What Are The Most Important Terms To Understand When Talking About Weight Loss?

Keith Ayoob, Ed.D., R.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

February 1, 2009

Question: What are the most important terms to understand when talking about weight loss?

Answer: When talking about weight loss, really the one thing you need to understand is calories and specifically that calories in need to be fewer than calories out. That's called creating a calorie deficit. Somehow in order to lose weight you've got to create that calorie deficit. But you can do that in a few different ways.

You can do it by cutting back on the number of calories you eat. Or you can do it by increasing the number of calories your body burns up through exercise and physical activity. For most people probably the best way to go is to cut back a little bit on the number of calories you eat and to increase a little bit the physical activity you do, at least to start. Because that way, by doing that combination neither intervention is going to be very, very noticeable and that way you can achieve the goal that you want, and you can sustain it over a long period of time. Because the goal with weight loss is not just to lose weight, it's also to maintain the weight you've already lost.

So by creating that calorie deficit with a little bit fewer calories that you consume and increasing the number of calories that you put out through exercise, you'll be able to achieve your weight loss goals and you'll do it in a very comfortable way.

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