy behaviors mastered first.

Without those behaviors nailed down, if you're hungry all the time, are ruled by cravings, and have no energy, the chances of you maintaining your diet are minuscule. You may lose what you want, but as soon as you go back to eating your normal foods in the normal amounts, you'll likely regain all you've lost, and in some cases add on an extra few pounds.

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Complicating things even more, research has found that repeated cycles of loss and gain end up making it harder to lose pounds and easier to put them back on, as Layne Norton, Ph.D., explains in the article How Your Fat-Loss Diet Could Be Making You Fat. This yo-yo style of dieting may damage your metabolism, leading to a slower resting metabolic rate—meaning the amount of calories you burn during each day.[3]

It's far more likely you'll have success if it comes off slowly—particularly when it comes to stubborn belly fat. And your metabolism will end up working with you, not against you.

This doesn't mean that there's nothing to be gained by doing a fat-loss focused workout program that only lasts a few weeks, though. On the contrary, as fitness coach Sohee Lee writes, many researchers believe just three weeks is enough time to create lasting healthy habits.

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The upshot for you? If you just think in terms of the next four weeks, or even better, six weeks, you can achieve a surprising amount—and set yourself