How To Calculate Your Daily Calorie Intake

For Weight Loss Success

What's your required personal daily calorie intake for weight loss?

Since your goal is to lose abdominal fat, you should calculate and know your personal total daily calorie intake for weight loss; how many calories you need daily in order to lose weight.

You'll need to begin cutting calories somewhere, but how many calories should you cut?...and what’s the best way to do that?

Follow along with me as I explain one method that will help you to calculate your personal calorie intake for weight loss.

First off, begin by subtracting between 250 to 500 calories daily from your personal BMR calculation.

If you haven’t calculated your own Basal Metabolic Rate yet, you may want to do that now otherwise the rest of this won’t be of much help to you.

Your BMR will give you a rough estimate of how many calories your body burns daily to maintain your current weight - it's your starting point.

Using our imaginary friend Mary, (from the BMR calculation page ) as an example, we had calculated that her BMR was 1,721 calories per day.

Let’s now subtract both 250 and 500 calories from Mary’s BMR of 1,721 and we arrive at a range of 1,221 calories on the low end and 1,471 calories on the high end.

In other words, Mary’s ideal calorie intake for weight loss would be approximately 1,221 on the low end and 1,471 calories daily on the high end.

Consider this too...

There are approximately 3,500 calories in one pound.

A daily deficit of 500 calories would be equal to 3,500 total calories (or 1 pound) over the course of a week.

It comes down to cutting calories through a healthy fat loss diet plan and burning calories through increased activity.

Bottom line, the equation is always going to be how many calories are taken in vs the amount of calories burned.

If our friend Mary also increased her activity level, along with decreasing her calorie intake, this would help her to burn hundreds more calories and increase her percentage of lean fat burning muscle as an added bonus.

Calculating YOUR Calorie Intake for Weight Loss

Do the same with your own basal metabolic rate number.

Deduct both 250 and 500 calories from your BMR total you previously calculated to arrive at your ‘low’ and ‘high’ end daily calorie intake for weight loss.

Increase your own daily activity to burn an additional 200-250 calories daily and add some fat burning lean muscle for future weight maintenance.

Doing this will help you lose about 1 to 2 lbs. per week, what’s considered a healthy weight loss.

BMR is in no way an exact measurement – there are far too many variables, but it will serve as a guideline and get you started on the path to fat loss.

A word of caution here...

Avoid shocking your body!

Sudden and extreme changes (like reducing your caloric intake for weight loss from 1,500 calories daily to 800 calories per day or less) will back fire and do your body more harm than good – not to mention that it’s guaranteed to keep that stubborn belly fat firmly in place as you slowly starve yourself.

Sudden and extreme drops in caloric intake trigger your body’s survival mechanisms and belly fat loss becomes impossible.

Your metabolism will slow down in an effort to conserve energy and your body will go into fat storage mode. Not good. You can read more about that in The "Fat Belly Syndrome".

In my opinion, this is why so many women struggle and ultimately fail in their attempts to lose abdominal fat.

When the body senses stress, in this case brought on by a sudden drop in calorie intake, it reacts by releasing cortisol (a stress hormone), adrenaline (flight or fight response) and increases fat storage enzymes which then triggers fat cells to store fat.

You want to absolutely avoid this scenario, so it's important to slowly decrease how many calories you consume daily in small, incremental steps.

Start with a decrease of not more than 250 - 300 calories per day maximum.

At the same time you will also want to increase your daily activity level as well.

A brisk 30-45 minute walk daily (enough to get your heart rate up) will increase calories burned by an additional 250 - 300 calories.

Over the course of one week you’ll have created an additional deficit of approximately 2,100 calories through both diet and exercise!

The good news is that the first type of belly fat you’ll lose is visceral fat ....and that's a good thing.

Once you’ve lost some weight you’ll want to then recalculate your BMR (it will be lower) and adjust your calorie intake and/or activity level accordingly.

Remember, each of us is unique, and there just isn’t a one size fits all diet.

The amount of calories you'll need daily will be different than how many calories your friend would need.

I suggest that you keep track of your results in your diet journal and exercise log and re-assess your weight loss on a weekly basis as your calorie intake for weight loss requirements change.

If you’ve done a thorough job and kept good written records in your diet journal you’ll be able to easily tweak your fat loss diet plan or exercise plan according to your own personal results and what fits best for you.

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