The one thing I have learned from helping people and being a member of a few weight loss forums is that a lot of people do not know how to figure their calorie intake. Sometimes their caloric intake will be a little too high or too low but I see some cases where the caloric intake is extremely low.

When you reduce your calories at extreme amounts your body will think you are starving it. What usually happens is that you will lose weight at first but eventually your weight loss progress will hit a plateau and stop losing weight. As a result a lot of people will decrease their calories even more which ends up causing their body to burn their muscle for energy while saving the fat.

The most important thing I tell everyone is muscle is so important and you NEVER want to compromise it. The more muscle you have the more fat you will burn. Yes muscle does weigh more than fat, but in the long run if you have a “well built” machine then you don’t have to worry as much all the time about the calorie content in food. For example, have you ever seen a hard core athlete? They can eat things like pizza or ice cream, in moderation, and not worry about it as much as the rest of us because their body burns it up so quickly. Of course they can’t do this all the time or they would eventually have a weight problem. So my advice is don’t shoot in the dark on calories.  I recommend using the instructions below to get an estimate on how many calories you should eat in a day.

The first step is to calculate your BMR which is the number of calories you burn at rest.  Click here to calculate your BMR.  The next step is to multiply your BMR by your activity level.  This is used to calculate how many calories you burn a day (also known as your TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure).

I personally decrease my TDEE by ~500-750 calories per day.

*It takes 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat so you will need to consume fewer calories than your TDEE if you want to lose weight. However, you don’t want to go too low and starve yourself!

Activity Levels 
Sedentary - 1.2 x BMR - television or office work as main activity
Light - 1.375 x BMR - exercise or workout 1-3 days per week
Moderate - 1.55 x BMR - exercise or workout 3-5 days per week
High - 1.725 x BMR - exercise or workout 6-7 days per week
Extreme - 1.9 x BMR- exercise or workout twice per day

I have really only hit the tip of the iceberg on how you can calcualte your calories but it should help you get started thinking that just eating less isn’t the best solution.  I highly recommend you learn more about your TDEE and the book that has really helped me understand a lot if this is Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.  I have already recommended this book in a few of my previous post and if you are really serious about losing weight the right way then I personally feel it is a must read. Click here for additional details on Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle