Not sure
TinaMarie0524
Posts: 15 Member
Hi everyone i am not understanding the calories and why it’s important to count them as it pertains to weight loss. I need help with this so my weight comes down.
2
Replies
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What do you mean? What aren't you understanding?
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Your body only burns so many calories. If you eat more calories than your body burns a day, you gain weight. You need to eat under your calorie needs in order to lose weight. Pretty simple and straight forward.1
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Calories are a unit for describing the energy that we can get from food and that the body uses. Each day your body will use a certain amount of calories that depends on how active you are among many other things. To lose weight you have to eat less calories than you expend. It's really quite simple1
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Calories are units of energy. Your body is made up of energy. Stored energy = body fat. If you're overfat, you have too much stored energy. Counting calories is limiting the amount of incoming energy so you can let your body give up some of its stored energy, AKA burning body fat.
Since your body still needs some energy to function, you still need to eat, just not as much as you used to. This is the concept of energy balance.
That's basically how it works. If you need to lose stored energy, limit the amount coming in. If you need to gain energy, increase the amount coming in.2 -
Thank you for the reply!musicfan68 wrote: »Your body only burns so many calories. If you eat more calories than your body burns a day, you gain weight. You need to eat under your calorie needs in order to lose weight. Pretty simple and straight forward.
Ok! That makes sense. I am so new to this I am feeling a bit overwhelmed.
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All food contains calories. Calories are fuel for your body. It uses calories to do things like make your heart beat, fight off infections, and repair muscles, as well as more obvious things like exercise. If you give your body too much fuel, it stores the extra as fat. If you don't give it enough fuel, it burns its stores.
In order to lose weight, you need to give your body fewer calories than it needs, so that it will burn its stored fat. When you set your height, weight and activity level, MFP figures out how many calories your body probably burns every day. When you set how quickly you want to lose weight, MFP figures out how few calories you should eat to make your body burn that much. MFP also has a database that tells you how many calories are in different foods, so that you can track how many you're eating.
Bottom line: eat about the number of calories that MFP suggests. If you do exercise, eat about 50%-75% of the calories MFP says you burned. After a month, see if you're losing weight faster or slower than you want, and adjust your calorie goal if you need to.2 -
All food contains calories. Calories are fuel for your body. It uses calories to do things like make your heart beat, fight off infections, and repair muscles, as well as more obvious things like exercise. If you give your body too much fuel, it stores the extra as fat. If you don't give it enough fuel, it burns its stores.
In order to lose weight, you need to give your body fewer calories than it needs, so that it will burn its stored fat. When you set your height, weight and activity level, MFP figures out how many calories your body probably burns every day. When you set how quickly you want to lose weight, MFP figures out how few calories you should eat to make your body burn that much. MFP also has a database that tells you how many calories are in different foods, so that you can track how many you're eating.
Bottom line: eat about the number of calories that MFP suggests. If you do exercise, eat about 50%-75% of the calories MFP says you burned. After a month, see if you're losing weight faster or slower than you want, and adjust your calorie goal if you need to.
Awe thank you1 -
TinaMarie0524 wrote: »
Knowledge is power. Power must be used wisely, else it is dangerous.
Now that you know that you can lose weight by eating fewer calories than you need, be cautious that you do not imagine eating much, much less than you need in order to lose very, very fast.
Is it widely recognized as safe and appropriate for overweight people to succeed at losing 1% of their body weight each week by means of eating less than they need.
Please calculate the solution to this problem: "(TinaMarie0524's weight) times 0.01"
That solution is the number of pounds you want to lose this week. As your weight will change over time, it is wise that you recalculate that solution frequently and re-adjust your calorie intake accordingly.
Eventually, you will get small and the trend of weight loss will become very slow. That's what winning looks like.
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »TinaMarie0524 wrote: »
Knowledge is power. Power must be used wisely, else it is dangerous.
Now that you know that you can lose weight by eating fewer calories than you need, be cautious that you do not imagine eating much, much less than you need in order to lose very, very fast.
Is it widely recognized as safe and appropriate for overweight people to succeed at losing 1% of their body weight each week by means of eating less than they need.
Please calculate the solution to this problem: "(TinaMarie0524's weight) times 0.01"
That solution is the number of pounds you want to lose this week. As your weight will change over time, it is wise that you recalculate that solution frequently and re-adjust your calorie intake accordingly.
Eventually, you will get small and the trend of weight loss will become very slow. That's what winning looks like.
Thank you for the reply0 -
Calories are a unit for describing the energy that we can get from food and that the body uses. Each day your body will use a certain amount of calories that depends on how active you are among many other things. To lose weight you have to eat less calories than you expend. It's really quite simple
Thank you for the reply0 -
Calories are units of energy. Your body is made up of energy. Stored energy = body fat. If you're overfat, you have too much stored energy. Counting calories is limiting the amount of incoming energy so you can let your body give up some of its stored energy, AKA burning body fat.
Since your body still needs some energy to function, you still need to eat, just not as much as you used to. This is the concept of energy balance.
That's basically how it works. If you need to lose stored energy, limit the amount coming in. If you need to gain energy, increase the amount coming in.
Thank you for the reply. This is very helpful.0 -
This post gives a simple explanation as to how weight loss happens and how MFP works:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10569458/why-eating-too-little-calories-is-a-bad-idea/p1
This post covers the basics of accurately counting your calories:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10640205/the-basics-of-accurate-logging#latest1 -
TinaMarie0524 wrote: »Hi everyone i am not understanding the calories and why it’s important to count them as it pertains to weight loss. I need help with this so my weight comes down.
Your body uses a certain number of calories to maintain your current weight. To lose weight you need to eat fewer calories than your maintenance. Eating fewer calories means your body will use fat stores.
Plug your statistics into MFP, select lose weight, and eat that many calories. If you do deliberate exercise (not required....but a healthy habit) - you earn more calories. Eat some of those too.1
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