How many calories do i need to consume daily to lose weight

For one, it gives you an objective way to compare very different meals and make informed decisions about overall portion sizes. These can be some of the most difficult nutrition decisions to make!

Calories and kilocalories

But it's still extra calories a day—and of pure sugar, at that. Consumed regularly, that's enough to make a difference in how you look and feel—maybe up to 15 pounds of weight gain in a year. While counting calories is a great place to start, the quality of your food, the balance of macronutrients, and the type and amount of activity in your life also matters plenty! So along with your caloric target, consider:.

Wait, what even are calories?

Calories aren't just calories! They're actually values that come from the macronutrients protein, fats, and carbohydrates as well as alcohol. Splitting your caloric intake into a tried-and-true ratio is the next step after determining how many you need. We created a nine-video course, Bodybuilding.

For weight loss :. For muscle gain :. Fat burners and pre-workout supplements are popular choices for people looking to lose weight. Creatine is a staple choice for people trying to gain weight. And protein is often a high priority for both camps.

We've created guides to each:. If you've been eating less than you burn for a while, or if you feel like your body has stopped responding to a deficit, then the answer may not be to continue cutting.

Instead, you may want to consider reverse dieting. Here's why this approach works. You need to eat fewer calories than you burn to lose fat. However, if you restrict your energy intake for too long, this can eventually slow your metabolism in a process called "metabolic adaptation," which makes it difficult to continue losing weight. To combat metabolic adaptation, you can gradually increase your caloric intake in order to raise your metabolism. Even though it sounds a little crazy to increase calories to lose weight, this ultimately helps you burn more calories.

To create an effective reverse diet, you could also do less cardio and more weight training, which will further optimize your metabolism to build muscle and shed fat.

If you've reached a point with your dieting where you think you may need to reverse diet, do it strategically, like how registered dietician Katie Coles recommends in the article "The Ultimate Guide to Reverse Dieting," to maximize your results. In order for you to get the most out of the calculator, and macronutrients as well, you need to be able to match it up to the foods you eat. You can do this using food labels, or by weighing out your food and using one of the many online nutritional databases.

Weighing food may seem like a lot of counting and not much fun, but it gets easier over time. Fitness coach Vince Del Monte says in "From Here to Macros: 4 Steps to Better Nutrition" that you quickly learn to "eyeball" quantities after just a few weeks of practice. Whenever you're taking a peek at a nutritional label, the first number you want to know is the serving size.

This is usually near the top of the chart. All the information that follows is based on that serving size. Sometimes serving size reflects an entire product, but it usually represents a portion of a product. It's an estimation of the average portion a person eats. Measure the portion size you actually do eat, and compare that to the serving size on the label. Is it more, less, or the same? So, when you eat a cup of a product with a serving size of half a cup, you will then double all the following nutritional information protein, sodium, fat, etc.

You can achieve some amazing results by simply changing the way you eat. But adding in activity, both in the form of exercise and non-exercise activity, can definitely help you tip the scales even further in your favor. It's common for someone who is looking to lose weight to start exercising with an eye toward burning as many calories as possible.

They see this as the best way to boost total daily energy expenditure TDEE , which is the amount of calories they burn each day. However, as Susan Hewlings, Ph. If that's your goal each time you step foot in the gym, well, that's an easy way to start hating exercise—and stop doing it. A better approach is to simply focus on exercising consistently, incorporating both cardio and weight training, and following a nutritional approach that you can sustain long term.

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That means no drastic deficits! This approach will help you build lean muscle, which will help you burn calories, even while your body is at rest. Then, when you're outside of the gym , focus on adding in low-impact activity whenever and wherever possible. The amount of energy you need will depend on:. The term calorie is commonly used as shorthand for kilocalorie.

You will find this written as kcal on food packets. Kilojoules kJ are the equivalent of kilocalories within the International System of Units, and you'll see both kJ and kcal on nutrition labels. To find out if you are a healthy weight, use the BMI calculator. To maintain a healthy weight, you need to balance the amount of calories you consume through food and drink with the amount of calories you burn through physical activity. To lose weight in a healthy way, you need to use more energy than you consume by eating a healthy, balanced diet with fewer calories while increasing your physical activity.

For more information on weight loss, download the NHS weight loss plan , our free 12 week diet and exercise plan. You should get advice from the GP if you're underweight your body mass index is less than To gain weight, you need to eat more calories than your body uses each day. For more information, see How can I gain weight safely? Page last reviewed: 24 October Next review due: 24 October Home Common health questions Food and diet Back to Food and diet.