Calorie Awareness

Calories are simply a measuring device, like ounces, or grams, or pounds or even MPH. Calorie awareness is critical to fitness and healthy weight loss. When your energy input (calories) is greater than your energy output (activity) you store the extra calories as body fat.

The all important concept when working with calories, whether consuming them or burning them, is that you must factor in your current body weight. 100 calories to a 100 pound person means something entirely different than 100 calories does to a person who weighs 200 pounds. There are more complicated and accurate ways to go about this, but these numbers give you a quick idea of how your caloric intake relates to maintaining or changing your weight and body fat percentage. You will maintain about the same weight and body fat percentage with the calorie consumption shown at the different activity levels below.

Body Weight/Body Fat Maintenance Levels

• 13 calories per pound of body weight with sedentary activity.
• 15 calories per pound of body weight with physical labor or medium exercise.
• 17 calories per pound of body weight with hard physical labor or intense exercise (very few fit in this category).

Examples:

If your current weight is 150 pounds and you have an office job with little activity you will gain weight if you consume more than about 2,000 calories per day. If you weigh 100 pounds then 1,300 calories per day is the break point.

If you weigh 200 pounds and work light construction you will gain weight if you consume more than about 3,000 calories per day.

To burn body fat at 1 pound per week consume 500 calories per day (3,500 calories/week) less than your maintenance level.

To burn body fat at 2 pounds per week consume 1,000 calories per day (7,000 calories/week) less than your maintenance level.