Calories In vs. Calories Out

I read an study recently in Prevention magazine about caloric intake and output.  It stated that it didn't matter how many calories you consumed, that as long as your caloric exertion was 300-500 calories less than your input that you would still lose weight.  If the spread is any larger than your body will go into starvation mode and you won't lose weight.

Interesting...

The trouble is that I don't like to count calories and tracking my out-going calories is too tedious and difficult.

So, what you can do is use a calorie calculator to determine how many calories you should consume based on your age, weight, height and normal activity level.  Take that number and subtract 300.  Take THAT number and divide by 3.

example:  Calories to consume = 1800, subtract 300 = 1500, divide by 3 = 500

So, (based on the above example) that person can eat 3 meals a day @ 500 calories a piece and eat 3 snacks of 100 calories a piece.  To lose weight, she would just have to burn 300-500 extra calories per day, over and above normal activity.

An easy way to track the output is to get a heart rate monitor watch, which will calculate how many calories you burn based on your heart rate.  Pretty cool and it works well.  I got mine from Overstock.com for $40 ~ here's another place you can get one:

My suggestion is that you just tweak what you already eat to fit into your calorie input figure and use the watch to calc the extra output and you're golden!