Calculate Weight Loss To Keep Motivated!
If your “love handles” aren’t quite so lovable anymore and you’ve decided it’s time to take off some weight, you’ve come to the right place. Losing weight doesn’t have to be difficult – actually, it is guaranteed!
Diet and exercise, diet and exercise, diet and exercise. We’ve all heard it over and over again. It’s no deep dark secret that that’s how you lose weight. That’s not the problem, keeping motivated is! Good news, by keeping a simple graph of your weight loss successes, it’s a whole lot easier to stay motivated.
Keeping a simple, basic graph of your weight loss success will go a long way toward keeping you excited and on track. You start your chart at 100% of your total weight and as you start to see your percentage of weight loss line going up and up, it gets downright thrilling.
Calculating your percentage of body weight loss is pretty simple. You need two numbers; first you need your beginning weight and then you need your current weight. The first calculation is to subtract current from beginning. Then you divide that by the beginning and multiply times 100. So for example if you started at 200 pounds and you’ve now reached 190, that would be 200 – 190 equals 10. Shazam! You’ve lost 10 pounds. Now divide that by the original 200 and you get 0.05. Multiply that times 100 and you get the final answer of a total body percentage weight loss of 5%.
It’s easier to do than it is to describe, reread the description if necessary and follow along with a calculator.
Weigh yourself every week on the same day and at the same time. Then calculate the total weight loss percentage and add it to your chart. Watching the line going up and up is a lot of fun.
Don’t forget… your body fluctuates in weight somewhat dramatically throughout the day. Be sure to weigh yourself at the same times. Plus, our weight can fluctuate from day to day too, so it is best not to do this too often, pick one day a week and stick with that. it can get discouraging if done too often. But, nothing beats it as a once a week thrill.
Clearly to lose weight you want to eat fewer calories than your body burns, but you don’t want to go overboard. That can be very unhealthy and mess up your metabolism big time. Create a diet where you will lose approximately 2-5 pounds per week.
To determine how much you can eat, to gain or lose a pound involves 3500 calories. In other words if you eat 3500 calories more than you burn off you will gain 1 pound. By the same token if your body burns 3500 calories more than you take in you will lose 1 pound. So, if you want to lose 1 pound in 10 days that simply means that you have to burn off an extra 350 calories per day. (It can get more involved than that, but this is basically true.)
To lose 2 pounds a week you need to burn off 1000 calories per day more than you take in. To lose 5 pounds a week you need to burn off 2500 calories per day more than you eat. There are no ifs, ands, or maybes about it. It’s a scientific process that will always work, for everyone.
Beware… your body does have to have a certain number of calories per day just to survive. This can vary depending on your level of fitness and your activities. For good health a woman’s diet should never fall below 1200 calories per day and men should stick above 1600 calories.
Start a graph today, and in no time you’ll look forward to doing it every week. It’s very motivating (more so than you may think). Award yourself a little gold star every time you reach your goals for the week.
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