Calories per Pound

One pound of body fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories. This applies whether they are food calories coming in, or energy calories going out.

If you eat 3,500 calories more than your body needs, you will put on about 1 pound. If you expend 3,500 calories more than you eat, you will lose about 1 pound of weight.

So to lose 1 pound of body weight per week, you need to eat 500 calories less per day. Less than you burn that is!

That might sound a lot, but over a week, it adds up to just 500 calories a day - and that can easily be done by making a few little changes to your diet, being a bit more active, or best of all, doing both.

For example, cutting 500 calories in a day is as simple as swapping a bowl of creamy chicken soup for vegetable soup, topping your jacket potato with cottage cheese rather than Cheddar cheese and doing 50 minutes of housework. An achievable goal is to dump an average of 1,000 calories per day and you should see a weight loss of around 2 pounds per week.

Losing 2 pounds a week is awesome! Understanding the 'maths' is crucial to slimming but it's also essential to set realistic goals. You need to know exactly how much you want to lose - and you want to be realistic about how long it will take. If you lose 2 pounds a week it will take you 5 weeks to lose 10 pounds.

That is a sensible rate of weight loss. And at that rate you stand a good chance of keeping the weight off. So if your list of resolutions includes goal such wearing a size-8 dress in the spring when you have 80 pounds to shift, it's time to cross them out and get real!