Are you struggling with your weight? You’re not alone. Thanks to our increasingly sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy food options, millions of Americans struggle with obesity. It is currently estimated that 78 million adults and 12 million children are obese in the U.S.
To reverse this trend, we need to change our habits and start a healthy, sustainable regimen of diet and exercise. If you’re looking for advice on how to do that, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, you’ll find everything you need to shed those pounds and reclaim your life.
An Explanation of Calorie Expenditure
Many hack dieticians will try to convince you that they’ve cracked the code to weight loss. They’ll tell you the trick is to cut carbs or drink lemon water or some other silly trick. At the end of the day, there’s only one key to weight loss. Every effective fad weight loss diet adheres to this rule whether they know it or not.
What is this rule, you ask? It’s the first rule of thermodynamics. This rule states that energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system. It can only convert into other forms of energy or transferred to another location or “burned off.”
What does this have to do with weight loss? Well, calories are human’s version of energy. It’s our gasoline. These calories can only convert to a different form of energy (body fat) or transferred to another location (burned off through bodily processes and exercise).
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE)
Even without exercise, our bodies need a certain amount of calories, or energy, to function. Our organs and cells are constantly working, managing the bodily processes we don’t have to think about. The number of calories required to do this varies from person to person, but let’s say the average human being needs 1,800 calories a day to survive.
To lose a pound of fat per week, you’d need to change your diet so that you only eat 1,300 calories per day because one pound of fat retains roughly 3,500 calories. This is how the first law of thermodynamics applies in this situation. What goes in must come out in the form of spent energy or stored as fat. Excess calories can’t disappear any other way.
Now, you might be thinking “why do I have to cut my calories so severely? Can’t I exercise hard and burn off 500 calories a day?” Let’s address this.
How Much Fat Do You Really Burn From Exercise?
Most people overestimate how many calories they’re burning from cardio and other forms of exercise. The fitness industry has exacerbated this issue by posting misleading numbers for calories burned on their treadmills, elliptical machines, exercise bikes, and more.
The average person will take the treadmill’s word for it. They’ll believe that they’ve burned 800 calories after 30 minutes on the treadmill, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Blame Our Ancestors
Throughout most of human history, our ancestors have lived in periods where food was scarce. Our bodies adapted to this by conserving energy efficiently. If running a mile burned 800 calories, our ancestors would have died from starvation. Most human beings have low metabolisms thanks to our evolutionary adaptations.
Scientists have actually determined that to burn a pound of fat, or 3,500 calories, your average human would have to run an incredible 60 miles. Do the math. This means that by running one mile on the treadmill translates to roughly 58 calories burned. So yes, you’ve got to change your diet if you want to lose weight.
Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ditch cardio altogether. It’s still good for you. It improves our hearth and lung health, gives us sweet, sweet endorphins to makes us happy, and increases our longevity. Sadly, it’s not the key to weight loss.
Foods You Should and Shouldn’t Be Eating
Now that we understand that to lose weight our diet and exercise balances have to lean more towards diet, let’s discuss what you should and shouldn’t be eating.
No matter what your fitness goals are, the trick is cutting or reducing calorie-dense foods from your diet. This includes high-fat red meats, high-carb foods like rice and pasta, and high-sugar food products. In place of these foods, you should fill your diet with foods that will leave you satisfied like lean meats, fibrous organic veggies, and complex carbohydrates (think oats, sweet potatoes, squash, etc.).
If you’re looking to build some muscle while you’re losing weight, you’ll want to be eating a ton of protein (roughly 1 gram per pound of lean body mass). Proteins and amino acids (both found in meat) are the building blocks for muscle, so without them, you will lose weight, but you won’t look toned.
Again, the trick to this is limiting your calorie intake. You could eat an all-twinkie diet and still lose weight, so if you’re eating good foods but still eating too much, your weight won’t go down. That said, your mental and physical health will be much better than the all-twinkie dieter if you lose the weight by eating right and less.
Diet and Exercise: It’s a Lifestyle Change
Finding the right balance of diet and exercise is tricky, but hopefully, this guide has helped you figure it out. It’s also helpful to think of this as a permanent lifestyle change. If you want to lose your weight and keep it off, you’ve got to settle on habits you can sustain.
Any habits that are too extreme will likely be tough to stick to and discourage you from continuing your weight loss journey. Remember, the road to your goal body is a long one, and by sprinting down it, you may burn yourself out.
We wish you the best of luck on your path to weight loss, and if you ever lose the motivation to continue, be sure to check out this article!