What occurs when the number of calories a person burns in a day is greater than the amount he or she consumes?

Table of Contents Show

Create a Caloric Deficit
Do It Safely
Burn Calories with Exercise
Avoid Fad Diets

Burning more calories than you eat will result in weight loss.

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Losing weight involves following a plan where you increase physical activity and exercise with the goal of burning more calories than you eat. By engaging in cardiovascular activity and eating a balanced, nutritious diet, you can shed fat, maintain lean muscle mass and increase heart health.

Before adopting a diet or exercise program, please consult a physician.

Burning more calories than you eat will lead to weight loss.

Create a Caloric Deficit

As you burn more calories than you take in, you set up a caloric deficit, which can result in weight loss. You can reduce calorie intake by eating healthier or less food, or you can bump up energy expenditure by increasing exercise. Consistently maintaining a caloric deficit allows you to permanently shed excess pounds.

Do It Safely

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute suggests losing weight at the safe and realistic rate of one to two pounds per week. Since 3,500 calories equals approximately one pound of fat, losing one to two pounds each week requires you to burn 500 to 1,000 calories more than you take in daily. Eat smaller, more frequent meals and engage in regular exercise to create this deficit. Set process goals, like exercising regularly, and outcome goals, like losing a specific amount of weight, to change your habits and remain motivated.

Burn Calories with Exercise

Exercising regularly helps you expend calories that can't be cut through dieting. Engaging in cardiovascular activity also increases heart health, reduces blood pressure and elevates your mood.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise per week just to maintain your weight. Increase this number if your goal is weight loss. Build more activity into your day to increase the number of calories you burn. For example, walk instead of driving and take the stairs instead of the elevator.

Eating too few calories can also be detrimental to your health. Women need a minimum of 1,200 calories per day, while men need at least 1,500.

Eat a nutritious diet rich with complex carbohydrates, lean proteins and healthy fats to reduce the number of calories you ingest. Consume fruits, vegetables and whole grains to receive the proper amount of vitamins and minerals and power up your workouts. Take in healthy fats like nut butters and olive oil to increase heart health, and consume lean proteins like chicken breast and salmon to provide your muscles with vital amino acids.

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion recommends that no more than 10 percent of daily calories come from added sugars, no more than 10 percent from saturated fats, and that you limit your sodium intake to a maximum of 2,300 milligrams per day.

Limit sodium, saturated fats and added sugars as part of a healthy diet.

Avoid Fad Diets

Stay away from fad diets promising rapid weight loss. Many of these diets restrict carbohydrates and other food groups, resulting in water weight loss. Once the body is rehydrated, the weight returns.

Cut out rich foods high in sugar and fat and reduce alcohol consumption to moderate your calories. Eat whole fruit rather than processed snacks and sweets.

By Erin Coleman, R.D., L.D. Updated December 12, 2018

Eating as many calories as you burn off each day is the key to maintaining your current body weight. If weight loss -- or weight gain -- is your goal, however, you’ll have to adjust your calorie intake -- or expenditure -- accordingly. You can use your body weight to help estimate your calorie needs to meet your weight-management goals.

The number of calories you should consume -- if weight maintenance is your goal -- is the same number you burn each day. Harvard Health Publications suggests that if you’re sedentary, you need about 13 calories for each pound of your body weight. If you’re moderately active, that number jumps to 16 calories per pound, and when you work out regularly at high intensities, you need about 18 calories for each pound of your body weight daily, Harvard Health Publications notes.

If want to lose weight, consuming fewer calories than you burn daily helps you reach your goal. Eat 500 to 1,000 fewer calories than you burn daily to lose 1 to 2 pounds per week, suggests the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For example, if your weight-maintenance calorie requirement is 2,400 calories a day, aim for 1,400 to 1,900 calories daily to safely and effectively shed pounds.

If you’re underweight, eating more calories than you burn each day will help you move toward a healthier body weight. Resistance training, such as weightlifting, and eating at least 200 extra calories daily will help you gain muscle mass instead of just body fat, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Try adding nutrient-dense, high-calorie foods to your weight-gain meal plan – such as dried fruits, nuts, seeds and nut butters. Add powdered milk to soups, casseroles, regular milk and smoothies to boost the calorie -- and protein -- content of your meals and snacks.

