You’ve heard the saying “calories in versus calories out” when it comes to weight loss. This is referring to a calorie deficit. But what is a calorie deficit, exactly? Basically, you need to take in fewer calories than you burn to lose weight.
While it’s true that a caloric deficit helps drive weight loss, it’s not the most important thing. In fact, we recommend taking the spotlight off calorie counting and taking a more holistic approach.
We’re digging into what it means to create a calorie deficit to lose weight and other critical factors of healthy, sustainable weight management.
What Is a Calorie Deficit?
A calorie deficit essentially means eating fewer calories than your body burns. In more technical terms, it’s the state in which your energy intake is lower than energy expended.
A calorie deficit prompts your body to tap into stored energy reserves — primarily fat — to make up for the shortfall. This is what ultimately leads to weight loss.
Creating a calorie deficit is a factor in most weight loss strategies, whether through changes in nutrition, increasing daily activity or a combination of both. There are healthy ways to approach it, but remember, it’s not everything.
How to Calculate a Calorie Deficit
Your body’s needs are going to be different from someone else’s. Learning how to calculate those needs with science can help you reach a point where you’re neither getting too much nor — more importantly — too little food.
Obsessing over low calorie intake not only makes weight loss — and eating, in general — a chore, but it can have lasting negative effects on mental health. Food should provide nutrition while bringing you joy!
We’d argue that it’s more important to have a general idea of your daily energy needs. And instead of counting calories, focus on mindful eating, making nutrient-dense choices, practicing portion control and listening to your body.
These skills — paired with exercise and other healthy lifestyle habits — work together for healthy weight management. Plus, you can keep using them in your everyday life even after reaching an initial weight loss goal.
What Should My Calorie Intake Be?
As for how to do a calorie deficit, around 500 to 750 calories below your estimated needs is typically recommended as a healthy calorie deficit for weight loss.
If you’re wondering, How many calories do I need a day?, you can use a formula that accounts for your basal metabolic rate (BMR) — your daily energy expenditure at rest — and your activity level.
There’s no shortage of online calculators for BMRI, but not all are created equal.
The Harris-Benedict equation is often used to estimate BMR based on gender, age, weight and height. Once you have your BMR, multiply it by an activity factor to determine your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).
TDEE is the number of calories you need to maintain your current weight based on your activity level. From there, you can adjust your calorie intake to create a deficit for weight loss.
For instance, let’s say your BMR is 1,800. If you’re moderately active, your activity factor might be 1.2. Multiple 1,800 by 1.2 to get your TDEE, which would be 2,160. To create a 500-calorie deficit, you’d want to aim to eat 1,660 a day.
Risks of a Calorie Deficit
Is a calorie deficit healthy? It depends. A calorie deficit can be an effective tool for weight loss, but it’s not without its risks. When considering how to go on a calorie deficit, consider the potential risks for:
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Nutrient deficiencies. Eating fewer calories may lead to an inadequate intake of certain vitamins, minerals and protein.
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Muscle loss. In severe or prolonged deficits, your body can start breaking down muscle tissue for energy, leading to a loss of lean muscle mass and reduced strength.
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Decreased bone density. Inadequate calorie intake, along with low calcium and vitamin D intake, can increase the risk of bone fractures over time.
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Reduced metabolism. Ongoing calorie deficits can slow down your energy burn. This can make losing weight more challenging.
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Fatigue and weakness. When you’re not eating enough calories to sustain your energy, you’re more likely to feel tired. This can impact your mental performance and ability to be active.
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Hormonal imbalances. Calorie deficits can disrupt hormones, especially those involved in metabolism, appetite and reproductive functions.
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Impaired immune function. Inadequate calorie intake can weaken immunity, making you more likely to get sick.
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Mental health effects. Ongoing calorie restriction could probably make anyone irritable. Not eating enough can lead to mood swings and increase stress.
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Risk of disordered eating. Unsustainable calorie deficits could end up making someone overeat from hunger or cravings for restricted foods, leading to weight ups and downs and potential long-term mental health issues.
Risks of Eating Too Few Calories
Is a calorie deficit safe? It depends on the circumstances. There’s often a focus on how not to overeat calories, but not eating enough calories is also problematic — perhaps even more so.
Eating too few calories can pose risks to physical and mental health. Severely restricting calories can eventually lead to nutrient deficiencies and side effects like weakened immunity, fatigue, brain fog or trouble concentrating.
