How Do Calories Effect Weight Loss?

One of the reasons why we consume food is for the energy to perform our daily activities and this energy is derived from the heat produced by the food that we consume. Calories are a measure of heat, therefore the foods with higher calories produce more energy. If you exceed your calorie consumption for the day, the surplus will get stored as body fat, thus having a negative effect on weight loss.

For you to lose weight effectively, you need to be in a negative calorie balance, for example; if an average man with a calorie consumption of 3000 calories per day, which is his maintenance consumption (balance) wants to lose weight, he now has to lower his daily calorie consumption (negative balance) for effective weight loss. The best place for him to start would be to lower his calories to about 2500 per day; this would now mean that he is burning an extra 500 calories per day which will result in weight loss.

Dropping calories too low will send your body into starvation mode which will slow down your metabolism and thus having a negative effect on weight loss. If you hit a plateau after dropping your daily calorie consumption, you now need to increase that negative balance to break that plateau and there is another way to do this without dropping your calorie consumption any further, by increasing your daily activity (exercise) for example; by using the previous example of an average man with a maintenance consumption of 3000 calories, he now increases his daily activity by adding exercise to his program and let's say this extra activity requires an extra 500 calories per day, his maintenance consumption now moves from 3000 calories to 3500 and he is consuming 2500, this would mean he is now burning an extra 1000 calories per day as opposed to 500.

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