Quick Diet HowTo Community

What’s the magic number? 1677. Calories, that is. Yup. I’ve found the magic number to lose weight fast…for me, anyway. This number will be different for everyone, so here’s what I suggest: If you’re really serious about losing weight, keep track of your daily calories–in a spreadsheet–and then calculate the weekly average.

When you start to lose weight, notice your weekly average calories and commit to staying close to that number for as long as you want to lose weight. Of course, you need to eat enough to stay alive, so start off slowly. I read that 1600 cals for a man and 1200 for a woman, are the average calories needed to stay healthy and lose weight. Well, they were right–if you look below, at my weekly numbers, you’ll see that I consumed–on average–1677 cals and lost 3.6 pounds!

This is the most weight I’ve lost on this diet since week 4 (4 lbs) when I consumed an average of 1537 calories the previous week. Back then, you see, I wasn’t keeping track of weekly averages and therefore didn’t notice the association between weekly calories and the weight lost.

So, I know what I’m going to do–try my best to stay at approximately 1600 average calories per day until the weight’s off. What are you going to do? Note: If you don’t have Excel (spreadsheet software), download OpenOffice. It’s free, and has a word processor, presentation and spreadsheet software, among others.

Here’s an example of my diet spreadsheet:

This week’s pleasing numbers:

• Average calories: 1677/day
• Average exercise: 10 mins/day
• Today’s weight: 275.8
• Last post’s weight: 279.4
• Weight loss: 3.6