Calories to Lose Weight - Use Lean Body Mass to Build Muscle at the Same Time

Calories to Lose Weight

Calculating the calories to lose weight, or body fat is important to making the defined muscle that you have built visible. Clearly the more muscle you have, the easier it should be to lose body weight related to excess body fat. It is important to understand the losing weight without consideration for whether that weight is body fat or muscle could be preventing you from reaching your goals, having the body that you want, and keeping it that way. Without muscle, your body is robbed of the calorie burning furnace that you can use to great effect, to lose body fat.

Having a lot of muscle, and keeping on exercising your lean muscle, will mean that you will have a constant requirement for calories, to rebuild and grow muscle, as well as all your day-to-day activities. This means that having the odd treat is going to have much less of an impact on your body, than it would he you had little muscle, and a very strict calorie controlled diet. This is why diets often have a yoyo effect, as the balance is much easier to upset without muscle as there are much smaller margins.

Lean Body Mass - How it related to Losing Weight

Lean Body Mass is the weight of the body without fat. Don't think that your goal should be the same as your lean body mass - it shouldn't, you would be dead if you achieved that goal. Your body needs some fat - the quality of which is very important to how good your results will be. Natural fats, such as olive oil, omega 3 (from fish) are really good for you in the right amounts, and will help you.

Since Lean Body Mass is the weight of your muscles, bones and body tissue, it is related to your body weight goals - the key is that you maintain or increase your lean body mass, whilst decreasing the amount of body fat present in your body. This is very important to remember - if you consume too little of what your body needs, in terms of calories, protein and fats, over time your muscles will atrophy, or waste, and you will be left with a hard job of burning calories.

Calculating Calories to Lose Weight

To calculate the calories to lose weight, you need to know your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, which is calculated in the following way:

For adult males: 66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

For adult females: 655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

Now, this calculation will tell you the amount of calories that you need to maintain your body weight doing nothing - what your body needs to function, so we need to adjust this to give you an idea with the amount of calories that you will require whilst you are exercising, particularly building muscle.

Now adjust your BMR by adding the following depending upon how often you exercise:

If you do not exercise: BMR 0.2

Occasional exercise: BMR 0.3

Exercise majority of days in week: BMR 0.4

Exercise every day, or long periods or high intensity: BMR 0.5

Athlete or Job is labouring job: BMR 0.6

This new value now tells you the amount of energy you need to keep your body functioning properly given your level of exercise.

To consume fewer calories than what your body needs, will create a situation where you body is forced to use stored body fat to make up the calorie deficit.

As mentioned before, if you leave your body with too few calories, it can cause your muscles to either stop growing, or even worse, shrink. Therefore, we do not recommend that you create a deficit lower than 500 calories. With a 500 calorie a day deficit for example, you should expect to lose approximately a pound of body fat per week.

Such a level of fat loss should not be too noticeable, or too difficult a situation to create. You could either find a way to consume 500 fewer calories, by swapping high calorie for lower calorie foods. You can also exercise harder - find a way to burn more calories throughout the day. The best way, is to build muscle, and your body requires calories for 24-48 hours after you train, to rebuild. If you were to go on a treadmill, you burn calories only for the time that you're on the treadmill.

We recommend the best approach is to swap out foods for better quality foods, and to train more - the more intensity you can get in your workouts the better. It means you might actually have to eat more, but will still lose body fat, and will probably never be hungry either!