How Do You Lose Weight Without Exercise?

Anyone who is interested in losing weight has certainly heard much about "diet and exercise." You've probably also heard about fad diets or pills that are supposed to help you lose pounds without any work. It is absolutely possible to lose weight by simply adjusting your diet and eating fewer calories.

Calories

• Put simply, a calorie is energy that comes in the form of food. The heart, lungs, digestive system and all the other organs in your body constantly require energy to keep doing their jobs. The amount of energy it takes to run these basic functions is called your basal metabolic rate. The average person who is relatively inactive burns about 2,000 calories a day between basic functions and walking around the house. Any extra calories that the body takes in are stored away for later use. The storage area is fat. If you consistently eat more calories than your body uses, you will carry extra fat.

Burning Calories

• In order to lose weight, the body has to burn more calories than it takes in. When it hasn't had enough calories for the day, the body will start eating away at the fat reserves in order to continue functioning. Of course, this has limits. If you don't eat anything, your body will kick into starvation mode and begin to shut down body functions instead of burning fat. That is why it is essential to balance your diet and eat enough food to keep your body running properly, but not enough to have leftover calories.

Planning a Diet

• Calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) using one of many calculators found online. For example, a 32-year old female who is 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 165 pounds has a BMR of about 1,500 calories. If you are relatively inactive, add 200 calories to that figure to account for walking, carrying things, and other light energy expenditures. The woman in our example would burn about 1,700 calories a day. In order to lose weight without adding exercise, she would have to eat less than 1,700 calories a day.

  There are 3,500 calories in one pound. If you want to lose 1 pound a week, you need to eat 500 calories a day less than what your body requires. In our example, the woman would have to eat a total of about 1,200 calories a day.

  Exercise increases the body's daily caloric needs, which is why dieters find greater success when they add in a few days of exercise. If you exercise, you are also able to eat extra calories with the same weight loss rate. You can compare the difference in allowable calorie intake by using a Daily Caloric Needs Calculator below.