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Whats your daily calorie requirement?
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20-02-2006 10:14am#1Once you've realised that all-important basic equation..
Gain weight = eat more calories
Lose weight = eat less calories
(its amazing how something that simple still eludes people
)
..the next step to properly manage your food intake is to figure out exactly what your daily calorific needs are. Once you know this, you know how much food your body *really* needs and can add/ subtract foods as required. Basically, in order to succeed, you need to take the guess work out of it and know that everything that goes into your mouth and into your belly needs to be there.
The information and equation shown here is taken from The Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition but isn't just applicable to atheletes, it shoes the calorie requirements for everyone.
1) So.. first off you need to figure out your resting metabolic rate (RMR) or the calories your body requires just to exist if you were lying down for 24 hours:
Age Men
10-18 (body weight (kg) * 17.5) + 651
19-30 (bw (kg) * 15.3) + 679
31-60 (bw (kg) * 11.6) + 879
Age Women
10-18 (bw (kg) * 12.2) + 746
19-30 (bw (kg) * 14.7) + 496
31-60 (bw (kg) * 8.7) + 829
e.g for me, a 72kg 26 yo female its (72*14.7) +496 = 1554
2) Then calculate your lifestyle daily energy needs:
Activity level
mostly seated or standing RMR * 1.4
regular walking or equivalent RMR * 1.7
generally physically active RMR * 2.0
again for me its 1554 * 1.4 = 2176
3) Then estimate your daily exercise expenditure by working out how much exercise you do a week and divide by seven for an average daily value:
Weekly I do 4 hours of weights = approx 1536 cals
2 hours low intensity cardio = 600 cals
2 hours high intensity cario = 1200 cals
Total = 3336 / 7 = 477 cals
So add that to my daily energy needs.. 2176 + 477 = 2653
My maintenance calorie needs every day are 2653 cals/ day.
For weight loss: I need to reduce my calories by about 15% a day:
2653 * 0.85 = 2255 cals/ day
For weight gain: Increase your calorie intake by 20%:
2653 * 1.2 = 3184
Of course most importantly, make sure you meet your calorie needs from nurittious healthy sources. If you need help with that.. well see here
Hope thats of help!0
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no worries Sleepy, really glad you're feeling the benefits- once you make a few changes to your diet its hard to see how you could ever revert back to bad habits (although treats every so often are not only good, they're encouragedSleepy wrote:Just wanted to add my thanks g'em, I've found your nutritional info here to be brilliant and I'm seeing results from my application of your advice so thanks!
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That's weird - it says that for a 5'4 25 year old girl who does no exercise and sits at a desk all day, I need to take in 1911 calories to maintain my weight? I've done calculations before which have put me closer to 1400 a day to maintain my weight.
That said, these calculations are pointless until I kick my sugar addiction 0 -
Are you using your total body weight or your lean body weight (minus the weight of your bodyfat)? You're probably meant to use lean body weight.rainglow wrote:That's weird - it says that for a 5'4 25 year old girl who does no exercise and sits at a desk all day, I need to take in 1911 calories to maintain my weight? I've done calculations before which have put me closer to 1400 a day to maintain my weight.
That said, these calculations are pointless until I kick my sugar addiction0 -
Transform wrote:However this does not address my point which is while most people understand that high GI foods, vegetable oils, junk foods etc are really a no brainer when it comes to adjusting nutrition this forum seems to have evolved and with that change comes refinement for those whishing to learn more.
So once more ala weight watchers where a claorie is just a calorie e.g. points taken in one day, i would argue that there needs to be some emphasis on nutrition individuallity.
Interesting point - onwards then!
OK, the 'is a calorie just a calorie' question? Well, basically 'yes' in the strictest sense. In other words, if you have a calorie deficit you will lose weight, while a calorie surplus leads to weight gain. However, there are a few more variables that we can play with to optimise our body compositions other than merely our calorie intake (which g'em’s first post deals with very well, I got a pretty accurate calorie recommendation anyway). Why do we need to optimise – don’t we just create a calorie deficit/surplus and that’s it?
Well, if you look at the body, calories come in, waste comes out, and the difference is the net nutrients we take in from our diet. This can either be used for energy or stored, and here lies the crux of the problem.