It can also result in muscle loss and a slowed metabolism, making it harder to maintain a healthy weight and reach your weight loss goals. Finally, extreme calorie restriction can contribute to an unhealthy relationship with food.
Alternatives to Calorie Counting
Sustainable weight loss goes far beyond only a calorie deficit. Rather than counting calories, we recommend prioritizing nutrient-density, mindfulness of portion sizes and the quality of the foods you’re eating.
Lean proteins, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are key in healthy meals and snacks.
Nutrition is a crucial component of healthy weight management that’s often overlooked when the focus becomes calories. Besides nutrition, we suggest focusing on four factors for healthy weight loss: movement, hydration, sleep and potentially weight loss medication.
Movement
Exercise has countless benefits, such as improved mood and a lower risk of things like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancers. It’s important for weight loss because it helps create a calorie deficit by raising your energy expenditure.
Regular physical activity boosts metabolism so you continue to burn calories even after a workout. Exercise also helps preserve your lean muscle mass while you burn excess body fat.
Experts recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week, plus resistance training at least twice a week for general health. For weight loss, this goes up to 200 to 300 minutes a week.
But these are just recommendations. It’s okay to start where you’re at and fit what you can into your schedule. All movement counts. Find enjoyable ways to move your body that you can do long-term, like:
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Jogging with your dog
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Walking around your neighborhood after dinner
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Playing basketball or soccer with friends
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Joining a group fitness class
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Lifting dumbbells or using weight machines and resistance bands for strength training
This blog covers how many steps a day you need to lose weight.
Hydration
Hydration is essential for wellness. It also supports bodily functions involved in metabolism, fat loss and digestion.
Drinking water, especially before meals, can also help curb your appetite and prevent overeating. Stay hydrated during and after exercise to replenish fluid stores and support energy expenditure.
Keep a reusable water bottle with you to sip throughout the day. If you get bored of plain water, flavor it with lemon or cucumber slices or opt for unsweetened seltzer water or herbal teas sometimes.
Sleep
Better sleep supports sustainable weight loss by regulating hunger and appetite hormones like leptin and ghrelin.
Adequate shut-eye helps restore energy levels for the next day’s activities. It also improves brain function and decision-making abilities. Also, sleep deprivation is associated with increased energy intake (i.e., eating more because your hunger hormones are out of whack).
Experts recommend adults get seven to nine hours of sleep nightly. To improve your sleep, try:
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Creating a sleep-promoting environment in your bedroom, using things like comfy PJs, breathable bedding, blackout curtains, and white noise if needed
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Avoiding technology close to bedtime, as the blue light emitted from screens disrupts melatonin production and can make it harder to doze off
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Going to bed and waking up around the same time every day
See this guide on how sleep supports weight loss for more insight.
Weight Loss Medications
Combined with nutrition, exercise and other healthy lifestyle habits, weight loss medications can be a helpful tool.
Some suppress appetite by targeting brain chemicals and reducing hunger. Others may increase calorie expenditure by boosting metabolism or limiting how much fat or carbs your body absorbs.
Some of the most effective weight loss medications include:
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Topiramate. Topiramate helps with weight loss by reducing appetite and increasing feelings of fullness. It might also affect certain brain chemicals involved in regulating food intake and metabolism, ultimately contributing to decreased calorie consumption.
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Metformin. This medication is primarily prescribed to manage type 2 diabetes. By helping the body use insulin more effectively, metformin may decrease hunger and promote modest weight loss over time.
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Contrave. This is a combination of bupropion (an antidepressant) with naltrexone (a drug used for alcohol and opioid dependence). It reduces appetite and cravings by targeting reward centers in the brain.
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Glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists. GLP-1 weight loss drugs mimic the action of GLP-1, a naturally occurring hormone that regulates appetite and glucose metabolism. They decrease appetite, slow digestion and increase satiety. Common examples include liraglutide (Victoza) and semaglutide (Ozempic).
Speak with your healthcare provider to see if weight loss medications might be a good option for you.
Calorie Deficit FAQs
We’ve rounded up some of the most commonly asked questions about calorie deficits.
How Many Calories Do You Naturally Burn in a Day?
The number of calories burned naturally in a day depends on factors like age, gender, weight and activity level. On average, an inactive adult may burn around 1,600 to 2,400 calories a day, while those with higher activity levels can burn more.
How Much of a Calorie Deficit Does a Person Need to Lose 1 Pound?
