5.17 Weight Loss Summary and Conclusions
To summarize things…
- Know your BMI and ideal body weight to help set your goals and track your progress.
- Your ultimate goal at a minimum should be to get your BMI in the normal range and an aggressive goal would be to get down to your ideal body weight.
- Understand the concept of calories and how they relate and sometimes do not relate to weight loss and weight gain.
- Know your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and % body fat to track your progress.
- Know the total number of calories you burn in a day (BMR + daily activity + exercise), but do not worry much about how many calories you eat as long as you stick to a whole foods plant based diet to achieve this goal.
- An aggressive weight loss goal is to lose 2 pounds per week. So if we were counting calories as the only factor (which they are not) we would say each pound is 3500 calories, your body needs to use 7000 more calories per week than you eat. With 7 days in a week, that means you need to burn off 1000 more calories per day than you eat.
- A more realistic goal is 1 pound per week, which is 3500 per week or a 500 calorie deficit per day.
- The guidelines from the ACC/AHA/TOS recommend a 500-750 calorie deficit per day for safe weight loss. They specifically recommend a 5-10% reduction in weight in the first 6 months, which will usually come out to 1-2 pounds per week.
- Just focus on eating healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans/legumes, whole grains, and nuts/seeds and counting calories will be completely unnecessary
I hope you learned a lot in the video and we were able to set the foundation that will allow you to achieve your weight loss goals.