Imagine if your income where double that of your expenses. Whatever you spend per month, you make twice as much. I imagine you’d probably feel pretty happy about that. So, what would you do with that extra money? Would you want to travel? Would you go looking for your dream car? Or maybe you would want to go buy your dream home? Perhaps you’d want to Invest that money to build your dream business? The opportunities available to you are endless! But more importantly, let’s talk about what this means for you energetically.
I want you to just go ahead and imagine money as a form of energy. We’ll call each dollar a “unit” of energy. Remember, you make double the units then you spend. So you’re making and spending these energy “units” consistently. Month after month this cycle continues. So why am I bringing this up? Why am I making this comparison? Well it has to do with your body weight believe it or not.
The foods you eat contain calories. A calorie is also a unit of energy. Similar to the way I referred to earlier. Some foods have more calories than others. Some have a lot. Some have a little. But more importantly, calories are the key to achieving your healthiest weight. Being aware of how many calories you consume is the key to managing your weight.
I’m sure you’ve heard that 3,500 calories is equal to about 1 pound of fat. But what do you do with that information? This is where we are going to have some fun! Think about the money example above. Let’s say a person spends 2,500 units (calories) per day at their normal activity level. If they make (eat) 2,000 units per day, they will be in what’s called a “caloric deficit.” The amount of unit deficit they will be in is 500 units. So as long as they manage this daily caloric deficit of 500 units you drop weight. Here’s how the math works. If you multiply the – 500 units by 7 days in a week you get a – 3,500 units. Which we now know is equal to 1 pound of body fat.
So how do you drop the weight? You do the math. Make sure you are eating less calories than burn. But I should be more specific. This isn’t how to lose weight. This is how to lose “fat.” There is a big difference. You’ve probably hopped on the scale in the morning and then later on in evening and had a mild panic attack because you gained 5 pounds in one day. You did NOT gain 5 pounds of fat. Yay! That increase in weight can be from the actual weight of the foods you ate or water retention. Remember, 5 pounds of fat is approximately 17,500 calories. It is highly unlikely that you ate that much food in one day.
Back to fat loss. Eat less than you burn. It is that simple. There are other aspects to your health and wellness that are important like the quality of foods you eat, your mindset, water intake, sleep, physical exercise, potential supplementation, etc. But to start at the most basic beginning, fat loss occurs when you eat less calories than you burn. End of story.
So how do you find out how many unit to eat in a day? You first need to learn how many units you burn in a day. The simplest way to do this is to Google “how many calories do I burn in a day” and click on one of the calculators. Fill out your information. This is a ROUGH estimate so it may take a few adjustments before you find the accurate number.
Once you get this number, subtract 500 from it. This is how many calories I want you to eat per day for TWO weeks. This will allow for a reasonable amount of feedback to see if you need to make any adjustments to your daily unit intake.
Be sure to weigh yourself before you start doing this. When you weigh yourself, make sure it is at the same time. After you wake up and go to the bathroom, but before you eat or drink anything. You can weigh yourself everyday, but the only weigh ins that count is the first one, a week later, and a week after that second weigh in.
After these two weeks, compare your weight from the start. Did you lose, gain, or stay the same? If you lost weight, then keep your daily calories where they’re at. If you gained weight, how much did you gain? Adjust your calories by lowering them according to that number. And if you maintain the same weight, drop your calories slightly. Do this for two more weeks and measure the progress again. By this point, you should have the awareness of your caloric needs based on your weight goal.
Make sure to be consistent in tracking your calories accurately! Use the myfitnesspal app to track your calories. This is what I use when focusing on dropping body fat. Unit of food aren’t good or bad. They are units of energy. Treat your food like units of energy. If your goal is to drop your body fat percentages, then you need to consume less units or increase your activity to use more units. It’s all units of energy.