When it comes to how many calories to eat to lose weight, everyone is different. To lose one pound of body weight, you typically need to create a calorie deficit of roughly 3,500 calories. This can be achieved through reducing calorie intake, increasing physical activity or both.
Also, keep in mind the average calorie intake for men can be different from calorie intake for women. As noted, caloric intake by age can vary too.
How Much of a Calorie Deficit for Weight Loss Is Safe?
The safety of a calorie deficit for weight loss depends on things like your starting weight, overall health and unique nutritional needs. In general, a gradual calorie deficit of 500 to 750 calories a day is considered safe and sustainable for most people, leading to a weight loss of about one to two pounds a week.
Putting It All Together: Calorie Deficits for Weight Loss
Creating a calorie deficit is a factor in weight loss because, in order to lose weight, your body has to be taking in fewer calories than it’s burning. If you’re starting a weight loss journey and considering how a calorie deficit fits into it, keep these things in mind:
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Weight loss is more than just calories. We all have general calorie needs to lose weight — but this isn’t the only piece of the puzzle. The nutritional quality of your meals and snacks, exercise routine, sleep habits, hydration and mindfulness are also important. Rather than being laser-focused on calorie intake, we recommend a holistic approach for sustainable, safe weight loss that incorporates these other key components.
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Getting too few calories also poses risks. There’s often a focus on eating more calories than we need. However, eating too few calories can be dangerous, posing numerous health risks. Not only can it prevent you from getting the nutrients you need, but it can also leave you fatigued and irritable — and eventually, it might alter your metabolism in a way that leads to a weight loss plateau.
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Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Weight loss is personal. We all have different needs, preferences and challenges. It can be overwhelming to come up with a weight loss plan on your own. Reach out to your healthcare provider for support, or meet with a registered dietitian who can help create a nutrition plan that works for you.
This article originally appeared on Forhers.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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7 TikTok Weight Loss Trends Ranked By an Expert
Spend a while scrolling through social media, especially TikTok, and odds are you’ll encounter someone enthusiastically sharing their experience with a new fitness or weight loss program. These days, it can feel like health and wellness challenges are proliferating so quickly it’s hard to keep up. By the time you’ve got your fitness equipment ready to jump onto one, there’s a new one taking the internet by storm.
But how effective are the hashtag-friendly regimens we’ve been seeing more of lately, and what makes them so alluring anyway? Well, like most things, the answers depend on a lot of complicated factors. But there are some important throughlines.
In general, we tend to be drawn to challenges like the “30-30-30 approach,” which has recently gone viral on TikTok, when they speak to a need we’ve already identified for ourselves. If you know that you’ve been wanting to lose weight, the simple structure of 30-30-30 (eating 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up followed by 30 minutes of exercise) just might help you harness some motivation to get started on that journey. And if you experience some initial success within the framework of a specific, focused challenge—as opposed to a more nebulous resolution to lose weight—you may also notice an uptick in inspiration to keep going.
Another important factor helps explain why joining these programs can sometimes lead to a boost in willpower: Many popular challenges are social undertakings, explains Jessica Yu, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and Sr. Director of Patient Experience at Hims & Hers. “There’s that sense of being part of a bigger movement,” she says. “Human beings, by nature, are social creatures, so we love the idea of being part of something that’s bigger than ourselves.”
So does that mean anyone interested in weight loss should rush to pick from the expanding menu of social media-friendly fitness regimens? Are we all doomed to repeat the chaotic, even dangerous missteps of the TidePod challenge era? Not quite.
We asked Craig Primack, MD, FACP, FAAP, FOMA, a physician specializing in obesity medicine and Senior Vice President of Weight Loss at Hims & Hers, to share his thoughts on some of the most viral weight loss challenges and trends circulating online. Here’s his take on seven popular methods, ranked from best to worst according to what’s most effective and sustainable.
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Cutting out alcohol for an entire month
“This one’s a bit of a no-brainer for anyone who’s normally a social drinker. Its positive effects extend to many different parts of the body, and it’s hard to argue with as a boost to weight loss: At the most basic level, cutting back on alcohol means cutting out unnecessary calories. That may be especially effective among young people, who are most likely to see their drinking habits contribute to obesity risk. Ditching the booze also means you’re likely to sleep better and have more energy overall, which makes it a lot easier to get consistent exercise. And, best of all, cutting alcohol for a full month might make it easier to realize that you don’t always need it in social situations. Some people who go back to consuming alcohol after an initial Dry January challenge say that they find themselves drinking less or reconsidering their relationship to alcohol.”
