

According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020–2025, the average adult woman expends roughly 1,600 to 2,400 calories per day, while the average adult man expends 2,000 to 3,000. To lose a pound, you need to have a good idea of how many calories you burn - that is, use for energy - on an average day. Doing the Math With a BMR Calculator to Make Weight Loss Work for You

“You can lose weight eating 1,200 calories of anything but in order to be healthy, the kinds of calories you eat matter.” Foster advises choosing more foods that are high in protein, unsaturated fats, and fiber - and fewer that contain lots of saturated fat and added sugars. It’s also important to look at the overall nutritional value of a food, rather than calories alone, especially when on a weight loss journey, says Foster. So, when a company or program claims to help with fat loss, that’s a fallacy. While multiple diet and exercise variables determine how much comes from fat versus muscle, caloric deficits never target fat exclusively. Foster notes, all of the lost weight comes from a combination of fat and lean tissue, which is mostly muscle. Researchers explain that much of the discrepancy is because the way body expends energy (called metabolism) changes with weight fluctuations.

Studies show that eliminating 3,500 calories largely overestimates how much weight someone will lose, as well as how much of that weight will be from fat.
