Don’t know how to start your diet? Use a BMR calculator!

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Starting a dieting regime can be confusing, especially if you have never done this before. Here is some useful advice on how to approach your diet.

First of all you need to assess your daily calorie intake and your actual daily calorie requirement. This is easier said than done. Are you consuming too many calories per day? Obviously yes, otherwise you would not be thinking about dieting, right?

How much is enough and how much is too much?

Your body is a machine and it needs fuel to operate. Consuming foods and drinks will provide your organism with adequate calories.

If you happen to consume too many calories your body will not be able to spend them all. In that case it will store them for later use and you do not want that. This is how extra body fat is formed. When there is an excessive amount of calories available and your body cannot burn them all it will store those extra calories in a form of fat tissue. So if too much is too much what would be the recommended calorie intake per day? Let’s see.

Your total daily calorie expenditure consists of your BMR value plus the amount of calories burned when doing other activities (e.g. walking around, walking up or down the stairs etc). If you are working out you need to count in those calories too.

What exactly is BMR?

BMR (short for basal metabolic rate) is the amount of calories your body needs every day in order to maintain vital life functions such as breathing, thinking and proper operation of internal organs.In other words if you were to stay in bed the whole day you would still burn a certain amount of calories – also known as basal metabolic rate.

Your BMR is determined by your total lean mass, especially muscle mass, because lean mass requires a lot of energy to maintain. Anything that reduces lean mass will reduce your BMR too.

Basically, you first need to calculate your basal metabolic rate (also known as BMR) and then adjust your eating habits.

How can you calculate your BMR?

BRM can be calculated using following formula:

Imperial BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.8 x age in year )
Metric BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )

Alternatively, and more convenient, you can use an online BMR calculator to obtain your value.

Do the simple math

Now that you have calculated your BMR it is time to assess your total daily caloric needs. Since it is hard to accurately calculate that value let us make the following assumptions (Harris–Benedict equation).

Daily activity Needed calories
Little to no exercise Daily kilocalories needed = BMR x 1.2
Light exercise (1–3 days per week) Daily kilocalories needed = BMR x 1.375
Moderate exercise (3–5 days per week) Daily kilocalories needed = BMR x 1.55
Heavy exercise (6–7 days per week) Daily kilocalories needed = BMR x 1.725
Very heavy exercise (twice per day, extra heavy workouts) Daily kilocalories needed = BMR x 1.9

Again, to avoid miscalculation use a BMR calculator and simply select activity level as the modifier.

Adjust your eating habits

After all the math is done it is time to adjust your eating habits. What does that mean? It means you have to start paying attention to what you eat and when you eat. If your daily caloric expenditure is 2000 calories than for a successful weight loss you need to consume about 80% of that value.

Why consuming less than your recommended caloric intake? Because by eating less you force your body to compensate the loss of energy by burning your extra fat – this is where the excessive calories “go” when you eat too much (eating at a caloric surplus). If your daily caloric expenditure is 2000 calories and you only obtain 1600 calories by consuming food (80%) you force your body to burn 400 calories of fat to balance things out. And this is actually the whole rocket science of weight loss. Calories in minus calories out must be a negative number in order for your to lose weight effectively. For majority of people this equation works!

Counting calories from food

It’s a dull job, but someone has to do it. Write down and calculate calories from all foods that you have consumed in 1 day. Every food that you buy in a supermarket or a local store has a label on it and on that label there is information on how much calories that particular food consists of.

Calories in, calories out

Now that you have both your calorie intake calculated and your calorie expenditure estimated it is time to calculate the result. Calorie expenditure minus calorie intake must be a negative number. An example: if you have consumed 2000 calories and burned 2500 calories in one day that means you are 500 calories in minus. In ideal case all of these 500 calories came from your stored reserve – your body fat.

Since 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories it means you have just burnt off 56 grams (2 oz) of body fat. Not bad for a start. Now go for it! Burn that extra fat and make it work for you!

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