Concept of Dieting

The basic concept of dieting is to take in fewer calories and to burn off as many as you can.  To lose one pound of fat, you have to burn off 3,500 calories.  What that means is that you have to consume 3,500 calories less than your body needs in order to lose that one pound.  There are several ways that you can do this.  Let’s assume that you weigh 150 pounds and when your body is at rest, it needs 1,800 calories per day to live.  Now, in order for you to lose a pound every few days without exercising or doing anything else but rest, you would need to consume approximately 1,167 calories less than you body needs, or only 633 calories per day. 

Another thing that you could do is consume 1,800 calories per day, but jog a little more than 5 miles every day which would create the same deficit in calories to lose a pound every few days.  Wow, that sounds really hard doesn’t it?  The simple fact is however, that you have to find the best way to combine the two in order to lose the weight you want.  The whole idea behind most diets, from Weight Watchers to the grapefruit diet is simply to lower the calories every day that your body needs.