TURN BACK THE CLOCK ON YOUR FACE!
It’s not as sexy as the latest diet craze sweeping through Hollywood, but in the search for a slimmer figure, slow and steady weight loss (one or two pounds a week) really does win the race. Whether you want to lose five pounds to fit into your clothes better or need to lose fifty to protect your health as you get older, losing weight boils down to a simple equation: The number of calories you take in must be less than calories out. In fact, diet plans that claim you don’t need to count calories usually reduce your calorie intake anyway because you eat smaller portions or cut out certain foods (or in some cases, entire food groups). Even if you choose not to count calories, it’s worth understanding a few key points about them.
Know Your Calorie Needs As You Age
Everyone has a baseline number of calories they need to maintain their current weight, but the number differs according to your gender, weight, activity level—and your age. It isn’t just your imagination; your calorie needs do decline as you get older. Your metabolism slows about 5 percent each decade, so at age forty, women burn about 100 calories fewer per day and men burn about 50 calories fewer than they did at age thirty. That may not seem like much, but over a year it can translate to an extra five or ten pounds. The dip in your metabolism is mostly due to a decrease in muscle mass and a corresponding increase in body fat , but your organs also use fewer calories as you age.
The best way to determine your calorie quota is by measuring your resting metabolic rate (RMR), the number of calories your body requires for the daily tasks of living, such as breathing, blood circulation, and forming and repairing cells. Your gym may have a handheld device called a calorimeter that can measure your RMR pretty precisely. If you don’t have access to a calorimeter, a 2005 review of studies in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association discovered that a tool called the Mifflin-St Jeor equation is the next most reliable way to estimate a person’s RMR. You’ll need to translate your weight from pounds to kilograms and height to centimeters; the formulas are as follows: 1 pound = 0.45 kg; 1 inch = 2.54 cm
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