A pound of flesh

It is widely accepted that one pound of fat contains about 3500 calories.^[1]

What this means for us is that if you are desperately trying to loose some weight you will have to cut your calories by 3500 per week to loose a pound of fat every week.

But before I carry on, lets convert the numbers to metric measurements and round a little since I could never quite grasp the imperial madness:

3860 kcal = 0.5 kg Fat

So if you want to lose 0.5 kg per week you only need to create a 550 calorie deficit per day from what it would take to maintain your current weight (you can use the calorie calculator to figure out how much you need to maintain your current weight, then simply subtract 550 from this number).

Creating this daily deficit can be as easy as not eating that extra piece of chocolate cake, or just doing some additional physical exercises, for example, this morning alone I burned a good 1354 calories at gym.

If you follow this calorie guideline your weight loss will be more healthy and more predictable at a steady pace. You can even get fancy when you realize that your weight is changing too little every week and use your results to re-calculate that calorie deficit.

It is however very important to realize that what we have just discussed are guidelines, not pure hard science. I do however promise if you follow your calorie planned diet you WILL see results, they may not come overnight, but they will come!

Up to this point we have discussed weight loss, but you will know that is not my goal, I've already done that, so you can take my word for it and know the above works. My goal is to gain weight, and by weight I mean muscle, not fat!

Unfortunately, from what I have read, muscle gain is a little less predictable than weight loss, and I am not exactly sure how many calories you will need to gain a pound of muscle. From Google research it would seem that you will need a surplus of 2500 calories per week. ^[2]

2500 calories = 0.45 kg muscle

I am quite happy to use this smaller number and I am happy to gain that amount of weight every week, assuming that most of it will be muscle.

Next up I will have to calculate the calories I will be consuming ever week, and then work out from which foods these calories will be coming from. So keep visiting the blog and post comments or ask questions!