Calorie Needs - Weight Maintenance, Weight Loss, Weight Gain

Your total daily calorie needs are the calories required to MAINTAIN your weight (as calculated above). In order to LOSE weight, you need to reduce your calorie intake. In order to GAIN weight you need to increase your calorie intake.

One KG of weight is equal to 7,700 calories. Therefore, in order to lose one KG of weight per week, you should either consume 7,700 fewercalories per week, or consume 3,500 fewer calories (500 fewer per day) while burning an extra 4,200 calories in extra exercise! To gain 1/2 KG of weight per week, increase your calorie intake by 3,600 calories.

If you eat more than the above calories per day without doing extra exercise to burn them off, you'll gain weight. If your goal is to lose weight by burning off excess body fat already stored in your body, aim to eat less calories over the week and maintain or increase your exercise activity. However, do not go below 900 calories per day as it'll send your body into "starvation mode" which will start to store food as fat! Also, if you suddenly cut down too much calories per day, you'll lose energy and feel tired easily, therefore get on a diet program that you can sustain without these side effects.

Eating right by counting calories is too time consuming for most people. In a perfect world we would all have time to prepare or locate such low calorie meals in restaurant or hawker centers, but not in today's fast pace fast food society. On top of that, cutting down on calories intake is only part of the solution to permanent and successful weight lost - you still need to ensure that those low calorie meals are also nutritionally balanced. Otherwise it'll be easy to loose weight by simply skipping meals!