One of the primary reasons many of us seek out workout routines for men to employ in our daily lifestyle is weight management and maintenance. For a few guys, the goal is to gain a little weight, however, for the vast majority of us, we’re interested in losing a few pounds to feel better about ourselves overall and to reduce our risks of weight-related health issues. However, it’s not enough to simply employ one of the programs listed here at Workout Routines for Men to lose weight. In theory, you could exercise for two hours a day, seven days a week, but if you’re consuming 3,500 calories a day and performing an activity that burns 400 calories per hour, well, your workout is probably not going to help you achieve your weight loss goals.

In this article at Workout Routines for Men, we’re going to introduce a formula for calculating your total daily caloric expenditure. By managing your calorie intake and employing workout routines for men which help you boost your caloric expenditure, you will successfully lose weight. This sounds simple and intuitive. We all know how this works, but we don’t often understand what’s going on behind the scenes.

Here’s the general rule of thumb to keep in mind if you want to lose weight:

1 pound of fat = 3,500 calories

This is a critical number. This means that if you want to lose a pound, you need to create a caloric deficit of 3,500 calories. This does not mean you need to fast for a week. That’s not sustainable or healthy weight loss. A healthy way to lose one pound might be to create a caloric deficit of 500 calories a day every day, which equates to 1 pound of weight loss per week (7 days x 500 calories = 3,500 calories). If you want to lose 20 pounds, this can be done over the course of 5 months.

I simply use 500 calories a day as it’s an easy goal to achieve for most of us without creating drastic changes in our lifestyle. Research has shown that for proper weight management goals to be achieved and sustained, you need to have realistic expectations of yourself. Crazy fad diets and crash diets are a sure fire way to burn out well before you achieve your goals and go on a binge at Mickey D’s to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain. You need to be able to have a little fun along the way if you’re going to stick with it. You should be able to enjoy a couple of light beers on the weekend or eat a piece of your daughter’s first birthday cake.

Here’s how you determine how many calories you’re expending in a day. This formula uses a rough estimation of resting energy expenditure (REE) based on your age and body weight. If you want to go to a physiology lab and have your exact numbers tested, you’re welcome to do that as well.

Example:

162 pound man, age 32

162 pounds / 2.2 = 74 kilos

(11.6 x 74 kilos) + 879 = 1,737 calories REE

This simply means that if you sat in a chair all day long, the body of a 162 pound 32-year-old male would burn 1,737 calories. As I said, this is an approximation. Many factors can influence this number such as body composition, genetics, and environmental factors such as caffeine intake or cold weather.

However, now that we have our REE, we can add our exercise calories in. Many exercise machines allow you to enter your weight and will give you an approximation of calories burned. If not, you can do an internet search for “calories burned calculator” and get a list of your favorite workout routines for men and how many calories they burn per hour based on your current weight.

Let’s say you spend 30 minutes per day on an elliptical trainer at moderate intensity. This activity burns 835 calories per hour for the 162 pound male. So 30 minutes gives us 417 calories burned from exercise.

1,737 calories REE + 417 calories from exercise = 2,154 calories burned

I typically add an additional 10% to this as we aren’t completely sedentary during the day. We walk about the office, shuttle kids in and out of car seats, or maybe do a couple of projects around the house.

2,154 calories x 1.1 = 2,369 calories expended

So, now we can see that in order to create a caloric deficit of 500 calories in a day, we need to limit our caloric intake by that number.

2,369 – 500 = 1,869 calories consumed

This is completely achievable by selecting health, low-fat foods. If you don’t think you can limit yourself this much and create a deficit of 500 calories, try 250 calories. You’ll still lose one pound every two weeks at this rate.

You begin to see how important physical exercise becomes in creating this deficit. If you are setting weight loss goals, it’s critical to incorporate workout routines for men into your daily lifestyle.