In this guide, let me show you the ultimate key to losing fat for good, by learning how to calculate your calorie needs for weight loss so you can realize a successful and long-lasting body transformation.

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Like most living, breathing humans on the face of the earth, you’ve likely tried just about every trick and life hack available on Google to find that one secret method or perfect diet to finally lose weight.

From low-carb dieting to endless hours of cardio to juice cleanses, all of those simple celebrity-endorsed strategies promised that the pounds will fall off.

And maybe that approach worked. Until it didn’t.

Or maybe it never worked at all.

Or maybe you just really want to find a better way to finally drop the weight … and actually keep it off for good.

You’re fed up with the yo-yo battle of up and down progress on the scale, only to give up because it was too hard to maintain, stress was through the roof and you were frustrated with the ineffective process.

It’s time to put an end to this endless cycle once and for all.

In this guide, let me show the simple method to calculate your calories needs for weight loss. We’ll breakdown:

• The No. 1 Rule of Fat Loss
• Why calorie counting is the king of dieting royalty
• The simple method to finding your calorie needs for losing weight
• Why protein is important for reaching your goals and how much you should eat for fat loss (and why it’s not nearly as much as you might think)
• How to turn this approach into a long-term practice that will last a lifetime for consistent and mind-blowing weight loss results

Let’s get into it.

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How fat loss works

Here’s the truth about losing weight and burning fat: All diets work. Seriously. They ALL work.

From Atkins to Paleo to Keto to Low Fat to the Twinkie diet (yes, that is actually a thing), every single one of those popular diet methods work because they all comply with the No. 1 Rule of Fat Loss. They are all designed to put you in a caloric deficit.

A caloric deficit simply means you are burning more calories than you eat.

Word of caution: don’t let “burn” trick you into thinking that you’ve got to immediately hit the treadmill and pound away for hours on end to burn away that belly fat.

Let me explain.

All of those grueling CrossFit WODs … the intense Orange Theory style sweat sessions … the SoulCycle style spin classes are great ways to melt calories. But the amount of calories you burn from those exercises is much smaller than you think; likely only a couple of hundred each time.

In other words, you can easily blow up your entire calorie burn with a post-workout meal of junk from your local fast food joint.

Ignoring this simple fact is why so many people struggle with long-lasting fat loss despite working their asses off in the gym for hours on end.

The best way to burn more calories than you eat is by controlling how much you actually eat.

It doesn’t matter what foods you’re eating if it’s too much. You can gain weight on the most wholesome nutritious foods, just like you can lose weight on junk food.

Food quantity and total energy balance is the most important factor.

Where you’ve likely run into trouble in the past is that you’ve been missing out on that all-important factor. You simply didn’t know how many calories you were eating in a day, so you couldn’t possibly know how to lose fat and look awesome.

So how do you know? You have to track your calories.

Why you should count calories to lose weight

A calorie is just a unit of measurement for determining how much energy is in the food we eat.

When you eat that bowl of rice with 200 calories, you are “consuming” energy. Likewise, when you hit the elliptical for an hour, you are “burning” 200 calories worth of energy.

In this scenario, the calories balance out. You ate 200 calories, then burned 200 calories.

Your goal is to be in the negative, or burn more calories than you are eating.

How do you know that you are accurately achieving this goal? By tracking.

Every food or drink that touches the inside of your mouth needs to be logged in some way, shape or form (get your mind out of the gutter).

This sounds like a tedious slog. And, truth be told, for people brand new to this principle, it can be a bit of a drag to face these facts.

But, again, this is the only way to knowledgeably and effectively lose weight and keep it off. #Facts

Yes, you probably lost some weight without ever tracking a single calorie when you switched from the Standard American Diet of chips, soda and pasta to a Paleo lifestyle of whole nutritious food. But this mindless approach to creating a calorie deficit is not a long-term solution.

Eventually, the weight loss progress stalled out because you never knew exactly how much energy you were consuming versus how much energy you were burning.

Counting calories is the only accurate and definitive way to know if you are doing the right things necessary to lose weight, and most importantly, keep it off for good.

4 Steps to Quickly Calculate Your Calorie Needs for Weight Loss

STEP 1: Calculate your calorie needs for losing fat

The first step in the calorie tracking process is to determine just how many calories you need in order to burn more calories than you eat.

This is typically just a guesstimate. Yep, most nutritional coaches are making well-educated guesses as to how many calories you need to eat to gain/lose/maintain weight.

Each person really is a unique snowflake and many different variables affect this estimation: height, starting weight, age, sex, activity level and various other outside factors.

So the goal here is to avoid getting stuck in neutral while trying to find the absolute perfect number. You need to get in, get out and get to work on your nutritional plan. So, a ballpark target will do the trick to get you started.

The most basic way to get an accurate caloric deficit target for yourself is to utilize your bodyweight and find an appropriate multiplier based on how active you are on a daily basis.

