Viktoria Hogan is a personal trainer and online nutrition coach who runs Tori Training, an online solution to your health and fitness goals. She lives in the U.S., but is originally from Sweden. She played soccer up through college and has always had a passion for training and nutrition.
Are you looking to start your weight loss journey but don’t know where to start? Perhaps you have tried losing weight but want to do it right? You might have heard that you need to eat fewer calories than you put in but don’t know what that means or entails. This article will help you with the building blocks of what you need to think about.
How to lose weight
For your body to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you burn, but what does that mean? Your body burns calories all day, including when you are sleeping at night. It also burns calories when eating and of course, when you engage in physical exercise. How much you burn during these activities depends on many different factors such as your sex, height, weight, amount of muscle mass, any medications, any illnesses or injuries, and for the physical activity, it also matters how long and how hard your activity is.
So how do you know how many calories you burn based on all these factors? There are a few ways to figure it out: you could wear a watch that tracks your calories, you could wear a heart rate monitor during your workouts and get an idea of your added calories each day, or you could use different calculators online where you fill out several metrics to get an idea of what you burn daily. An activity watch or heart rate monitor would be the most accurate to estimate what you burn, but a calculator goes a long way too. Another option would be speaking to a dietitian to get a better idea.
Once you know how many calories you burn, you can figure out how many calories to eat. You would have to eat at a deficit which just means that you eat less than you burn. I usually suggest a deficit of 250-500 calories for my clients, which will make you lose about 0.5-1lb every week. Anything more than this is hard to sustain, although the safe limit to keep losing weight is up to 2 lbs per week which would mean a 1,000 calorie deficit. For example, if you figured out that you burn 1,800 calories every day and you were going to start with the 250 deficit, you would be eating 1,550 calories every day to maintain that.
Related: “Are You Afraid of Getting Bulky When Lifting Weights?” and “Cardio vs. Strength Training: Which One Benefits You The Most?”
How to know what you put in
The best way to know how many calories are in the food that you are eating is to measure and weigh your food and then either write it down on a piece of paper or put it in an app. An app makes it a little easier as it will store your data for you and often remember frequently eaten meals so that it becomes smoother to track.
You could also use hand portions to track how many macros you should eat every day. A palm is a size for protein, a cupped hand for carbs, a thumb for fats, and a closed fist for your veggies (which technically are carbs, but usually so low calories that they could be on their own – although fruits are counting as the cupped hand of carbs).
Keeping motivation and patience
It can be hard to keep that beginning motivation and keep the momentum going once you start working out, especially if you don’t see the results that you are expecting immediately. It is important to note that the scale does not always give you what you are looking for as it only shows your total weight and not your composition (unless you have a scale that gives you more metrics). Therefore, when you are just starting, you might be gaining some muscle mass while losing fat mass which won’t show up on the scale, but your clothes might fit differently.
Something that might help is to find someone to workout with or at least check in with so they can help you stay on track. I have had some clients who were hesitant to pay for training, but that actually made them more accountable to come because they didn’t want to lose out on sessions that they had paid for. Other ways to stick with it are to set a meeting for yourself on your schedule to make sure that you are going to do the workout or to join a group class where you are with other people all the time.
Related: “Going Beyond Motivation”
Where to go to get started
If you are unsure of what to do to get started or if it sounds way too overwhelming to do on your own, don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional for help. Investing in your health can save you many medical bills down the road.
Viktoria Hogan, Personal Trainer and Online Nutrition Coach
Viktoria Hogan is a personal trainer and online nutrition coach who runs Tori Training, an online solution to your health and fitness goals. She lives in the U.S., but is originally from Sweden. She played soccer up through college and has always had a passion for training and nutrition. As a trainer since the beginning of 2020, she has trained a multitude of clients and gained several specialization certifications within her field. Her main mission is to improve people's quality of life.
