Dear Friend ,

How to Lose Weight with Mathematics

This article was written in response to a question ''How do i achieve a caloric deficit ?


What is your Maintenance Caloric value?

This is the amount of calories you require to maintain your weight at the present value it is now

How to Calculate Your Calorie Maintenance Level

In case it’s not obvious enough, calorie maintenance levels are different for everyone because we all have different daily calorie requirements. It’s not like everyone with a certain goal or body type has the same maintenance level or anything like that.

Instead, your calorie maintenance level is dependent on many factors that are specific to you and your exact situation.

These factors include:
Gender
Height
Weight
Age
Activity level
Metabolic Rate
Thermic Effect Of Food
Non-Exercise Activity Thermo genesis (NEAT)

Maintenance level is tailored to you and you alone. Even if you are the same age, height and weight
As you can see, your specific calorie as someone and have the exact same activity level and goals as they do, you can both still have very different calorie maintenance levels and daily calorie requirements in general.

Luckily though, there are a few quick and easy ways to get an accurate estimate of what your daily calorie maintenance level is.

Here are my favorite methods…

Method #1: Body Weight (lbs) x 14-17 = Estimated Daily Calorie Maintenance Level

Just take your current body weight in pounds and multiply it by 14 and 17. (we calculate in pounds and not in kilograms because the developers of the formula are whites and not Nigerians ; a challenge for us ; smiles; don’t mind me )

(To convert your weight from kilograms to pounds; multiply by 2.2)

Somewhere in between those 2 amounts will usually be your daily calorie maintenance level.

You can equally use this method: multiply your weight (in pounds) by 12 if you have a sedentary lifestyle, 14 if you are moderately active (you work out 3-4 times/week), or 16 if you are very active (5-7 times/week).

For example, a 180lb person would do 180 x 14 and 180 x 17 and get an estimated daily calorie maintenance level of somewhere between 2520-3060 calories.

People who are female, older, and less active or feel they have a “slow metabolism” should probably stick more towards the lower end of their estimate. People who are male, younger, more active, or feel they have a “fast metabolism” should probably stick more towards the higher end of their estimate.( all for the first formula )

If you’re unsure, just pick a number somewhere in the middle.
Crude way of calculating your Caloric Maintenance

Basically, eat the same amount of calories each day for a couple of weeks and monitor what your weight does.
If it stays the same, you’ve found your exact maintenance level.
If it goes up or down, then just adjust your calorie intake in small increments, wait another couple of weeks, and see what your weight does then.
When it stays the same, you’ll know for sure that you’ve found your exact daily calorie maintenance level.

How to Calculate your Caloric deficit

Now that you know your maintenance calories, it’s time to figure out how much calories you need to consume in order to lose fat.
The Only way to lose fat is to be in a calorie deficit, meaning that you’re expending more calories than you consume.

It’s pretty easy to figure this out.A good starting point would be to subtract 300-500 calories from your daily maintenance.

You can equally calculate thus: (if you love calculations) 20% of your maintenance calorie values… subtract the value you get from the maintenance value.

This gives you the maximum amount of calories you should consume in order for you to lose fat.

Why isn’t it an absolute number?


To be continued tomorrow
Yours in fat loss
Dr Maduako