Beginner’s Guide To Calorie Counting: Eat Right To Lose Weight

Calorie counting is a common diet practice allowing individuals to track the number of calories they consume and subsequently burn. Counting calories is an efficient way for one to track their exercises and diet to lose, maintain, or gain weight. There is a lot of math and tracking that goes along with it, but luckily plenty of free apps can make this job much easier to handle.

How Many Calories To Eat Per Day?

How many calories need to be consumed each day is dependent on the individual’s gender, age, height, weight, and their weight goals. It has been reported the average woman should consume two thousand calories per day to maintain her weight, and 1,500 calories per day to lose one pound each week. Similarly, the average man should consume 2,500 calories to maintain his weight, and two thousand calories to lose one pound per week. However, these are only averages and may vary from every individual.

Which Exercises Burn The Most Calories?

Cardiovascular exercises do the best job at burning calories quickly and keeping an individual healthy. Jogging is one of the most popular cardio exercises, and an individual weighing 155 pounds, running at six miles per hour, can burn 744 calories per hour. Another favorite cardio exercise is biking. Bikers who keep a steady speed of five mph can expect to burn 598 calories, and up to 746 if biking uphill. But which cardio workout burns the most calories? Rock climbing. That’s right: rock climbing can burn up to 818 calories per hour. Keep in mind all calories burned were using a test subject weighing 155 pounds.

Calorie Counting Apps

Many popular calorie counting apps can help track daily calorie intake and most contain well-designed food diaries and exercise logs allowing for easy tracking. Ideally, calorie counters help individuals track consumed calories as well as those burned through exercise to get closer to their weight goals. Look up free calorie counting apps that can be downloaded right to the phone to keep track of every calorie consumed and every calorie burned. Some calorie counting apps require monthly or yearly subscriptions, so do more research to find the best one.

Counting Calories To Effectively Lose Weight

It is recommended an individual attempts to consume five hundred fewer calories than usual every day to lose weight while counting calories. This tip can help to lose approximately one pound each week. However, by taking advantage of some cardiovascular exercises such as rowing, cycling, jogging, swimming, and cross-country skiing, many calories can be burned, and the individual’s diet may only need some minor changes. It is suggested those who are serious about healthily losing the most weight should consume fewer calories and try to burn off as many of the other calories as possible by using exercises that burn a lot of calories.

Problems With Counting Calories

There are a few potential problems that may be of concern with counting calories. For starters, calories may not be precise to the quantity of food. As an example, one medium apple may average 93 calories, though it could also be anywhere between the range of 83 to 116 calories. Some other problems with counting calories are everyone absorbs food differently, and the absorbed calories may differ on a case by case basis. Additionally, how the food is prepared, spiced, and cooked may change its calorie load, and the sizes of portions will vary the calorie values.

With all this in mind, take the appropriate steps and precautions to be a calorie-counting master and begin making the path towards whatever goal may be in place.