How to Count Calories for Dieting and Weight Loss

Calorie reduction is the most important aspect of weight loss. Counting calories is very helpful in order to adjust food intake and portion sizes. It is important however that this is done according to your height, current weight, target weight and amount of activity. Your target weight should be such that your Body Mass Index, or BMI, falls in the normal range.



Counting calories has been made easy by freely available online tools, nutrition labeling and diet/nutrition food scales.

Instructions

• 1

  Calculate your minimum daily calorie requirement.

  The minimum amount of energy required when resting is called the Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR. The BMR is calculated based on the weight, height, age and activity factor: sedentary, light activity, moderate activity, very active. Your daily calorie requirement can be calculated by multiplying the BMR by the activity factor. Online calculators are available to calculate BMR and daily calorie needs.

• 2

  Calculate the calories you need to consume in order to achieve your target weight.

  Your target weight should be such that your BMI falls in the normal range of 18.5-24.9. BMI is a measure of body fat for adults based on height and weight. Online calculators are available for calculating BMI. Once you calculate your target weight, plug in this value in the "weight" field of the daily calorie intake calculator of Step 1. The resulting calories will be what you need to consume daily in order to reach your target weight.

  If, say, the difference between the daily calorie requirement from Step 1 and the target calorie intake calculated above is 100 calories, then you would need to consume 100 calories less everyday, which is equivalent to a medium size banana. One pound of body fat has 3,500 calories. Thus a reduction of 100 calories per day will cause a loss of 1 lb. of weight in 35 days. To lose weight faster, you need to cut down more calories. A daily deficit of 500 calories can help you lose up to 1 lb. per week.

• 3

  Calculate the calorie content of foods that you consume using nutrition labels, manual calculations and/or online tools. The following is the calorie content per gram for the macronutrients:

  Carbohydrates: 4 calories

  Protein: 4 calories

  Fat: 9 calories

  Most foods will be a mixture of these (and other) nutrients, so its important to note down the composition of the foods based on the recipe and maintain a journal to record everything that you eat.

• 4

  Use food scales and calorie counting software to keep track of your calories. There are several scales that weigh and calculate the nutritional content of the food based on the weight. The "Perfect Portions Digital Scale", "Eatsmart Digital Nutrition Scale" and "NewLine Digital Glass Nutrition Calculator Diet Food Scale" are examples of such scales, very affordable and an excellent investment if you are monitoring your calories.

  There are also several freely available web tools such as FitDay and Calorie-Count that have thousands of foods in their database and provide calorie tracking through food diaries.