To help determine your individualized calorie needs for weight maintenance, use an online calorie calculator -- such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Daily Food Plan. This plan not only shows what your daily calorie intake should be based on your age, gender, height, weight and activity level, but it provides you with a customized meal plan. For example, a 35-year-old woman who is 5 feet 3 inches tall, weighs 120 pounds and is physically active 30 to 60 minutes daily needs about 2,000 calories to maintain her current weight -- including 6 ounces of grains, 5.5 ounces of protein foods, 3 cups of dairy foods, 2.5 cups of vegetables, 2 cups of fruits and 6 teaspoons of oils daily.

Writer Bio

Erin Coleman is a registered and licensed dietitian. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in dietetics and has extensive experience working as a health writer and health educator. Her articles are published on various health, nutrition and fitness websites.

Burning more calories than you eat in a day is referred to as a “calorie deficit” and is the basis of many weight-loss equations. The idea is daily calories in minus daily calories out = caloric deficit.

The first thing you need to understand is that one pound of fat is made of about 3,500 of extra calories. To lose one pound of fat, you need to create a caloric deficit of 3,500 calories. For example if you wanted to lose one pound a week divide 3,500 calories by seven to get 500; that means negative 500 calories a day overall.

FIND OUT IF WEIGHT-LOSS SURGERY IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

There are only 3 ways you can create a deficit of calories each day:

Eat fewer calories than you burn each day. Keep in mind that your body burns calories all day long as part of your basal metabolic rate (BMR), because it takes energy (calories) for your body to perform basic functions that are necessary for life—breathing, digesting, circulating, thinking and more. It’s important for you to know what your BMR is so you can estimate how many calories you burn in an average day. In addition to that, you also burn some calories with normal daily activities like bathing, cleaning, walking, typing and exercising (which uses even more calories each day). So by simply taking in less calories each day, that means less excess calories you have to burn off. Easy ways to do this include: eat less fast food or junk food, eat more fresh vegetables and fruits, eat lean protein, reduce the amount of bad fats, and drink more water.
Burn more calories than you consume by increasing your physical activity. If you eat enough calories to support your BMR, but add more exercise, you’ll create a caloric deficit simply by burning extra calories. This only works if you’re not overeating to begin with. Example: If you exercise more to burn an extra 500 calories each day, you’ll lose about one pound of fat in a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories). You can workout more or just add more movement into your daily lifestyle. Some ideas: ride your bike walk rather than driving places, always take the stairs, move around at work rather than sitting a desk, play with your kids or dog, do squats while watching TV. Get creative with your day, the possibilities are endless
A combination of eating fewer calories and exercising to burn more calories. This is the most effective way to lose weight and keep it off. It’s much easier to create a substantial calorie deficit when you combine eating less with exercise because you don’t have to deprive yourself so much, or exercise in crazy amounts. Studies show that the combination of diet and exercise are compounded to increase weight loss more than the equivalent of one method alone. One theory is that the exercise increases metabolism which rev’s the fat burning even more. Example: If you cut 200 calories a day from your diet and burned 300 calories a day by exercising, you’d lose about one pound per week. Compare that to the other examples above—so you’re losing weight at about the same rate without making such extreme changes to your diet or exercise routine.

The key to any successful weight loss is consistency. Over time your calorie deficit will ‘add up.’ and you will lose the extra weight. But remember to be super accurate with your caloric intake and exercise because after all it is a math equation.”

It’s also important to note that although this seems like simple math, our bodies are actually very complicated. We also have emotions, hormones, stress and more that can factor into the equation so you might not always see the results you expect based on equations alone.

If efforts to lose weight with diet and exercise have been unsuccessful and your body mass index (BMI) is 40 or higher (or 35 or more and you have a serious weight-related health problem, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure or severe sleep apnea), you may qualify for weight-loss surgery. To learn more, visit our weight-loss surgery program page or call us at (310) 836-7000. To find a bariatric surgeon, click here.