How Many Calories Must be Burned to Lose Weight?

The key to losing weight is to burn more calories than you take in. While everybody is different, in general, you need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose a pound.

Long-Term Planning

• The National Institutes of Health recommend that most people should aim to lose just one to two pounds per week. This results in a slow, steady weight loss, and you're less likely to regain the weight. If your plan is to lose a pound a week, you need to burn an extra 500 calories per day.

Reduce Your Daily Calories

• One approach is to reduce the number of calories in your diet by 500 per day. If you normally consume about 2,000 calories a day, cut back to 1,500. Avoid high-calorie foods, such as sweets and fats, and replace them with low-calorie, high-fiber options that fill you up.

Increase Your Exercise Level

• Another option is to increase the number of calories you burn per day. To burn 500 extra calories a day, you could add an hour-long swim, run or bike ride to your daily schedule.

Combine Diet and Exercise

• Your best bet is a combination of diet and exercise. Decreasing the number of calories by 200 per day is easier to maintain than a more dramatic cut. Walking three miles a day will burn an extra 300 calories. Between the two, you've achieved your net reduction of 500 calories per day.

Calculating Your Calorie Burn

• Everybody burns calories at a different rate---the numbers given here are just estimates. Heavier people will burn calories faster than lighter people. There are many online calculators available. To get a more accurate estimate of the calories you burned in a particular activity, enter your weight, the type of activity you performed and the length and intensity of your workout.