adminThe traditional approach to weight reduction has been the prescription of diets that provide an energy intake below that of energy expenditure or in common terms calorie) deficit, often called reducing diets.
Reducing the energy content of the diet can be achieved by restricting protein, carbohydrate, or fat alone or in combination; at the same time one or more macronutrients can be increased.
How to calculator the daily calorie deficit for weight loss
The days of diet programs where the calories are not counted are gone. You don’t need a dietitian to dictate what you have to eat and when to eat. We can now eat as we please, and as much as we want, as long as we restrict the calories eaten and burnt. If the calories eaten exceed the ones that we expend in the course of the day, the extra calories are stored up as fat deposits in the body.
Most common calorie deficit recommendations for daily calorie intake , such as 1,200 calories per day for women and 1,500 calories per day for men. The obvious issue with the claims is that not everybody has the same daily calorie expenditure so the resulting deficit will vary significantly between people. Many personal trainers and health professionals routinely recommend a daily calorie deficit of 500 to 1000 calories for everybody – a range that is too low for some and too high for others
According to the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, the optimum rate at which the body can get energy from its fat stores is about 31.4 calories per pound per day.
Calculating Daily Calorie Deficit For Maximum Fat Loss
- Measure body weight and composition.
- Multiply body weight in pounds by percent body fat to determine pounds of fat.
- Multiply pounds of fat by 30.
If the above formula is used to determine the daily calorie deficit, assuming body fat measurements and daily calorie expenditure estimates are reasonably accurate, the following formula can be used to estimate the number of days required to lose a certain amount of fat.
The above is far from perfect, but provides a rough estimate that can be used for planning a diet or establishing time frames for short and long term fat loss goals.
