How to Lose the Weight for good by Eating For Your Ideal Weight

The other day I had an epiphany on how to lose weight. This is what Oprah would call an ah-hah moment. This is a piece of knowledge that I’ve had for a while now, but didn’t follow through with because I was greedy!

I wanted to take the fast road to weight loss, even though I know that study after study has show that quick weight loss is fleeting weight loss. And I did it anyway!

Had I followed through on this key piece of knowledge, I would have been at my ideal weight long ago. Instead, I’ve been eating like a bird and hating every minute of it.

Here’s the trick… Instead of eating the bare minimum of calories and starving myself to the point of giving up… I should have been eating the number of calories needed for my ideal weight. This is how to lose weight the right way.

By eating the calories you need to eat to maintain your ideal weight, you will slowly lose the extra pounds because your body will need that extra fat to fuel your extra weight… it’s the best kind of catch 22 there is!

How to Lose Weight Using Ideal Weight Caloric Intake

Let’s take a look at how to lose weight with the numbers… In order to lose weight, you’ll need to create a deficit between the number of calories your body is using (your daily maintenance or DM calories) and the number of calories you are consuming.

One pound of fat is 3,500 calories. So, for each pound you want to lose in a week, you need to have a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories for the week or 500 calories per day.

For illustration purposes, let’s say I am a 250 pound male that is a couch potato, but I want to weigh 200 pounds (and still be a couch potato). Putting this information into the calculator below, at my current weight, I need 3369 calories per day to maintain my 250 pounds. If I were 200 pounds, I would need 2695 calories per day.

So the difference between what my body needs to stay 250 and the calories to maintain my ideal weight is 674. So if I eat for 200 pounds but my body is burning calories for 250 pounds, then I will have a calorie deficit of 674 calories per day.

If I need a 3,500 calorie deficit to lose a pound, then I will lose my first pound in about 5 days (3,500/674=5.19). Now… I’m sure as you can imagine, the closer you get to your ideal weight, the slower the pounds will come off because your deficit will not be as large. But that’s OK… remember that quick weight loss results never last.

So, now that we’ve had our ah-hah moment, use the calculator below to figure out how many calories you should be eating in order to get to and maintain your ideal weight.