Losing Weight

The formula for losing weight is very simple.

Calories you eat - Calories you burn = X

If X is positive, you will gain wait over time. If X is negative, you'll lose weight over time.

How many calories do you burn a day?

First, its VERY important to understand that your body burns a TON of calories every day doing normal things like breating, digestion, sleeping, etc. For a 5'5 person weighing 130 lbs, the person will burn 1,500 calories every day doing nothing but staying alive. If the person eats less than 1,500 calories a day and does nothing at all, he'll lose weight. However, if he eats 3,000 calories a day and does nothing at all, he'll gain one pound of fat every three days. We call this basic amount of calories you burn the Basal Metabolic Rate. To find out what yours is, click here.

Now that you know how much you burn normally, the FULL amount of calories you burn a day is that BMR + the calories you burn doing exercise. To find out how many calories each exercise burns, click here.

How much should you eat?

If you want to lose weight, eat less calories per day than the amount of calories you burn in a single day.

Make sure you eat at least 75% of your BMR, otherwise you could slow down your metabolism (your rate of burning calories) and you can actually GAIN weight by eating too little.

Where do you start?

Changing up a diet is a great start. Keep to those calorie numbers, and keep in mind that you can eat more healthy food for the same calories than junk. For instance, you could eat one candy bar or you could eat about 5 peices of fruit or a pound of vegetables. Which would fill you up more for the same calories?

What are some simple ways to shape up?

• Push ups, sit ups, or jumps after deaths in games like Counterstrike or BF2 or during travel times in games like Eve Online or World of Warcraft.
• Keep a glass of water at your compute desk... as soon as its empty, fill it up!
• If you get bored, do something exercise related to get things going again. Keeping active can help keep your gaming skill consistant.
• Eat lots of healthy foods, start taking vitamins if its cool with your doctor.