How it Works

Putting it simply: put out more than you take in. It’s basic math and science principles, as your PE teacher and mother once told you.

Regardless of one’s age, genetic constitution, activity, metabolic rate, frequency of exercise and natural inclinations, weight loss boils down to less input + more outgo = lost weight. That equation doesn’t work for income, though.

In basic principles, men burn body fat and have higher metabolic rates than do women. This is held over from our ancestors of more primal civilizations. Men didn’t need to nurse children and had more stamina to handle the brunt work of cave-living; women, in turn, stayed behind to nurse the children and live on her own fat stores as she nurses. Today, with a more technological age before us, people moving further into the suburbs and driving growing more form necessity than luxury, while these advances are wondrous in making lives easier to a degree, it has led to a more sedentary lifestyle. With that, we’re moving less and eating more, especially more of the unwise food choices.

Weight loss works as follows: For each pound one loses, that is equal to 3,500 calories during the week. A week has seven days and to break down that caloric intake, that would come down to 500 calories a day. A calorie, in layman's terms, is the unit energy science has named as such to burn food humans need to function their bodies properly. More of those calories—or units of energy—taken in by a man or a woman, and not expelled in that energy increases and becomes stored energy in the form of fat cells. Decreased activity for prolonged periods of time causes muscle atrophy; that’s why, when you first start a workout program you’re as exhausted as if you’d be running a 26 mile marathon for the first time—and after just training for a month.

If you took these 500 calories a day times seven days = one pound weight loss, this breaks down to cutting out one can of soda and a Starbucks frappucino trip a day. This 500 calorie reduction = a daily donut and Chinese take out three times a week. Whatever it is you know you’re eating daily that’s adding to the overall effect in a weight gain of a pound a week, that’s easily omitted by taking it out daily and only having it once a week, instead. That still means you’ve lost a pound and a half in just under 2 weeks—without physical exertion involved at all. And, losing that much weight a week is within healthy guidelines of permanent weight loss.

Correction: You are exercising: The mental discipline it takes to hold to the restraint needed to keep from n the daily frappucino or the daily donut--or the daily can of soda and the thrice weekly visit to Gung San’s Noodle House is well worth the great-looking jeans still hanging in the closet.