Weight or Calories Loss

General or Other | General Practice | Weight or Calories Loss (Symptom)


Description

Human being's weight is determined by the amount of energy in food and the amount of energy consumed in daily activities. Energy is measured in calories. If the weight of a person remains constant, probably he/she eat the same amount of calories each day. If a person gains weight slowly, over time, probably caloric intake is greater than the number of calories he/she burns through daily activities.

Diagnosis and Treatment

Everyone can control the amount of food they eat every day, so the intake of calories is something manageable.

Human beings can also control production of energy or calories that are burned each day. The calories eaten each day are dependent on the basal metabolic rate, the calories burned per hour and the physical level of activity. People whose job involves heavy physical force will naturally burn more calories in a day than someone sitting at a desk all day (a sedentary job).

For people who have jobs that require intense physical activity, exercise or increased physical activity can increase the number of calories burned. As a rough estimate, an average woman 31-50 years who have a sedentary lifestyle needs about 1,800 calories per day to maintain a healthy weight. A man of his age requires about 2,200 calories.

Participation in moderate physical activity (exercise three to five days a week) involves about 200 extra calories per day. The most effective method for weight loss is reducing the number of calories consumed while increasing the number of calories burned through physical activity. To loose 1 kg it is needed an expense of about 3,500 calories. It is possible to do that either by reducing food intake either by increasing physical activity.

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