At the very ground level of weight loss, the primary concept that must be conquered has to do with the number of calories going in and the number that are going out; that is, what you’re eating versus what you are burning. One pound of fat on the body is made of about 3,500 calories. Therefore, a deficit of 3,500 calories must be created in order to reduce the body by one pound of fat. Of course, it’s slightly more complicated than that, but this is the foundation of the overall concept. You burn more calories than you take in and you lose weight.

The deficit needs to be created by eating fewer calories than you burn each day. Of course, not all of those calories need to be burned by way of exercise. On its own, the body burns off a large number of calories just to keep up with your basic functions of life such as circulating blood, breathing, thinking, and even digesting. Physical activity such as walking, bathing, and even typing at your computer then burns more of those calories. While you do not have control over many of the ways in which your body burns calories, you do have control over how and how much you exercise.

To lose one pound of fat every week, the idea is to create a deficit of about 500 calories per day. So you will need to burn 500 more calories than you are eating every day for a week. This means that you will likely want to start tracking your caloric intake so that you’ll know just how much you are actually consuming each day, and you will likely want to boost your physical activity so that you’ll burn more calories away more as well. By tracking, you’ll be able to know just where you stand and you will be able to make appropriate eating and activity decisions based on what your numbers are telling you.

Tracking is a good way to gain a better understanding of what you are eating and how much you are exercising, regardless of your weight. Many people are surprised at how much or how little they are consuming because they had never thought about their meals and snacks under those terms.

Furthermore, it will help you to see how much of a difference each of those efforts make to creating a calorie deficit. You may want to cut back on foods but continue living a sedentary life, but when you see how much food you’ll need to slash to create a deficit when you aren’t moving around, that might provide you with a lot of motivation to get up off the couch and burn more calories!