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Concentrating your eating in specific hours of the day
“Intermittent fasting has been obviously huge for about five to eight years now. It’s been shown to work just as well as standard, caloric-restriction dieting. It may even be a little bit better in people with insulin resistance or diabetes. It’s sustainable for some people, but not everyone. Time-restricted eating, the most common kind, is best when it makes sense for people’s lifestyles. For example, you probably aren’t going to succeed if you try to stop eating for the entire day at 2 pm. But it’s often possible—and effective—to structure your day so that you’re not doing much eating after, say, 7 p.m.”
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“There are lots of reasons to love this one—not even for weight loss, per se. Running, or even just walking, one mile a day is good exercise without being overpowering. Most people can do it, and it’s not timed. Exercise is a keystone habit, so when you’re exercising regularly, you’re also likely to sleep better. When you sleep better, you can diet better—and have energy to exercise. So on and so forth.”
(Related: Ozempic For Weight Loss)
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Setting your treadmill to an incline of 12 and speed of 3 miles per hour, walking for 30 minutes
“I would say this one’s firmly in the middle, neither good nor bad. I only heard about this recently, in part because there’s no medical science behind it. It was done by an influencer, who saw a noticeable change after she tried it. I don’t doubt that she found it helpful, but the average person who has a medium amount of weight to lose may find it very hard to start out at 12% incline for 30 minutes. If it had a ramp-up in the first two weeks—maybe starting at less of an incline or for fewer than 30 minutes—I would think it’s more sustainable. That said, if you are able to do it, I think it’s a solid one, especially if you’re aiming for four to five days a week rather than every single day.”
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A nutritional change program that requires eliminating foods such as dairy, grains and added sugar from your diet
“I think this is going to be one of the challenges that causes people problems because it’s avoidance-based. Avoid, avoid, avoid—and what a long list, too! It seems to encourage all-or-nothing thinking as well, which we know can be very counterproductive. If you take one bite of something with dairy in it, for example, you’d need to start all over again. That feels needlessly punitive to me. Unless you’ve got allergies, one bite of pretty much anything isn’t going to kill you.”
(Related: Weight Loss Medications: Are They Effective?)
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A “mental toughness” program in which you must adhere to a set diet, cut alcohol, drink a gallon of water, work out twice, read 10 pages of a non-fiction book and take a progress photo—every single day for 75 days (or, in the modified version, 30 days)
“Did you get tired just reading that? I did. And I really don’t like this one. First of all, because the diet portion isn’t set by the program, we actually don’t have any proof that someone sticking to whatever diet they pick for 75 or 30 days will have the desired effects. The exercise portion is outlandish for anyone who’s not already in a consistent fitness routine. Going from zero to 100 here would be close to impossible for most people—how many working people have an hour and a half in our days to start exercising twice and reading non-fiction books? The answer drops even lower if you consider people with kids. And if you fail any one day, you have to start all over again. I know two people who’ve done it and were really excited about the accomplishment, but I can tell you for sure that when their 75 days are over, they’re not sticking to the same regimen. It really doesn’t encourage good long-term habits.”
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Eating according to hunger and satiety cues
“I know that this works for many people, and some of my frustration is rooted in my own personal biases on this one. It’s also been around forever. There’s a book called Intuitive Eating that was first published almost 30 years ago. I understand the appeal of the premise—if you’ve been on a ton of diets before, of course it’s refreshing to consider acting like you’re not on one. But the average American who struggles with their weight doesn’t necessarily believe they’re on a strict diet day to day. Without clear guidance for how to shift your relationship to food and really listen to your body’s cues, this strikes me as too wishy-washy to really work. And, crucially, many people with obesity and other diseases don’t have the same food cues that other people do. They either get hungry faster or they stay hungry longer. To me, telling someone with a disease that affects their hunger cues to simply snap out of it feels a little like telling a depressed person to just cheer up.”
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Where does that leave people who are serious about weight loss and looking for the lifestyle-change support that challenges can provide? Well, a number of the challenges above are intriguing, as Dr. Primack notes. But if you want to help setting realistic goals or evaluating new reports about diet trends, try measuring any proposed regimen against the SMART criteria: Is it specific, measurable, achievable, realistic (or relevant) and timely? That can be an incredibly helpful tool.
And of course, don’t be afraid to seek out additional help from physicians and dietitians if you’ve been going it alone for a long time already. Losing weight can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.
This article originally appeared on Hers.comand was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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Featured Image Credit: Caterina Robustelli / iStock.
