Weight Control and Calorie Intake: How Many Calories Should I Have a Day to Lose Weight

Bringing your weight down through a diet is not a matter of eating less, but rather of controlling the number of calories you take in a given day. While this translates to most people as simply eating less of everything, this is actually not true. You don't have to eat substantially less to lose weight, you just have to watch what you eat.

The best thing you can do for weight control is to do your research, and here are the steps you should take to make yourself a diet plan that will help you to lose weight without the usual dread of starving yourself.

The first thing you need to do is check your ideal body weight for your height and compare it to your actual weight. Yes, I know this can get depressing but you have to give yourself a goal, and that ideal weight is what you should strive for.

Next, download a calorie calculator from the internet that lets you figure out how many calories someone at your IDEAL weight should be taking in a day for body maintenance. Needless to say, you should NOT strive to match this intake immediately if you're at, say, 200% or more of your ideal weight. But at least you now have a better idea of the calorie intake you're shooting for.

Then you should look for food calorie references, either from books or the internet, and pretty much go over the list. Start by listing which foods you eat and in what quantities. You'll immediately be able to pinpoint the biggest culprits in your regular diet that provide huge calories for relatively minor amounts eaten. Kick those from your day to day eating habits if possible, especially if they're empty calories like those found in junk foods.

Then, list the foods that you regularly eat (or can tolerate, at least) which have a low calorific value for their mass. These can make up the bulk of your diet when you start out, so that you can eat almost as much as you used to but will be taking in fewer calories.