How to Lose Weight by Counting Calories

Video Transcript

"Have you've ever wondered how to lose weight, simply by counting calories. Hi, I'm Jani Roberts, I'm a graduate of the American Academy of Nutrition, and also a Certified Personal Trainer. Certainly counting calories is a great way to monitor your weight, whether it's weight gain, or weight loss, so lets look at that. First thing to know, is, that in every pound, there's about 3,000 calories. So, simple enough, right? In order to lose 1 pound, you've got to eliminate 3,000 calories. Now, depending on how much you're eating right now, that could be very difficult, or fairly easy. Where are we going to get rid of it? Okay, first of all, if you go to 6 meals a day, and you average those meals at about 250 to 300 calories; guys don't panic, depending on your weight, we'd certainly increase this for you. You can do this 6 times a day, and come into the 2,000 to 2,500 mark. Now, probably you're eating quite a bit more than this, because you're eating more randomly. Most people would get up, maybe have something for breakfast, maybe not. Lately I've been seeing really long lines at the coffee shops, so they're spending about 5 bucks just to get a coffee, no nutrition. Okay, so we're going to look at, doing something simple, maybe like a protein shake, something in the morning that's fast and easy, if you don't have a lot of time, it's going to fall right in this category. And then you're going to repeat that about 5 times a day. So, certainly you're not going to be hungry, that's the good news. you're going to drop your caloric intake right away, by probably a thousand to 500 calories, just right there, okay. Then what we're going to do, is, we're going to interject some activity. So let's say we're doing some exercise 3 to 5 times a week, maybe 30 minute increments, let's say 30 minutes to 60. Maybe you take a dance class, maybe you shoot hoops for an hour, go swimming for 30 minutes, whatever it is that you enjoy doing, and you want to make sure you enjoy it. By doing that, you're going to increase the amount of calories that you're burning. So our goal would be to increase that by, 500 to a thousand burned calories during that week. So, what have we done, without really making any huge changes, we've decreased our caloric intake by 3,000 calories, and you've lost a pound. Thanks for joining, I'm Jani Roberts."