If we have an excess of calories, in total we need to store more calories than we need to burn for energy, so our bodies are in an anabolic state (we need to be anabolic to make muscle, we also need to be anabolic to make fat – it’s all anabolism, and does not refer only to building muscle. It’s a state where the net metabolic effect is to create new tissues). We can store our nutrients in different ways; muscle, muscle glycogen & adipose fat being of most concern to us gym rats. Usually we want to maximise muscle gain, and minimise fat gain.
If we have a calorie deficit, in total we are burning more calories than we are taking in, so we can use dietary sourced nutrients for energy, or we can use up our stored energy, and here the same problem rises again – do we take fat, glycogen or muscle? This state is referred to as ‘catabolism’. Being in a catabolic state is therefore necessary to lose body fat, but we want to do it while losing as little muscle as possible. Therefore, we are looking to manipulate our energy storage partitioning at all times. Our main dietary concerns*, therefore, to affect this manipulation beyond a simple ‘calorie is a calorie’ approach will be;
1] Our macronutrient split (protein/carbs/fats/alcahol)
2] Our macronutrient timing
*You may wonder why I didn't include our daily calorie expenditure, as that seems like the most obvious parameter to play with apart from calorie intake - however I believe that the most successful manipulation of this parameter comes by manipulating our macronutrient variables [1] & [2] above, as well as just consciously increasing energy expenditure.
How can energy storage partitioning manipulation work? Well… it has too! Otherwise there would be no point bulking up, cutting up, doing much at all really – our overall compositions would never change and we would just get bigger or smaller. We know this isn’t true, Ronnie Coleman can carry 290lbs on his frame while having miniscule amounts of bodyfat. “But he manipulates his hormone levels!”. Damn straight he does! – and that’s exactly what we have to do (except in a less direct, more legal & less dangerous way
, with our food & exercise). What hormones are we primarily concerned about? Well, the human endocrine system is pretty complex, and hormones have many ‘levels’ of effects and inter-effects with other hormones and so on, but basically, when manipulating our diet we are interested in insulin levels (& leptin & testosterone if you’re ‘hardcore’!).
Insulin is one of the most anabolic hormones you’ve got. Its function is to open up cell walls and let nutrients in through them. Insulin rises in response to all food intakes, but some more than others (usually carbs more so than protein or fat). You’ve heard of the post-workout shake? Why is everyone in such a hurry to get all that stuff into themselves so soon after working out – it’s because intense physical exercise spikes insulin levels. You’ve heard of the GI diet? How does it help keep you slim? – low GI foods usually (but not always) elicit a slow steady insulin response, and so stop your body going into ultra-‘store store store’ mode. Why are the majority of westerners overweight? – take a look at the back of one of those pre-made dinners next time you’re in the supermarket. Lots of carbs (highly processed carbs that will jump your insulin levels) coupled with lots of fat and minimal protein. Great! Open up the cell walls, and flood your bloodstream with fats and no protein. Follow that with a blood sugar crash to minimise physical activity. Most processed foods have pretty similarly bad macronutrient profiles.
Insulin sensitivity varies from person to person, and can be affected by diet and lifestyle (yes you can turn yourself into a fat-prone person by neglecting your health, and in extreme cases go the whole hog and give yourself type II diabetes, where your insulin production shuts down or your body just quits listening to it). In general, endomorphs (the easy gainers) insulin response is poor. That means they get a peak of insulin rather than a steady response to any remotely fast acting carbohydrate. This means that they will frequently have high levels of insulin and therefore will pack on both muscle and fat very easily. They can also suffer from blood sugar crashes if ingesting a lot of carbs or simple carbs as the insulin response is so high that the blood sugar is swept into body-fat storage very rapidly leaving levels below normal fasted blood sugar levels. Ectomorphs (hard gainers) have more trouble getting their insulin up, they typically become more active in response to ingesting a lot of carbs or simple carbs and have such high metabolisms that the blood sugar doesn't stay elevated for long. Their generally lower levels of insulin mean they have more difficulty putting on fat or muscle. Most people sit somewhere in between those two extremes.
Just so you know, leptin is a hormone whose level is linked to the amount of adipose tissue (fat) you’ve got. It makes it easy for an obese person to lose fat quickly while making it increasingly difficult as you approach lower levels of bodyfat. Testosterone, does a zillion things, but one of it’s effects is to prioritise muscle retention over fat retention, and muscle gain over fat gain, so for men especially, it’s a good idea to keep this guy happy. Anyway, lets keep moving – onto the basics of food macronutrients.0 -
Basics 101;
A kcal is a measure of the energy in food. The food is oxidised (burned) in a closed environment and the total energy given off is recorded. 1 kcal will raise 1 kilogram of water by 1 deg celcius. 'kcal' and 'Cal' can be used interchangeably but are both 1000 times greater than 'cal' with a small 'c', just so you know .