Multiply your CURRENT bodyweight (IN POUNDS) by 10-12

• 10 = completely sedentary (i.e., and office desk job or just sitting on the couch watching way too much Netflix)
• 11 = somewhat active
• 12 = moderately active

Is this a perfect equation? Nope. Is it close enough to get you started? Absolutely.

Let’s play this out in action.

Daenerys is a mother of three and wants to lose a bit of holiday weight she gained over a long winter. She’s currently 125 pounds and hopes to get back to her preferred 115 pounds by summer (a 10-pound weight loss goal).

At 125 pounds and pretty active for a mom of three feisty “children,” Daenerys knows that she’s moderately active throughout her day and she really wants to lose weight to get ready for what promises to be a nice summer.

A caloric deficit can be achieved by taking Daenerys’ weight (125) and multiplying that by 12. This gives her a daily target of 1,500 calories.

A good rule of thumb is to allow for a bit of flexibility with this calorie number, that’s why it’s always important to include a bit of a range of about 100-150 calories for Daenerys to hit.

This takes the rigid structure out of the daily battle. Makes things a tad easier knowing there’s a bit of flexibility for days when you’re a little more full than normal, or if you have an oops and go over your target by 50-60 calories, it’s still all good.

So in this case, Daenerys will have a calorie range of 1,400 to 1,600 calories.

STEP 2: Finding your protein goal for weight loss

You’ve got this calorie thing down. Bravo. Now it’s time to talk macros.

Macros, or macronutrients, are what make up calories.

There are three primary macros and they come in the form of proteins, carbohydrates and fats––and then the fourth macro, better known as alcohol.

Each macro carries a specific caloric measurement:

• Protein (4 calories per gram)
• Carbohydrate (4 cals/gram)
• Fat (9 cals/gram)
• Alcohol (7 cals/gram)

It’s important to have a concept for how all four of these macronutrients play off of each other in order to help you make progress towards your weight loss goal.

But, remember: calories are still king.

There are successful dieters that only count calories and find amazing results.

There are successful macro counters that achieve fantastic success.

Counting macros is a more involved method that still gets you to the calorie deficit and does so a bit more accurately since you’ll avoid some of the rounding errors found on nutritional labels; food companies can be off by as much as 20-percent on their calorie estimates.

But it adds some extra steps that might make things a bit too difficult to keep up if you’re just starting out.

For the vast majority of us, including my one-on-one online coaching clients, I like to set up a system that marries the two strategies.

In your weight loss journey, concern yourself with calories and protein only.

It doesn’t matter what you do to fulfill the caloric target by the end of the day as long as you hit your calories and then reach a minimum goal for protein.

Why is Protein important for fat loss?

Protein tends to be the most filling of the four macros. When you are dieting, hunger is going to be a natural part of the process, so finding ways to beat those hunger pangs without blowing up your diet is important.

Protein is the only macro that builds and preserves muscle. If you are in a proper caloric deficit and burning more calories than you eat, your body is essentially eating itself for energy. Eating enough protein is a signal to the body to utilize your excess fat stores instead of muscle.

This is the key to looking awesome while you lose the weight.

Ever watch that episode of Friends when Joey gets the meat sweats from eating an entire turkey on Thanksgiving?

Those Joey Tribbiani meat sweats come from the work your body must do in order to digest all that protein. Out of our Big Three macros (protein, carbs and fats) protein has what is called the highest thermic effect of food.

Simply put: your body needs to use extra energy (calories) to properly digest protein than it does for carbs and fats. You’re basically burning calories while eating protein. That’s a win-win.

How much Protein do you need in order to lose weight and keep muscle?

The protein requirements you find from most trainers and magazines is substantially over exaggerated. But, you DO NEED PROTEIN and likely MORE protein than what you’ve been told.

You do not need to eat an entire turkey every day, nor do you need to snack on horse heart in between meals in order to get upwards of 200 grams of protein per day.

My lowest protein recommendation is a range of 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound of your current bodyweight.

More protein (up to about 1.2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight) is okay and won’t cause any issues. Anything more than that is probably not really worth your time.

So going back to our friend, Daenerys, she will track her calories to a 1,500 caloric deficit and her protein with a goal of about 90 to 125 grams per day (0.7 x 125).

She now has 1,150 calories at her disposal (after her 350 calories of protein) that she can play with on a daily basis.

It doesn’t matter if she fills that up with carbs, fats or some variation of her choosing. As long as she is consistently hitting her calorie target of 1,500 calories per day, she will lose weight.

And as long as she hits that minimum protein goal, Daenerys will keep her hard-earned muscle while still burning fat.

STEP 3: How to track calories and protein for weight loss

Once you’ve got your calorie and macro targets down, it’s time to figure out the best method for tracking your calories.

At minimum, you should at least start with a food log. This can be a pen and paper or just a random notes app on your smartphone.

You would simply take the calorie and macronutrient numbers from your favorite foods, jot them down as you eat, and add up your day as you go to make sure you’re within your targets.

Chart everything. Log the time. Log the amount. Track how you feel on this food. Then wash, rinse and repeat.

