Reducing the amount of calories eaten per day will begin your journey towards losing weight, however, many people start off on the wrong foot by restricting their calories to unsafe amounts. The most typical method is to reduce your caloric intake by 500. It is ideal to do a combination of reducing calories by 250 and burning an extra 250 calories.
3500 calories is approximately 1 pound. Therefore reducing to 500 calories per day will essentially drop 1 pound a week (500 per day x 7 days = 3500). While 500 is a generally safe number to go by, you must first find out how many calories your body needs to function properly each day.
Let's say you cut your caloric intake to an unsafe number such as 1200 calories per day. You are putting your body at risk. The following are some risks of too low of a daily caloric intake:
- loss of lean muscle
- feeling mentally and physically fatigued
- prone to sickness
- lack of nutrients
- slows metabolism
The following are calorie calculators to find out how many calories it takes to maintain your current weight. Once you get an estimate, you can reduce from that number.
Mayo Clinic Calorie Calculator
Always seek the advice of your health provider or a nutritionist before cutting back on calories so that you are doing what is safe for you.
