How many calories should you eat a day to lose 10 pounds in 1 month

One of the most important rules for weight-loss is to be aware of your calorie intake vs calorie outtake. If you want to lose 10 pounds in 1 month then the amount of calories you burn has to be greater by far than what you consume. This could also be called the golden rule of weight-loss because without this step the weight-loss will not happen.

By eating fewer calories than you consume gives you a good start but your mission is not fully completed until you know how many calories you should consume in a day.

To answer this question you have to answer an even more important question…

WHAT IS YOUR WEIGHT LOSS GOAL?

To answer this question about your weight loss goal you have to know 2 things:

How Much Do You Want To Lose?
By When?

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If you don’t want to rush and you want to lose 25 pounds, giving yourself a year to do that is a very healthy and attainable goal.

But what happens if you want to lose 10 pounds but you want to accomplish that in less than 2 months? What you should do to lose 10 pounds in 1 month?

I would not suggest quick weight-loss, but losing 10 pounds in a month is still considered to be healthy weight-loss.

I have done it myself and I felt really good during that time. It was not a struggle at all.

So if your goal is to lose 10 pounds in a month I will break down how much calories you should consume to accomplish this target.

GET TO KNOW YOUR BMR

Before we get into the losing 10 pounds in a 1-month topic there are a few things you must calculate.

First of all, you have to know your BMR which stands for the Basal Metabolic Rate. The BMR shows how many calories you burn in a day without doing any physical activities.

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There are four factors that determine your BMR:

AGE
GENDER
WEIGHT
HEIGHT

So grab a pen and paper and do some mathematics with me! 😊 To calculate your BMR we will use the Harris-Benedict Formula.

If you are a WOMAN, then your BMR= 655 + (4.35 × weight in pounds) + (4.7 × height in inches) – ( 4.7 × age in years )

If you are a MAN, then your BMR= 66 + (6.2 × weight in pounds) + (12.7 × height in inches) – (6.76 × age in years)

In my case the calculation will be: 655 + (4.35 × 145) + (4.7 × 69.6) – (4.7 × 35) = 1448.37.

So I can only consume 1448.37 calories a day in order to maintain my weight -145 pounds – without doing ANYTHING.

How much was your BMR?

LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR ACTIVITY LEVEL…

After you have found out your BMR, you must be aware of your activity level.

Your activity level should be in one of these 4 groups:

Sedentary (little to no exercise, desk job) – BMR*1.2
Lightly Active (working out 1-3 times a week) – BMR*1.375
Moderately Active (working out 3-5 times a week) – BMR*1.55
Very Active (working out 6-7 days a week) – BMR*1.725
Extra Active (working out very hard every day or twice a day) – BMR*1.9

In my case, the calculation will be 1448.37×1.55 = 2244.9735. So since I work out about 4 times a week I can consume 2244.97 calories to maintain the 145 pounds.

HOW MANY CALORIES CAN YOU CONSUME BASED ON YOUR ACTIVITY LEVEL TO KEEP YOUR CURRENT WEIGHT?

Write down the number on a piece of paper!

So just to be clear if you consume more than the number of calories you have just written down, you will gain weight. However, if you consume less, you will start to lose weight!

Before we discuss the question of losing 10 pounds in a month there is an important fact that you must know.

In order to lose a pound, you have to burn 3,500 calories.

So if you want to lose 10 pounds in a month you have to burn 35,000 calories in a month. It means that you need to burn roughly 35,000/30=1,166 calories a day.

There are 2 ways to do that:

Consume less than you currently are eating
Burn calories through exercising

The best I can recommend is to save these calories through a combination of exercising and less eating.

There are two reasons why I am saying this…

It is a big change for your body to suddenly consume less food.
Exercise boosts your metabolism through working your muscles, which is an important factor if you want to lose weight quickly.

So how will your week look like if you want to lose 10 pounds in a month? Try to work out at least 3-4 times a week and burn 650 calories and eat 500 calories less. For example, with a 40 minute HIIT workout, you can burn 650 calories and you should do that 4 times a week.

HIIT WORKOUT is a very efficient way for quick weight-loss, and it is also a good way to lose belly fat especially over the age of 30.

On the remaining days try to consume 1,166 calories less and you will be good to go.

If you are not in a rush and can give yourself 6 months to lose 25 pounds then obviously you don’t have to make any extreme changes.

If you want to lose 25 pounds in the next six months then you actually have a half a year to burn 87,500 calories. It means that you have to burn roughly 486 calories a day to accomplish this goal.

If you start working out and do a 60-minute aerobic exercise twice a week you are able to burn 300 calories on those days. The rest of the calories can be saved by eating less.

Obviously, losing 25 pounds in 6 months is a more attainable long-term goal then losing 10 pounds in 1 month, because if you are not careful about how you get back to normal after one month you could end up gaining back more than 10 pounds.

However, as you can see it is possible and still considered to be healthy to lose 10 pounds in 1 month. If you continue living a healthy lifestyle after that one month you will be more likely to maintain those results, although long-term weight management could be challenging for a number of biological reasons (1.). However, I would definitely not recommend losing more than 10 pounds in a month.

I hope this advice was helpful!