This is the second part of an article series about weight loss. The first article, The Principle Behind Weight Loss, explores the mechanism behind losing weight. In that: your body is a giant energy store and to lose weight, you have to eat less than you burn.

It is really that simple. But undoubtedly quite hard to execute.

Pre-Requisite Basic Knowledge

Calorie is a unit of energy measurement.

1g of carbohydrate digested will yield 4 kilocalories.  

1g of protein digested will also yield 4 kilocalories, but due to a more strenuous process of digesting protein (comparatively high thermic effect) the net yield is less than 4 kilocalories.

1g of fat digested will yield 9 kilocalories.

As alluded in our previous article, energy cannot be created nor destroyed and therefore, if you have 5 kilograms of excess pure fat you would like to get rid of, you have to for a period of time be in a caloric deficit of 5 x 1000 x 9 kilocalories which comes to 45,000 kilocalories.

45,000 kilocalories is equivalent to:

• 34.6 kilogram of white rice
• 18 kilogram of rump steak
• 300 kilograms of lettuce
• 90 big macs
• 23.7 2L tubs of TipTop vanilla ice-cream

The very low energy (calorie) density of lettuce and other leafy greens along with being rich in micronutrients is the reason for lettuce being considered healthy and diet friendly.

When you put it down like this, weight loss seems less abstract doesn’t it?

This leads to the next point and the theme of this article.

You need to track your calories.

If you are really serious about losing weight, you have to make sure you are eating less than you are burning. How do we know this for sure? Like all things such as financial forecasts to monitoring inventory levels you have to track the numbers.

Boring. Could be. But after you do this for a while, you can calculate roughly in your head without having to weigh things religiously (unless you want to).

My Personal Guide to Losing Weight (Brief)

1) Pre-requisites

You need:

A kitchen scale

A calorie tracking app such as MyFitnessPal

That’s it!

11) Weigh and log everything you eat into your calorie tracking app

This will give you a baseline average calorie intake.

As long as you are not gaining or losing weight, the total amount divided by 7 (7 days in a week) will give you your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).

111) Be in a negative caloric balance

There are two options for step 3: you can do either one or both at the same time (my preference is to do both).

1. You can try and eat 90% or less amount of your total daily energy expenditure everyday
2. You can try and increase your activity with exercises such as walking, running, cycling or going to the gym *while* (important) eating the same amount

And ideally, you should do this for at least 3 months consistently.

Strategies on executing step 3 will be covered in future articles.