If you need to lose weight, your diet may be one of the reasons you weigh more than you should. To lose weight, you’ve got to burn more calories than you consume. Taking a closer look at your diet is a good place to start. It’s good to say, “I’ll eat less,” or “I’ll eat healthier,” but most people need a better plan than that.
Following a calorie-controlled eating plan can help. When you keep track of what you eat based on calories, it can help you make better food choices and avoid overeating. Here’s how:
Some diets, like Weight Watchers ®, encourage people to follow a point system based on the calorie content of food and amount of fiber it contains. That approach isn’t for everyone, but it works for some people.
Instead of following a point system, you can simply count calories. To do this, figure out how many calories you should eat to reach your goal weight with this
weight loss calculator. If you are overweight and inactive, you should aim to eat about 1,600 calories per day for men or 1,400 calories per day for women to lose weight.
Use ChooseMyPlate
The U.S. Department of Agriculture website,
ChooseMyPlate.org, offers another way to follow a calorie-controlled diet. Enter your age, gender, and activity level on the site. Then you’ll get an eating plan based on the number of servings per food group you should eat.
If you can reduce calories by about 500 per day by improving your diet, you’ll lose about one pound of fat per week. Add 30 minutes of exercise per day to a calorie-controlled diet, and you’ll see weight-loss results even faster.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
ChooseMyPlate.gov.
National Institutes of Health.
