For most of your life, you might not have cared about your health and fitness. Suddenly you read an article online, or start thinking of getting healthier from friends or people in your social circle. It’s started to make you realize that you could improve your health quite a bit.
Now that you’re motivated to become healthier, you start your research online. One common word used in all the articles you’ve read is “calories”, and you realize that to become healthier and lose weight, you need to balance the calories inflow and outflow. If you’re on a strong push towards losing weight, you might have thought “Is it healthy and safe to burn 1000 calories a day?”
The answer is yes. It’s safe to burn around 1000 calories a day. However, it’s just not limited to this and has other nuances. In simpler terms, you have to balance the calories inflow and outflow. For this to happen, you have to monitor the number of calories you intake and the number of calories you burn.
There’s also more to it than that. For example, if you want to lose weight, we know you have to burn more calories than you take in. To gain weight, you need to be in a calorie surplus. Moreover, it also depends on the factors such as the factors that affect your metabolism. These factors include age, ethnicity, and weight. The faster the metabolism rate of a person, the easier it is for them to lose weight.
I remember eating a lot, and people always complain about why I don’t get a fat belly versus those who eat relatively less but end up gaining weight quickly. The answer to this is that even if we have similar physical activities, it will still be dependent on the metabolism rate, which is the rate at which my body breaks down the food that I eat.
The typical recommendation in the US is that an average person should eat around 2000-2500 calories a day. Again, this can vary dramatically for your unique situation, and what your weight loss goals are.
Ideal calories deficit for weight loss
If you are looking to lose weight, the ideal calorie intake is around 500-1000 fewer calories than your usual diet. To achieve this, you can either cut down on your current diet or exercise more to burn extra calories.
It usually takes a lot more effort to exercise more than to stop eating; however, it’s still very subjective and varies from person to person. With my personal experience and no scientific backing, I have found that doing both things simultaneously helps you achieve your goal.
Another feature of weight loss is the type of calories that you have. A balanced diet consists of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and fats. People trying to gain muscles have to shift towards a protein-rich diet, and people trying to lose weight need to avoid fats and have good clean carbs only.
Having an approximately 500-1000 calories deficit on average makes you lose 1.1 pounds or 0.5 kilograms a week.
Food that helps in weight reduction
Certain foods help you shed weight easier because they give you the feeling of being full, making you feel less hungry less often. These food items include…
- Beans. Rich in protein and high in fiber. The latter makes it slow to digest, which gives you the feeling of being full for a little longer. It also doesn’t have any fattening elements.
- Protein-rich breakfast. It’s highly essential to have a full meal in your breakfast. Having a heavier breakfast (high in protein) helps you avoid hunger and munching during the day, which is the most common reason for gaining weight. You should follow the fantastic old quote.
“Have your breakfast like a king lunch like a prince and dinner like a slave.”
Several studies have shown that people who have a protein-rich breakfast that includes eggs and meat eat less in the entire day than those who have cereal in their breakfast.
- Soup. Drinking soup before having your meal reduces the amount of food that you eat to almost half.
- Chocolates. Yes, you read that people who love chocolates would eat almost 15% less food if they had a small bite of a chocolate bar in between their meals. Who said that diet means only eating vegetables and being unable to eat your favorite dish?
- Apple. Remember the quote that “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” it is better to eat an apple the way it is rather than have it in its juice form. Raw apple has more fiber in it, which again makes it slower to digest. The big crunchy bite sends a message to the brain that you have eaten a lot, which eventually reduces the amount of food you have as your hunger goes away.
- Grapefruit. Having a glass of grapefruit juice or eating half grapefruit results in weight loss. Some studies have found out that having the upper mentioned quantity of grapefruit before a meal reduces the weight by a few pounds.
- Green tea. This type of tea fastens your metabolism, which helps your body in detoxification. Drinking green tea before or after a meal frequently results in weight loss.
- Veggies. Eating a lot more veggies, in general, can help you fill up without adding on a lot of calories. If you’re the type of person that likes to have a good-sized meal to feel content, adding lots of steamed broccoli, peas, or some cauliflower rice to the side will definitely put you on the right track towards weight loss.
Side note: You can even burn around two calories a minute while kissing someone.
Best exercises to burn calories
Apart from changing your diet, weight loss also involves changing your lifestyle, including how you spend your rest of the day. One great way to burn calories is to indulge in various exercises.
- Running. The centuries-old exercise of running beats most other outdoor activities in burning your calories. The exact amount of calories burnt during any exercise depends on the duration and intensity of the workout. On average, a person burns around 250 calories in a 30-minute running session.
- Swimming. The second one on the list is swimming. On average, you burn around 200 calories in 30 minutes while swimming.
- Cardio. Another way of burning your calories is doing cardio. The most efficient way of cardio is doing elliptical. It burns around 200 calories in 30 minutes.
- Jump ropes. This is an ideal way of burning calories. This exercise not just burns your calories but also increases your lower body strength. You burn around eight calories a minute while doing this exercise.
Note: It is best advised to do all of these exercises in routine and make a combination of them so that your body does not get exhausted. To calculate the exact amount of calories burned, you can have a personal trainer that can further guide you to more exercises or a nutritionist so that eating habits and exercise can synchronize, giving you the best results.
If exercise isn’t your thing that mere walking can also burn some calories an hour of walk burns around 200-250 calories. Nature has made your body in such a way that you burn calories even while sleeping. It is estimated that you burn around 50 calories an hour while sleeping.
Conclusion
Throughout this article, we have learned that the best way to reduce your weight is either exercising or eating a specific diet type. What’s important is the number of calories consumed and the number of calories burned.
The amount of burned calories is directly linked to your metabolism. It is also linked to your age, height, and weight. A change of lifestyle is needed if you want to reduce your weight.
