How Can I Lose 10 Pounds?

"How fast can I lose 10lbs if I burn off 500 calories by running 4-5 miles a day, and eating 1200 calories?"

I get questions like this a lot via my fitness business.

I'll give you a rough guideline but I can't answer this question
with 100% accuracy because I don't know your metabolic rate (how
many calories you burn during a normal day), the type of food you
eat, how often you eat, how much sleep you get, etc.)

So let's look at some examples. If 1,700 calories a day keeps
your weight the same and you reduce your caloric intake, you'll
lose roughly 1 pound per week.

There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. 7 days per week x
500 calories per day equals 3,500 calories per week. So, if you
added the running that burned 500 calories per day, this would be
another pound lost per week.

Now, keep a couple of things in mind. 1,200 calories per day may
be too low, which will cause your metabolism to slow down. This
is how people who go on a diet end up gaining all the weight back.

In addition, if you are not doing any weight training, about half
of that weight lost will be muscle, which will also slow down your
metabolism, again causing weight rebound and putting you in a worse
situation than before you lost the weight.

This is why I said roughly one pound per week up above. A pound of
muscle is only 600 calories and since you'll be losing muscle and
fat, you may lose more than a pound by burning 3,500 calories in a
week.

In addition, your body shape won't change. You'll just be a smaller
version of you, or what I call skinny fat.

You should add some weight training to your running plan, 2 to 3
times per week.

I would also reduce the amount of running you are doing, both in
number of days you run, and how far you run each day. Consider only
running that distance 2 or 3 days per week.

Consider performing high intensity interval training instead of the
running on 2 other days per week.

In addition, keep track of your calories. You only want to lose 1 - 2
pounds per week (you may lose more in the beginning. And keep in mind
that how you look is more important than the scale. If you lose 10
pounds of fat and add 10 pounds of muscle, you'll way the same as you
do now but you'll look a thousand times better.

You'll also be smaller as a pound of muscle does not take up as much
space as a pound of fat.

I hope this helps.

Good luck! I'd love to hear your results and questions (see below).