How Much Calories To Eat For Losing Weight
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1. Calorie counting: Whether you want to lose unwanted pounds, slim down a little bit or simply maintain a healthy weight, knowing how many calories are in your food is important. However, it can sometimes be tricky to decrypt the nutritional labels on food packaging.
There are many websites and apps that offer handy tools to keep track of how many calories you're consuming each day. They usually require the type of food consumed and the quantity. However, the calculations can also be done manually with some simple calculations if you eat mainly pre-prepared food (the calorie value of food is mentioned on nutrition labels before the unit "kcal") or if you use a "calorie chart", which shows calorie levels in various foodstuffs.
2. Counting calories to lose weight: When trying to lose weight, counting the number of calories accumulated daily can be an effective solution to stay on course. For example, calculating the calorific value of the food you've eaten at breakfast allows you to know the number of calories left for the rest of the day so you can plan your following meals accordingly. In the same way, adding the calories for each day can help you to plan for the days to come. But beware, doing these calculations will not necessarily lead to weight loss. Above all, you need to know your personal daily calorie need.
3. Official nutritional recommendations: Energy needs vary according to many criteria such as gender, age, and levels of physical activity. For a woman between 20 and 40 years old of average body build, with average levels of physical activity, 9,000 kilojoules (kJ) per day, or about 2151 kilocalories (kcal) are recommended.
So, should we eat less to lose weight? Not necessarily! You must not drastically reduce your calorie intake overnight without consulting a dietician. A dietician will be able to assess all of the variables - age, weight, gender, levels of physical activity, and etc. in order to recommend the ideal amount of calories you should be consuming per day.
