How to lose weight properly and effectively is one of the most difficult questions for many people. In theory, it would not be that difficult. If you want to lose weight, you have to consume fewer calories than you burn – achieve a calorie deficit. This way you will automatically lose weight. And yet it is often not so easy to find the right means to do it. With the right sports and nutrition, you can lose weight effectively and healthily. Today's blog post shows you how it can work.
Discover the Verival sports breakfast here
Weight loss formula: How to lose weight healthily
Don't worry: when we talk about formulas here, we don't mean highly complex mathematical formulas. The various equations for losing weight are very simple and don't require much prior knowledge.
First of all, it is important to know or calculate your basal metabolic rate. For adult men, this is around 2,000 kcal. For women, the basal metabolic rate is a little lower than for men, at around 1,750 kcal. If you combine the basal metabolic rate with the active metabolic rate, you get the total metabolic rate.
There are different performance rates for different types of sport. If you want to know exactly how many calories you burn during exercise, there are various sports watches that allow you to calculate this.
To lose weight, you should lower your total daily calorie intake by about 300 calories. That's how you shed those extra pounds!
The Harris-Benedict formula for healthy weight loss
The Harris-Benedict formula is designed to calculate the basal metabolic rate more accurately and has been around in this form for about 100 years. The Harris-Benedict formula is more accurate because it takes into account important factors such as gender, age, weight and height. For women, the formula is as follows:
655.1 + (9.6 x body weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age in years)
For men, the Harris-Benedict formula looks like this:
664.7 + (13.7 x body weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age in years)
Diet and exercise are crucial to healthy weight loss.
Although exercise should be one of the most important aspects of losing weight, the right diet is also a big part of it. So you should pay attention to what foods and meals you eat. Because not all calories are the same!
The right diet often doesn't require much. Nutritious foods, lots of fruit and vegetables and a balanced breakfast are the pillars of a healthy diet. Breakfast is an easy way to start the day with plenty of nutrients and energy.
With our Verival Porridge, you can start eating right at breakfast time. Without having to go without a hearty and, above all, delicious breakfast. Losing weight with porridge works wonders!
Lose weight healthily with the help of the Verival calorie calculator
Because the subject of calories can often be quite confusing, we at Verival have created a small tool to help you calculate your daily calorie requirement.
Our calorie calculator makes it easy for you to know how much you should eat each day and also takes into account your individual daily routine. This way you can determine more precisely how many calories you should consume daily to lose weight healthily.
Calculate your calorie requirement here for free
Lose weight healthily with cardio and endurance sports
In addition to the right nutrition, exercise and sport is the first port of call for healthy weight loss. With a daily routine that includes a lot of sporting activity, your total calorie expenditure goes up accordingly. This makes it much easier for you to lose weight, because it makes it easier to achieve the calorie deficit through the ideal nutrition.
How can you lose weight healthily with cardio?
Endurance sports are perfect for losing weight quickly. You burn a lot of calories when jogging, cycling or swimming. How many calories you burn in the various sports depends on your body weight. The heavier the body, the more calories you burn. But which sports burn the most calories?
Losing weight with running
There is no clear ‘winner’ in this category, because the different types of sport are not that far apart. When jogging, you burn about 500 calories per hour. This makes running the winner among endurance sports by a small margin. Incidentally, you should jog slowly, because then your body is more likely to use its own fat stores as energy reserves.
Lose weight by swimming
You can also burn up to 500 calories swimming – but it depends on your body weight. What makes swimming so special is that it is extremely easy on your joints and really is a full-body sport. You use almost all of your muscle groups as you swim through the water.
Lose weight with cycling
Swimming is closely followed by cycling or spinning. You can burn up to 400 calories an hour on a bike. Cycling is also very easy on the joints if you choose the right saddle setting.
Losing weight with high-intensity interval training
If you are looking for something a little more intense, high-intensity interval training is the way to go. HIIT involves alternating between high-intensity phases and rest phases. The workout is very strenuous, but it also allows you to burn 600-800 calories in an hour. That's a lot!
But before you start your session, you should make sure that you have enough energy to burn. Porridge, for example, is the ideal breakfast before exercise!
Can you lose weight with strength training?
We all know it: fitness studios advertise the falling kilos and lure you into becoming a member. But what about strength training, can you really lose a lot of weight with it?
Yes, you can lose weight with strength training too. That's because you burn calories just the same when you train with weights. However, if you are only concerned about the weight on the scales, you should be a little careful. Strength training is not suitable if you just want to lose weight quickly.
Strength training as a weight loss aid
The fact is that strength training helps you to build muscle. The more you train, the bigger your muscles will become. This usually means that you will also gain weight. But don't let that discourage you! Gaining weight while doing strength training is actually desirable. It helps you to define your body!
The simple formula for losing weight also applies to strength training: if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight. The scales may not show results as quickly as with endurance sports, but they will definitely show results sooner or later.
If you want to gain muscle mass, you can also use the calorie calculator for muscle building.
The best way to lose weight healthily: combine cardio and strength training
The best case for people who want to lose weight healthily would be to combine cardio with strength training. This way, strength training builds muscles and the kilos on the scales fall during endurance sports.
Especially if you do a lot of sports and mix the two types, you should definitely pay attention to how many calories you consume per day. Muscles can only be formed if enough proteins and nutrients are supplied to the body through food. So it is also important to know what you put in your daily diet.
Lose weight healthily with the right nutrition
The holy trinity for a healthy body, however, is a combination of weight training, endurance sports and, above all, the ideal nutrition. If you eat unhealthy food, lots of ready meals and fast food, you won't see or feel any progress in losing weight despite doing sports. Likewise, the calculation doesn't work in the other direction either – if you eat healthily but don't do any sports and therefore find it harder to achieve a calorie deficit, you won't see any progress either.
Nutrition is an extremely extensive topic, especially for athletes. Those who do a lot of sport and want to achieve a high level of performance should be aware of the power of nutrition. At best, you should have internalised what you can and cannot eat when you are dieting.
