Your body needs to shed 500 calories a day in order to lose just one pound per week, doctors say.
According to Cleveland Clinic's Dr. Gordon Blackburn, trying to cut 500 calories at once might be tough, but, it's not as difficult if you start off slowly.
"Cutting back on the calories coming in, the portion sizes, should be able to account for 200 to 300 calories deficit for most people. And adding in 100 calories of activity expenditure, which would be about walking that one mile or riding a bicycle," he said.
The recommended amount of activity is two-and-a-half hours of moderate aerobic exercise per week.
Dr. Blackburn says a good way to get started on an exercise plan is to find activities that you can incorporate into your day such as walking, jogging or riding a bicycle.
And the more intense the exercise, the quicker the calories will burn.
If you walk three miles per hour it would take you 150 minutes to burn 500 calories, but jogging at five miles per hour will only take 63 minutes to do the same.
"If you look at the big picture, if I expend just 100 calories more per day and I can do that over 365 days, that's about a ten pound weight loss in a year," the doctor said.
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