eli5: Losing weight

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I’m just confused on how losing weight actually works. So if I cut myself down to 1500 calories a day, I would have to burn like 2000 calories to lose weight? That just seems like a lot of exercising to me, especially because I’m juggling a job and highschool still. Could you guys explain it to me in a better sense?

In: Biology

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You lose weight in every activity you do including breathing. Even when you are sitting down your heart is pumping. This takes energy which burns calories is a measurement of. So even if you do nothing all day there is an amount of calories you naturally burn. You can find this amount online by looking for what is called a BMR or Basel metabolic rate calculator. This is a rough estimate of how many calories you burn a day without adding any exercise. The amount of calories you burn from just being alive plus the calories you burn from exercise is your calories burned per day. Then you eat less calories you can lose weight.

[https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html](https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html)

[https://www.choosemyplate.gov/node/5799](https://www.choosemyplate.gov/node/5799)

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