The typical breakdown of macronutrient energy quantities is;
1 gram of protein gives you 4 kcals
1 gram of carbohydrate gives you 4 kcals
1 gram of fat gives you 9 kcals
(& 1 gram of alcahol gives you 7 kcals, but it does worse than that in terms of fat loss & muscle gain - I'm not going to address it again in this post)
These values are pretty good estimates, although there are different types of proteins,carbs and fats which will give slightly different amounts of energy so they may not always be exact.
Designing your Diet;
When making out a diet, start with total calories, then protein, then carbs and fats together. Why? Well, the 40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fats rule will work well for alot of people, but consider a 220lb male bulking on 7,000kcal/day. Taking 40% of that from protein would mean eating 700g protein a day (or about 3 grams/lb LBM), which is probably excessive. So start with the basic rule of 1g/lb LBM (one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass) and increase as needed. People who just don’t train very hard may need to decrease as needed.
Calories;
Already covered by g’em. My diet is so similar form one week to the next that it’s very easy for me to increase it or decrease it if I feel I need to. Anyway;
Sample person: T-ha, 200lb male, LBM = 180lbs (values rounded off to keep calculations simple )
Maintenance Calories: 3,326kcal (according to g'ems post)
Protein;
When protein enters the body it is denatured in the stomach (peptide bonds are broken) and the aminos enter the bloodstream. They are either used or broken down in the liver. Aminos contain nitrogen, and once broken down they create a positive nitrous balance in the blood which the body can use to manufacture it's own proteins or form ammonia and excrete it in urine. Therefore, assuming you're properly hydrated, your urine can be a good indicator of how much protein you're getting. If it is coloured and smells strongly (think public toilet smell
) then you don't need the amount of protein you're eating and can cut back.
Calculating requirements: multiply my lean body mass by the number of grams of protein I want per pound (1.5g/lb in my case);
LBM (lbs) X 1.5 (g) :
180 X 1.5 = 270g protein/day
This is about 1,080kcal (270g X 4kcal ) of energy from protein, which is 33% of my total daily requirements. This leaves 2,246kcal (67%) to make up with fats and carbs.
The Fat/Carbohydrate Split;
This is where things get hairy, so bear with me. The ideal ratio here, is individual to me and my requirements for that day. It could be due to my ancestry, it could be my old childhood dietary habits, it could be a million things that have affected how I now process food but basically I have to tweak this for myself. I have 2,246kcals to play with. Three ways I could split this, which would represent the extremities of reason, would be;
1] 270g Protein (33%) 430g Carbohydrate (52%) 55g Fat (15%)
2] 270g Protein (33%) 390g Carbohydrate (47%) 74g Fat (20%)
3] 270g Protein (33%) 308g Carbohydrate (37%) 110g Fat (30%)
Well there’s a considerable difference there in those three options, so why would I choose one over the other? One of the main considerations is my insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance that I covered earlier. I’m basically a meso-endomorph (the fairly heavy, wide guy) and I know from experience that my response to carbohydrates is not great. For example, although it’s not an exact test, if I eat a large bowl of pasta I will fall asleep – that’s not a good sign for handling carbohydrates well. For this reason I will usually go with something between options [2] and [3], i.e. higher in fat and lower in carbs. I know this works for me because I have played with the options before and this combination keeps me the most energetic for longest on the same number of calories . Therefore my calorie expenditure is higher and I can stay leaner on the same food intake.
I highlighted that sentence because it contains the key to body composition management. Find your sweet-point. This is the combination that keeps you the most energetic from day to day. Once you have this, then variations for weight gain/weight loss/weight maintenance/summer diet v’s winter diet/etc. become a doddle, a matter of tweaking. You will often hear veterans of the weightlifting/fitness scene say that they don’t work out any of this diet stuff out and that they just eat. That’s simply not true – they just don’t do it consciously, it’s become ingrained either through working it out initially or through years of tweaking (or both). They just know their own bodies. It’s the same way that Bruce Lee first had to realise that a punch was a lot more than just a punch, and required a lot of skill and practice to do it correctly, before finally realising that a punch was just a punch.
