Calorie counting and exercise are the best ways to lose weight.
Reasons for Calculating Calories
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Heat is essential for human life activities, and the unit of measurement for heat is usually the calorie.
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One calorie is the energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. In our daily lives, we often use kilocalories (kcal) as the unit of measurement for calories, which is a thousand times the calorie. The calorie calculation for the three major nutrients is based on the fact that one gram of protein or sugar can produce 4 kcal of energy, while one gram of fat can produce 9 kcal of energy.
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The amount of energy a person needs to maintain life and activities throughout the day is called basal metabolic rate. It is approximately 2100 kcal for men and approximately 1900 kcal for women.
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People who are not overweight now are those who, in the past, consumed the same amount of calories as they burned through physical activity.
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Conversely, people who are obese now have a history of consuming more calories than they have burned through physical activity, resulting in excess calories being stored as fat. If these excess calories can be burned off, there will be a slimming effect.
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How to consume and burn calories? People often say "eat until you are 80% full", "control your food intake to three-quarters or two-thirds of your usual portion", and "twice your usual amount of walking". These are all easy things to do, and you can use these standards to calculate calories for your weight loss plan.
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However, people often set grand goals but fail to achieve them. Therefore, executing a weight loss plan requires willpower and determination.
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Reducing the amount of food you eat is less important than reducing your intake of fatty foods. Additionally, desserts and fruit juices can also affect calorie intake. Following a weight loss plan requires effort. Only by diligently adhering to your weight loss plan will you achieve good results.
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The "calculation method" calculates daily intake and expenditure, and the balance between the two is adjusted by oneself. Long-term and continuous efforts and control are the key to successful weight loss, and at the same time, it is also very helpful to people's health.
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The best way to lose weight
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As long as you exercise, you'll achieve good weight loss results.
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Few athletes who were once students are able to maintain their exercise habits after entering the workforce, which is why obesity is becoming increasingly common.
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Even after having the chance to play baseball or other sports with friends, they'll often indulge in a big meal because it's a rare opportunity. As a result, this overeating completely replenishes all the energy they've expended.
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Regarding calorie expenditure during exercise, for example, a 42.2-kilometer marathon run completed in 2.5 hours will burn approximately 2,400 kilocalories.
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Human fat cells contain approximately 80% pure fat and about 20% other components. One gram of fat contains approximately 9 kilocalories, therefore, burning one kilogram of fat requires 9 × 0.8 × 1000, or approximately 7000 kilocalories of energy.
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In other words, to lose 1 kilogram through exercise alone, you would need to burn approximately 7,000 kilocalories, which is roughly equivalent to running a full marathon 3.5 times.
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Some people advocate for the "10,000 steps" activity. Walking 10,000 steps burns approximately 300 kilocalories.
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Compared to burning calories through exercise, controlling your diet is much simpler. For example, burning 100 calories requires about 12 minutes of jogging or 30 minutes of walking, but if you control your diet, you only need to reduce the amount by about one slice of honey cake.
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In today's modern society, people rarely exercise, and delicious food is readily available. Eating too much and consuming too many calories can easily lead to obesity.
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We know that although exercise is unlikely to have a quick effect on weight loss, the basic principle of weight loss still requires exercise to directly burn fat. At the same time, exercise also has the effect of improving physical fitness.
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As for diet control therapy, its weight loss effect is relatively rapid, but it must be combined with a scientific approach and exercise in order to achieve healthy and successful weight loss.
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Why exercise is necessary for weight loss
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Many people give up halfway through their weight loss journey. Many initially work very diligently and achieve a weight loss of about 3-4 kilograms per month.
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However, once the second or third month begins, weight loss almost stops. This phenomenon is called adaptation, because the body reduces calorie intake and also reduces calorie expenditure in response to the reduced calorie intake.
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In order to sustain life, the basal metabolic rate also decreases, maintaining the use of minimal calorie expenditure, thus causing the phenomenon of stopping weight loss.
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Many people give up halfway through their weight loss journey because they think they've stopped losing weight. In fact, during this period, weight loss continues, and you may experience fatigue.
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A person weighing 80 kg who aims to lose 60 kg will find that when they reach 70 kg, the scale needle stops moving for several weeks.
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Think carefully about how long it took for this person, who weighs 80 kilograms, to increase their weight from 70 kilograms to 80 kilograms. We don't know the exact time, but it must have been a considerable period of adjustment.
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When you lose weight through diet control, you will inevitably experience this adaptation phenomenon. To overcome this phenomenon, you need to rely on exercise.
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> This is an adaptive phenomenon that uses exercise to change the body's metabolic state, because exercise increases calorie consumption and also increases basal metabolic rate.
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At the same time, excess body fat is metabolized, making fat storage more difficult, which in turn leads to weight loss. These two factors combined are necessary to overcome the adaptation phenomenon during weight loss activities.
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However, what kind of exercise can prevent adaptation? 300 kcal of exercise per day is necessary.
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Different weights will burn different amounts of calories, but walking 10,000 steps a day should be appropriate.
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In today's society, where people rely heavily on cars for transportation, it is difficult to walk 10,000 steps a day. Therefore, some people buy a pedometer to help them, which can be helpful for people who are trying to treat obesity.
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For those who want to lose weight consistently, the two essential elements of an effective weight loss method-exercise and diet control-are like the front and rear wheels of a bicycle; lacking either one will prevent successful weight loss.
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If you only rely on diet control to lose weight, you'll encounter several adaptation periods during which weight loss will be slow. Some people then resort to even stricter diet control methods. However, choosing appropriate exercise is fundamental.
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Overly strict dietary control is one of the reasons why weight loss efforts often fail. Furthermore, excessive dietary restriction can lead to nutritional imbalances and harm health. Therefore, appropriate exercise should be incorporated into dietary control to help overcome adaptation issues.
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The effects of weight loss are noticeable and rapid in the initial stages, but the pace of progress will slow down later; this is something you must understand beforehand. If weight loss slows down, you should choose exercise to overcome it, but you shouldn't have overly high expectations about the calories burned or how effective exercise will be for weight loss.