Weight loss, weight maintenance and weight gain all rely on one simple maths equation.

Energy in, versus energy out!

In very rare cases there are medical issues which complicate this BUT this isn’t the time nor place for us to go into detail about that.

Energy is measured in calories, if you intake more calories than you expend, you will gain weight.

Vice versa, if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight.

The maths is simple but the challenge really exists in how we plan to achieve our goal!

It’s worth noting that the calories we expend are formed of three components.

1. 1. Calories to survive, BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)
2. 2. Calories we burn via daily activity, NEAT, that’s like walking around the office, doing chores etc.
3. 3. Calories we burn via exercise.

On my calorie calculator  you’ll notice there is a section where you choose your ‘Daily Activity Factor’.

What does this mean?

This basically works out point 2 from my bullet points above. I’ve narrowed it down to just 4 levels for you.

• Sedentary – office based job (this is most of us)

•  

• Lightly Active – spend parts of the day standing and walking regularly

•  

• Moderately Active – Regular activity like a street sales person

•  

• Very Active – Manual labourer for an entire working day as a minimum (barely any of us)

•  

The most important thing when using the calculator is to be conservative, underestimate your activity because it’s nearly always LESS than you perceive it to be.

By underestimating your activity, you will give yourself the BEST chance to succeed with your goal!

For example, if you want to lose weight and you choose that your are sedentary and use the calories my calculator recommends and follow that for several weeks honestly and in fact that whole time, you should have considered yourself ‘Lightly Active’.

The only thing that will have happened is that you will achieve your goal FASTER!

Tell me, who doesn’t like achieving their goal faster!

Right there is a little bit of information to get you going, try it out. Let me know how you get on and if you have a question, e-mail me or drop a comment in the Facebook Group!


Train Hard! 

Arj