Last time I’ve told you all about the basics on
how to determine your daily calorie intake. We covered the subject on basal
metabolic rate (BMR) and active metabolic rate (AMR). The first one tells you
how much energy your body needs just to survive during the day if you aren’t
physically active (if you would just lay in your bed the whole day), and the
other tells you how much energy you need if you go around your day (if you
remember, I used a female teacher as an example). They both include all the
bodily functions that are constantly occurring in your body (metabolism, heat
production, breaking down, building and repairing cells and tissues and
others).
Up until now you should have a good Idea on how
your body is built. Now the real fun begins. How do we lose the most amount of
weight (and when I say weight I do mean subcutaneous body fat) with the minimum
loss of lean body mass, water and bone mass?
Let’s take a look back to the previous week at
our female teacher, who is 30 year old, 156cm tall and weighs 70kg, but before we
can determine on how she should lose weight, we need to understand where she
currently is. For this we can use a number of things like the body mass index
or any of the body composition measurement methods. The body mass index is not
a reliable source for everyone, because it doesn’t differ fat mass form lean
mass, bone mass or water. But it is suitable for an average person who just
wants to lose weight.
The body mass index or BMI is a way to
determine if an individual is in a healthy weight range. It can be calculated
with a simple equation:
BMI = weight (kg)/height2 (m)
And the number falls into one of these three
categories
Underweight: < 18.0
Healthy weight – 18.0 – 24.9
Overweight – 25.0 – 29.9
Obese - > 30.0
Our teacher has a BMI of 28.76, which puts her
in the overweight category.
For her to be in the healthy weight range she
needs to lose at least 3.86 BMI points which is roughly 9 kg. And it would be
ideal, if she could lose 9kg of fat mass and not overall body mass.
If you remember, 1 kg of fat tissue has 7700
kcal so our teacher needs to create a calorie deficit of 69300 kcal during her
weight loss. Sure, she could just starve herself, but that comes at a high
price, because not only does her metabolism slow down if she doesn’t eat at
least the minimum amount of calories per day, she also risks death!
For a person, who has less than 10 kg to lose,
I usually suggest a calorie deficit of 500 – 750 per day, but never less than
750 for the risk of slowing down the metabolism. A calorie deficit can be
created with both proper nutrition and regular physical activity.
If she creates a 500 kcal deficit every day, she
will lose the weight in 138.6 days or roughly 5 months. But if she creates a
deficit of 750 calories she will achieve her goal in 92.4 days or roughly 3
months.
Next time I will tell you, how she can do just
that, without the risk of damaging her metabolism.
Until next time, stay strong and be kind.
You can calculate your BMI here.: http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/metric_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html
Picture taken from: http://tiny.cc/v65mhw
References:
No comments:
Post a Comment