When you are ready to take it to the digital era, there are a number of apps to help you keep track of foods and their nutritional values:

1. MyFitnessPal –– probably the most popular calorie tracking app (there is absolutely no need to buy the premium option on this, by the way)
2. LoseIt! –– not as popular as MyFitnessPal, but still really effective
3. Fooducate –– the third option that also helps you break down the nutritional labels of those foods you grab from the grocery aisle so you can make sense of what’s going in your belly

There are numerous other tracking apps. Try them all out. Find what works best for your lifestyle and then stay consistent with it every single day.

STEP 4: How to turn this into a lifelong habit for long term weight loss results

The calorie estimate in this guide is a good guess. It might work wonders for you right off of the bat and you hit your weight loss goal without ever having to make a change.

Or it might not be quite the right amount of food and you struggle to lose weight.

Or it might work for a while before the weight loss slows down to a screeching halt.

This final step is the most important factor in finding long-term and long-lasting success along your fat loss journey.

Determine your daily calorie goal from Step 1.

Determine your daily protein goal from Step 2.

Track your daily calories regularly utilizing the guidelines in Step 3.

Then repeat Step 3 consistently and religiously for 3-4 weeks.

The patience is the key here. It gives your body time to adapt to the new way of eating. It gives hormones a chance to figure out how to respond accordingly. It gives you a chance to get into a groove and overcome any beginner errors that are inevitable.

You are aiming for a steady fat loss rate of about 0.5 – 1.5 percent per week:

At 125 pounds, Daenerys should be comfortable losing about 0.625 to 1.875 pounds per week.

If after 3-4 weeks, Daenerys is losing weight at a higher rate than 1.5 percent, she should increase calories by about 100 per day to prevent any staggering hunger or hormonal issues.

Likewise, if she’s not finding the right amount of weight loss after almost a month, she should decrease her calories by about 50-100 per day to boost fat loss.

Only through continued tracking of calories and staying consistent with your eating can you find the right systems for steady fat loss.

This is how the most successful dieters lose the weight and most importantly, keep the weight off for good.

Calorie and Fat Loss FAQs

Q: What about the quality of food?

Yes, there are plenty of studies that are highly accurate about how the quality of what we eat will help us feel better and provide more energy and clarity to perform our day-to-day tasks.

But in the game of losing weight, food composition is not nearly as important as food quantity.

Eating so-called “healthy” foods but not tracking the amounts of those foods might work for a short period of time, but the science will catch up to you eventually.

Once you get into the habit of tracking foods, you’ll notice how quickly things add up. That handful of mixed nuts that you eat in between meals likely carries 200 to 300 calories per pop. That would be 15-20 percent of Daenerys’ daily calorie target.

You’ll definitely feel much better if most of your diet consists of whole, natural, minimally processed foods like lean proteins, vegetables and fruit. Try to make these about 80-percent of your diet.

On the flip side, also know that no diet should be so rigid that you can’t enjoy the random treat. So make those treats about 20-percent of your daily eating.

This allows for the perfect balance of “healthy” and “cheaty” foods so you don’t feel so rigid and restricted that you end up binging on that entire tub of Ben & Jerry’s tonight.

You can eat ice cream. You can have a slice of pizza. You can enjoy a glass of wine. But you need to treat your daily calories as a bank account and realize that when you withdraw funds for the occasional treat it leaves only a certain amount of spending cash per day.

But now that you are tracking your calories consistently, you know just how much room you have to play with. And you can eat all of this stuff and finally look great, feel awesome and perform at a high level.

Q: I’ve got some jiggle around my belly/arm/thigh, will this help me lose that stubborn fat?

Well, kind of.

While the human body is a scientific marvel, we still haven’t figured out how to teach it to respond to our every beck and call, especially in terms of where we would like to burn fat.

So, no you cannot spot burn (or spot reduce) the fat around your midsection with any form of exercise or diet approach.

But, the good news is that the stubborn fat will eventually go away if you just keep plugging and working and tracking consistently.

Patience and consistency are the two hardest parts of this process. But everything pays off in the end if you stay in the game.

Q: What about the famous insta-celeb who brags about “eating intuitively” and “never tracking his/her calories?”

That’s awesome and probably true. But they aren’t telling you the entire picture.

Most of this population will admit that they used to track everything consistently and obsessively before giving that up. In other words, they’ve inherently learned how to keep track of their calories through regular, consistent practice.

Now they can do this without measuring and/or weighing their food and the learned behavior has paid off in the form of “intuitive eating.”

But, for most beginning and long-term successful dieters, this is a flawed and dangerous strategy to encourage.

Ignore that advice and do the real work of tracking your calories every meal of everyday. Eventually, you can get to a place where tracking can come intuitively and you can basically eyeball a meal for the correct calorie and macros.

Until then, know that you are now set for an adventure into the final chapter of your seemingly endless weight loss journey.

Cover Image Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Let’s Chat … 

You’re still here? Awesome. 

I’m here to help you finally bust through the rut and break the chains of chronic dieting. And figuring out the ins and outs of this calorie thing and tracking what you eat can be really confusing.

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com …

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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