How do I lose weight?

In my years of being a fitness professional there is one question that I am undoubtedly asked the most. “How do I lose weight?” Today I am going to give you all the answer to this most posing question. I have great news. The answer is REALLY simple. In order to lose weight you need to consume less calories than you burn. It really is that simple. In all of my studies the consensus is; weight is determined by the balance of your daily calories. Please keep in mind that all foods have different amounts of calories and the total amount of calories you burn in a day varies greatly. For example a good size garden salad (without dressing) has about 50 calories and a small piece of pizza has about 270. It is really a good idea to know how many calories you are consuming when you decide to eat something. Luckily, there are many resources on the internet that can help you determine how many calories you are consuming in just about every food out there. If you just type in a Google search asking how many calories are in … You will get the answer. Just like different foods give different amounts of calories, different people burn different amounts of calories. I recommend that you first determine how many calories you will typically burn in a day. One great resource to determine your daily calorie needs is the NIH Body Weight Planner https://www.niddk.nih.gov/bwp. This resource will give you a general idea on how many calories you can eat to maintain your current weight or to lose a specific amount of weight in a given time period. You can always get “extra credit” or burn extra calories by just getting up an moving a bit more than you currently do. Losing weight is a multibillion dollar industry with thousands of books, services, and products developed daily to help people answer this question. You may be asking yourself; if it really is that easy than why isn’t everyone skinny? Perhaps they are asking the wrong question. For example, say you wanted to learn how to drive a car. So you go to a car manufacturer and ask them how does a car run? They could spend hours with you describing the process of a combustion engine and you will still walk away not knowing how to drive a car. Perhaps you are asking the wrong question. Perhaps some of the real questions to weight loss are… “Why do I eat so much/often?” and “Why do I eat the foods that I do?” These are definitely questions for another day that I will help you find some answers to.