How many calories should you eat to lose 2 pounds a week if you weigh 160 pounds?

Answer 1

First, that would depend on a few different things.

1. Male or Female?

2. Age?

3. Height?

Then, you have to figure out your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) using a BMR calculator which can be found with a Google search. Your BMR is basically how many calories would you body burn each day if you did nothing and stayed in bed.

Let's say you are a 5'6" 30yr old female weighing 160lbs. Your BMR would be 1520 calories. Once you know this, you then have determine how much activity you do in a week. Google "Harris Bendict Equation". That guideline will help you determine how many calories your body needs daily to MAINTAIN your current weight. So, let's say you are sedentary (little or no excerise). Based on the HBE, you would take your BMR and times it by 1.2.

So using that info, your calorie needs would come out to 1824 calories per day. 3500 calories burned is equal to 1lb of body fat lost. If you were to limit your intake to 1500 calories per day, you would burn 324 calories for that day. That would equate to roughly 11 days to lose one pound. If you limited yourself to 1200 calories a day, it would take 5 days to lose one pound, and so on and so forth.

The key is this, the more active you are, the higher the calorie need for your body to burn goes up. Let's say you workout 3-5 days a week. Your calorie need goes up to 2356 per day. So, at a 1200 calorie per day diet, you would be losing 1156 calories per day and would therefore would lose 2 lbs. in 6 days.

Weight loss is simple, burn more calories than you take in each day and you will lose weight.