Losing Weight with a Calorie Deficit: Here’s How It Works
Do you want to reduce body fat or lose weight? Then aim for a calorie deficit.
With a balanced calorie intake, you maintain your weight. This means you provide your body with exactly as much energy as it actually needs in daily life. The energy you consume is used up immediately.
With a positive calorie balance, you gain weight because your body receives more energy than it burns. It stores the excess calories in your body as fat for future energy. Sounds logical and makes sense, right?
Our goal for weight loss is therefore a negative calorie balance, also known as a calorie deficit. This is achieved by reducing calorie intake or by increasing calorie expenditure. Your body then manages to mobilize energy sources. This is how fat is used as an energy source and burned. If you combine both approaches—that is, eating fewer calories and increasing calorie expenditure through exercise—you can lose weight faster and more easily.
Calculate Basal Metabolic Rate
Muscles burn energy. The more muscle mass you have, the more energy you burn—even while just sitting around without moving at all. This is your basal metabolic rate—the amount of energy your body needs to maintain all its bodily functions.
If you burn more calories than you consume, you’ll achieve a calorie deficit and lose weight. For healthy, slow, steady, and—above all—long-term weight loss, you should aim for a daily deficit of about 500 kcal.
But how many calories do you actually burn? You can easily track this using fitness trackers. The chart below shows you how to calculate your basal metabolic rate in daily calories. Your basal metabolic rate tells you how many calories you need to maintain your bodily functions, such as breathing.
Since you don’t just lie around motionless all day, your physical activity is added to your daily basal metabolic rate. Your daily calorie needs increase. There’s a table that shows you which PAL valueto multiply your basal metabolic rate by to calculate your actual daily calorie needs.
The calculation is as follows: calculated basal metabolic rate in kcal × PAL value = total calories per day
To lose 1 kg, you need to burn 7,000 calories. If you cut 500 kcal per day, you can expect to lose approximately 0.5 kg per week.
The Smart Approach: Calorie Deficit + Strength Training
You’ll reach your goal more easily if you combine exercise with your diet and lose weight by building muscle.
As you build more muscle mass, your calorie needs increase. This is because your body burns more calories when you have more muscle mass. As a result, you can consume more calories per day without gaining weight. At the same time, this makes it easier for you to cut calories. If you burn more calories than you consume, you’ll create a calorie deficit and lose weight faster—or reach your target weight.
In addition, you increase the oxygen supply to all your body’s cells. You’re essentially revitalizing your body and also boosting your metabolic activity. You create tensile and compressive stresses that supply your cartilage with nutrients and keep it healthy. Bones also benefit from these stresses; they undergo a constant process of bone formation and resorption, and the more forces acting on them, the stronger and more resilient they become.
Muscle Building & Weight Loss with Fitness Bands
To stimulate muscle growth through resistance band training, you need a relatively strong stimulus representing at least 60% of your maximum strength. Since resistance bands don’t allow for a measurable load in terms of the force you subjectively have to exert, you can rely entirely on how it feels. On a scale of 0–10, where 0 represents no resistance and 10 represents maximum strength, you should aim for a level between 5 and 6. This will stimulate muscle growth and, as a result, increase your daily calorie burn. This makes weight loss and muscle building fun.
04 Tips for Losing Weight Without Counting Calories
- Eat a predominantly plant-based diet. This ensures your body gets enough vitamins, fiber, and minerals.
- Cut back on animal products as much as possible, since they’re usually very high in calories. They also provide few nutrients.
- If you use protein powder in addition to your regular diet, opt for plant-based protein. Animal protein increases the risk of developing cancer.
- Before your main meals, eat a large plate of salad with a little flaxseed oil. This not only provides important nutrients and valuable anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids (from the flaxseed oil), but also fills your stomach, so you automatically eat less of the high-calorie main meals.
- Instead of a salad, vegetable soup also makes a good starter.
- Eat slowly and chew thoroughly. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register a “full” sensation.
- Make sure each meal includes as many components as possible from the 5 main food groups (excluding animal products): vegetables, fruits, legumes, (whole-grain) grains, and nuts/seeds.
05 Conclusion: Lose Weight Quickly and Easily
Calculate your basal metabolic rate and follow our tips for losing weight. If you consume fewer calories than you burn, you’ll create a calorie deficit, which will help you lose weight. That’s how to lose weight without exercise. However, through strength training and increased muscle mass, you’ll burn even more energy and achieve a calorie deficit even more easily—allowing you to lose weight quickly and healthily.
