The Smaller You are the Harder it Is

As you may already know if you want to lose weight you have to burn off 3500 calories above and beyond what your caloric need. How many calories you need to maintain your current weight and how many calories you burn in any given exercise depends on your current weight. But, whether you weigh 140 pounds or 250 pounds you still have to burn off those extra 3500 calories to lose a pound.

I was reminded how much easier it is to lose weight when you're heavier this evening when I jumped on the treadmill for a quick work-out. My husband had used the treadmill this weekend and entered his weight into the calorie meter.

I forgot to reset it and was initially shocked to see how fast I seemed to be burning calories compared to normal. Then I remembered that I forgot to set the calorie meter.

I decided to continue my work-out just to see the difference. In the time it took me to burn 250 calories, according to the calorie meter, my husband would have burned 435 calories.

That's a significant different. If the two of us were to eat exactly how many calories we needed to maintain our current weights and did the exact same work-out on the treadmill it would take him 8 days to burn off a pound, whereas it would take me 14 days.