Do you know how many calories you need per day? Find it now!
Health FitnessMost people are clueless when it comes to calculating exactly how many calories their body needs in relation to their diets. Most are content to look at the two recommended guidelines that the FDA requires on labels like litmus. This may work in a perfect world where everyone does the exact same things every day and has the exact same metabolic rate, but in the real world, there just isn’t one standard number that’s good for everyone.
About a year ago, I was having trouble losing weight. This was despite my regular diet consisting of nothing but fruits, vegetables, and protein and the fact that I did strength training and cardio regularly. I decided that what I needed was help and I consulted with a personal trainer. He wanted me to write down everything I ate for the week and at the end of the week, we would sit down and analyze the data to find if there was a visible culprit.
Of course, I complied and at the end of the week I sat down with my coach. He looked at him and what he told me he completely floored me.
you are not eating
enough…..
Surprised? I was. And that’s the point I’m making. To lose weight effectively, you need to understand the daily amount of calories (energy) your body needs and after make that your base point. We all know that if you eat too much, you will gain weight. However, if you eat too little, you may be fooling yourself by losing the optimal weight.
So how do you go about finding out how much your body needs? The good news is that there is a simple formula for this. By the way, it is known as BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate. The BMR takes into account many different variables that will be different from person to person.
- age
- Actual weight
- Height
How to determine your BMR:
66+(6.23 x your weight)+(12.7 x your height in inches)-(6.8 x your age)
Now this number is basically the number of calories you need to just exist…meaning existing if you were to lie in bed all day and do nothing. I guess you do more than just hang out in bed all day, though, right? So this is where you can get a rough estimate of how many calories you can expect to burn daily. You take your BMR number and then estimate how active you are. There is a chart for this…
- 1.0 – Sedentary (doing nothing all day)- This means that everyone got out of bed in a while to have a drink. Most of us would not fall into this category.
- 1.2 – Very light activity If you have a day job and don’t do any physical activity after work, you probably fall into this category.
- 1.4 – Light activity– If you have a desk job and walk after work then this is the number you want.
- 1.6 – Moderate activity If you have a desk job and do any physical activity, like cleaning the house, IN ADDITION to exercising, then this number is for you.
- 1.8 – High activity- If you have a physical job (such as construction) or are training very hard (such as exercising twice a day, then you can choose this number.
- 2.0 – extreme activity- This number is reserved for athletes mainly.
Once you’ve established what type of activity you’re into, simply multiply this number by your BMR and you’ll get an estimated caloric expenditure for the day.
So what does this have to do with diet?
Easy. If you want to lose weight, simply take your total caloric expenditure for the day and cut 500 calories from your diet. By doing so, you’ll easily lose a pound and a half a week, which is a great number to lose weight and keep it off. Happy diet!