How to Lose Weight - Calories, How Do I Handle Them?

It is that time of the years again; we all need to lose all those pounds we put on from all that lovely vacation eating. Ask me, I know, I visited my son in Germany and all that lovely German bread! Oh my, not too good for the figure, I promise you. OK, so now you ask the question: 'how to lose weight - calories, how am I supposed to handle them?"

So, this is what we have to look at now. Counting calories is difficult. It can be highly successful if you do it right, but it is still difficult as you have to count the calories in everything you eat.

How to decide how many calories you need to eat to lose weight:

1. How many calories a day you have to cut:

The ideal is that you should eat about 500 calories a day less than what your body needs to maintain its weight. If you try and eat fewer calories a day than that, you are in danger of your metabolism slowing down and that will make losing weight very difficult.

2. How active are you?

Now you have to decide whether you are going to do some exercise, which is, of course, highly recommended. Moderate exercise means exercising for about 30 minutes 3 to 4 times a week. Any kind of exercise will work, as long as your heart rate is increased to about 60% of its maximum for 30 minutes.

3. Doing the math:

OK, so now it is time to do a little math! For a moderately active person it takes 16 X your weight in calories to maintain that weight. From this you of course take off the 500 calories you want to eat less in order to lose weight and you have the amount of calories you need to eat each day.

4. How to work out 60% of your maximum heart rate:

So, another thing you need to know now is how to work out 60% of your maximum heart rate so that you can determine the best way to do exercise and burn fat. I mean in the end that is the reason why you are wondering how to lose weight - calories and how to handle them.

First you have to start with 220 minus your age. For fat burning, take 60% of that and you have your maximum heart rate for burning. For example, if you are 42 years old, the formula looks like this, 220-42= 178x60%= 107. Divide that by 6 and you have a 10 second count for checking your heart rate manually. All you have to do now is count the amount of beats for ten seconds and you know if you are exercising at the correct heart rate.

For the purposes of burning fat, working harder than that will be counter productive. Exercising at this intensity has to be kept up at least for 30 minutes.

As you can see, if you are wondering about how to lose weight - calories how do I handle them, calorie counting is not an easy method. If you do it right it can be highly effective, but it needs a lot of self discipline.

A far easier way is to get a good, healthy and balanced diet, all worked out for you and then all you have to do is follow it and you will get rid of those unsightly bulges.

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