What Does It Take To Lose A Pound of Weight?

Losing weight may be a struggle for you, possibly continually going through the see-saw effect. Lose a couple pounds in a few weeks, gain a couple pounds in the following weeks. Often this occurs because folks don't truly realize how this process actually works which is one reason for the fluctuation in weight from month to month.If you're a numbers person, here's a stat for you. For every 3,500 calories you get rid of, one pound of weight will leave your body. That may or may not sound easy to do, but let's take a closer look at what this actually entails.When nutrition is a priority, that means each day an appropriate amount of food enters the body. Depending on your age, gender, body type, and activity level, that total generally ranges anywhere from 1,400-2,500 calories per day.Once you have your daily calorie total, if that number is maintained daily you will stay at your current weight neither gaining nor losing weight. Since we want to lose weight in a healthy manner, that means our goal each day is to stay a tad under our daily calorie allowance.This is essentially known as creating a calorie deficit which translates to weight loss.When you are able to finish the day with a calorie total less that your baseline amount, that deficiency will chip away at the weight on your body. When your deficiency over a number of days totals 3,500, you will have successfully lost one pound of weight.


As you can see, this is a cumulative process especially since it is not healthy or advisable to try and rid your body of 3,500 calories in a day. But you also need to be aware of the small successes you do accomplish so you don't lose all your positive steps forward in one careless splurge.Say for instance you create a deficit of 500 calories for 5 days in a row for a total of 2,500 but then on the 6th day you go wild and have a night "out on the town" and take in a whopping total of 4,000 calories for the entire day.With this once lapse in control you unfortunately wiped out those 5 days of healthy eating with that one splurge.Granted that's an extreme exaggeration and hopefully most of us don't go hog-wild on a weekly basis, but think about your current regular eating habits and what you typically consume on a regular basis. You may find when you truthfully tally up what's eaten daily, you may be surpassing your daily calorie allowance which in turn means you are gaining weight regularly.