A realization hit me like a ton of bricks some years ago and it is this. It isn’t about how much you do in the gym its about what you put into your body that makes the most difference. Saying that diet is 75% of the equation is a liberal estimate, it could really be as high as 90%.

So, what you must do is figure out what you daily caloric expenditure is. This can be done with a simple equation found easily on the web. Just do a search for a calorie calculator and you will come up with a number of results. I would suggest calculating with a number of different sites and taking an average. They will give you a number of different answer based on a number of different inputs. You should have a pretty good idea based on your weight and you activity how many calories you should be burning in a day.

I am going to use the standard 2000 calories, which is what nutritional information is based on. And this is a pretty good average for many people. To most people it sounds low and that is why there are so many over weight people out there today.

Once you determine roughly how many calories you burn in a day, eat that many calories and see how you feel. This will help you tweak this number to get a better idea of how accurate your estimate is. Once you have a good baseline and you know what it feels like to eat the amount of calories that you should be eating start eating a little less everyday. You will have to keep a log to be accurate in this area.

I work in blocks of 100 calories. My daily burn is about 2600, I can work all the way down to 1200 for short periods of time. When I do this it is only for a day at a time and I am eating very nutritionally dense food. The key is to fluctuate the number of calories that you are eating in a day, but remain in a deficit.

Once you understand the numbers recognize that 3500 calories equals one pound of fat. At the end of the week tally up your caloric deficit, factor in the amount of calories you burned durning exercise and you will get a number. Divide that number by 3500 and you should get roughly the number of pounds that you have lost during that week. Any fluctuations are based more on water weight than anything else.

So, if you want to know how to loose weight fast, just look at the numbers.