If you're looking to loose some weight I've had this conversation with a few people. It rests on the idea that the the recommended Caloric intake of 2000 Cal/da

If you're looking to loose some weight I've had this conversation with a few people. It rests on the idea that the the recommended Caloric intake of 2000 Cal/day is likely wrong for you. It might be right but for a lot of people it's probably off. tl;dr if the above doesn't apply to you. Annoyed by increasing workouts and limited results I took to data cataloging my metabolism to find weak points in my diet. What I found was that I burn less than 2000 Cal in one day when I'm just doing my regular day to day activities. Meaning if I eat the typical diet I gain weight steadily until my mass is actually consuming all those extra calories and I'm slightly overweight. Procedure: Take about 1 week of data, don't change your lifestyle for that week do what you normally would do. Your body responds in about a 1 day cycle and you need about a week to get a clear trend. Record your weight/date-time once to twice a day at the same times, like morning and evening. Preferably without too much clothing so it doesn't throw off the numbers. Use some app or a notebook and note every single thing you eat, and I mean everything. You eat a peanut that counts, you have coffee that counts, all of it. Record any excess exercise you do as well, like a 20min run or biking. Things you do as extra to work out. Compute the Calories this is worth. End of the week plot your weight and draw a trend line, the slope/day is what you want to know how many pounds per day are you gaining or loosing. Compute the Calories per day you ate minus the calories burned on exercise, and get the Average. Hopefully you didn't eat wildly different amounts each day that can throw things off a bit. "3500 calories equals one pound of body weight" => compute the calories from the slope (lb/day) computed earlier if it's positive subtract that from the average caloric intake, if it's negative add it. This is you're baseline Caloric burn rate per day. Meaning if you do your day to day stuff and eat this much you will neither gain or loose weight. If you're trying to loose weight and don't have time or interest in working out you can just cut anywhere from 100-300-500 Cal from your day to day diet and it'll slowly go down. More than 500 Cal is typically difficult unless you balance it with also working out. Anything over a deficit of 1000 Cal is usually considered unsafe. The only reason for cardio is to strengthen your heart and keep your blood vessels clear (and so you don't get winded going up stairs), but a 20+min run 2-3 times a week or even some sport activity can solve that.