Calories do count.

Have you ever given thought that what you may be actually losing when the scale number goes down is water? For most of us, that is the case. That's why you hear the claims "lost 14 pounds in 2 weeks". Lets get real for one moment. To get rid of one pound of fat (remember that's 3500 calories) you need to eliminate 3500 calories. For a 14 pound loss, changing eating patterns alone, you would need to take 171,500 less out of you food intake for a 14 pound of fat loss!

Now consider, on a average you eat 2000-3000 calories a day. For 14 days that would be 35,000 calories (2500 cal./day).

So back to my original question...

What are you losing?
Water
At least half the weight is water loss. Did you ever notice how dry your skin can become during severe dieting?
Bone
Because you are washing out the minerals, with resultant brittle bones.
Minerals
Check the bones. Naturally, this is more of a cumulative effect, but over time it makes its damage. Other minerals like calcium will effect heart beat and leg night cramps.
Fat
It's the last fuel the body will burn on it's own. Usually its burning the carbs, and then the proteins (i.e. muscle!)

It's no wonder, when you lose "weight" quickly, you gain it back. But when you do, it's usually only fat and water!

So let's figure out what you need. Get that calculator out again.

To maintain your current weight:
1. Multiply your weight by the factor 13 for light activity.
2. This will give you the number of calories you need per day just to maintain at rest.
3. If you multiply that number by .20 and divide that by 9 it will tell you how many grams of fat that will be for a diet with 20% fat.

For example,
150 lb. x 13 1950/calories
1950 calories x 20 % of fat 390 fat calories
390 calories from fat x 9 cal./gram 43 grams/day

As you can see, calories do count!
So what now? This is why it's necessary to develop some sort of increased activity to burn calories.

There are tons of places to do this, at the gym, yoga or other martial arts classes, walking and other sports activities can all improve those numbers.

Walking @ 2 miles per hour will burn 5 calories

Cross country skiing on the other hand will burn 20 calories if your moving at 7.50 mph.

There are all kinds of activities, anaerobic verse aerobic, low impact verses high.

Just get out there and MOVE!