Dieting for Weight Loss - A Basic Overview
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Dieting for Weight Loss - A Basic Overview

We all know nutrition plays a pivotal role    during a weight loss/fat loss phase. What we need do however, is to gain a more clear understanding of what we are putting in our mouths and why it is important.

 Now what I am posting today is just to give you the basic overview of nutrition during a weight loss phase. It does and can get a lot more complex the deeper you dive into the information and studies. But for now we need to learn the basics. 


In our previous post we went over why weight training is so important for weight loss. Now if you are weight training and eating like a horse you will not lose weight. The key is to get into what is called a ‘calorie deficit’ this is where your body is expending more fuel (calories/energy) than what we are eating. 


Let’s take a few scenarios:


Scenario 1:

Say for instance throughout your entire day 24 hours you have expended or ‘burnt off’ 2,500 calories. If you are eating 2,500 Calories per day you will stay the same. 

This will mean your weight would stay the same. This is what we call maintenance.

(2,500calories in - 2,500 calories out =0)


Scenario 2:

Now let’s take the same person and the exact same amount of energy/calories burnt in a 24 hour period (2,500 calories) (As we did in scenario 1). 

However now we have them eating 500 more calories than they are burning (3,000 calories) over the same time period. This will mean that the person will gain weight and what we call a calorie surplus. This is what happens when we put on weight and where we definitely don’t want to be during our weight loss/fat loss phase.

(3,000calories in - 2,500 calories out = +500)


Scenario 3:

Now in this last scenario - let’s take the same person, have them burning the exact same amount of calories (2,500) (As we did in scenario 1 and 2), but this time they are only eating 2,000 calories over the same time period. In this case we are burning an extra 500calories, putting us in what is called a calorie deficit and where we want to be during our weight loss phase.

 (2,000calories in - 2,500 calories out = -500cals)


If we can stay roughly around 500calories per day in a calorie deficit, then over the course of a week that is = 3,500calories.


(-500calories x 7 = -3500calories)

which equates to roughly 1kg of weight loss. 


A great app to use to track the amount of food/drink you are consuming is called ‘My Fitness Pal’. It’s a very simple app to use and you can easily scan the barcodes of the foods you are eating/drinking. 


To finish off, below is a quick outline of the macro-nutrients and how many calories are in each: 

1 gram of Protein - 4calories 

1 gram of Carbohydrate - 4 calories 

1 gram of Fat - 9 calories


I hope this gives you a better understanding of why being more knowledgeable about the amount of calories you are consuming per day, plays a vital role in our weight loss/fat loss endeavours. 

If you have any questions regarding this please send us a message through Facebook, or LinkedIn to discuss further.

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