Anyway, enough Brucey waffle. In general, endomorphs do well on higher fat/lower carb diets, ectomorphs will do well on high carb diets, and everyone should steer clear of highly processed carbs and refined sugars.0 -
Macronutrient Timing;
One year a go, I was fat.
Now, I am not.
Today I eat close to twice the amount (calories) of food I used to eat when I was fat.
Make sense? Of course!
T-ha’s old diet (see if you can spot the mistakes kiddies);
Breakfast: none, maybe coffee
11 AM: Croissant & more coffee
1 PM: Giant baked potato with melted cheese & garlic sauce. Bowl of small battered chicken balls with ketchup. Can of coke.
4 PM: Sandwiches (white bread, ready made jobbies)
8 PM: Spaghetti Bolognese
12 Midnight: Pack of Koka noodles, on white buttered bread with ribena drink.
Snacks: Not that many, but the occasional binge at random times + a fair bit of beer on the weekends. The occasional 20” pizza with joejoem the ectomorphic so and so.
I won’t go into the details of what is wrong with that, it’s been done on this forum and others, but I will go into how I optimise my intake timing so I can now eat loads without the chub.
1] Hang on to your muscle! That means keep the dietary amino acids coming – all the time. That is done by taking in protein regularly, hence the whole 6 meal a day thingy. Generally you want slow releasing sources, like solid food sources or casein protein supplements. The obvious exception to this rule is peri-workout when you want to flood your system with aminos to take advantage of your workout insulin raise. For this purpose, whey is excellent. Protein also is slightly thermogenic, so it actually takes more energy to digest it than other macronutrients.
2] Consume complex carbohydrates and minimise your intake of simple sugars. This will keep insulin levels steady and leave more carbs available to be burned as fuel rather than storing them as fat. The nice side effect of this is that you will be more energetic throughout the day rather than having cycles of highs and crashes. By using the 6 meals a day system, you also avoid taking in too many carbs in one go and so stay light and energetic all day (avoid carb crashing!). The obvious exception to this ‘complex carb’ rule is again during and after your workout when you need the carbs in your blood quickly to give you energy during your workout and replenish muscle glycogen and maintain elevated insulin levels afterwards. I take these workout drinks and stuff in addition to my usual 6 meals so my total daily intake is basically cycled depending on my activity levels for the day.
3] Eat carbs when you know you’ll use them! Nobody gets fat because they eat too much oats in the morning. Plan your carbs to start with decent levels at breakfast and taper off in the early evening if you’re active during the day and not in the evening. The principal thing keeping me overweight before was the late night carb-ups. Noodles on bread! What was I thinking! . Now most of my late evening carbs are from vegetables.
A heavy workout requires carbs too, high-GI PostWO shake, followed an hour later by a high protein/high carbohydrate meal to speed up recovery. Some people like to have a pre-workout shake, but to be honest, I see the pre-workout time slot as an opportunity to get in some high carb meal I couldn’t usually have, so I like to have a solid meal (possibly not optimal, but hey – sue me ).
4] Make your high carb meals high in fibre too! This will dull the insulin response to the meal + it’s generally just good for you. Actually, screw it – just make your whole diet high in fibre. The obvious exception is post-workout.
5] Eat healthy fats! These will keep your hormones in check for starters (and we saw how important those are) and will also give energy, especially in the late evenings when I’m starting to run low on carbs. Fish oil has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity over time, making you less likely to pack on a belly. Eating fats does not equate to being fat. In some study that I can’t find now, one group of people added in a portion of nuts to their diet while another group went on a low fat diet. The group eating the nuts lost fat and gained lean muscle, the low fat diet group put on weight (fat) and lost lean muscle. The only thing I would warn about with dietary fats, is that you avoid them when you know your insulin will be high. That means that your post workout drink is strictly protein & carbs only, as is the meal directly afterwards (obviously you don’t have to go totally nuts on this but keep the fat content down). This idea evolved into the idea that all meals should be split into protein & carbs or protein & fats. I don’t agree with this idea, since most of our meals will use complex carbohydrates and high fibre content to keep insulin levels steady and since adding fats to a meal will likely dull the insulin response of the carbohydrates anyway, but just watch it after a heavy gym session.
Putting it all Together!;
Now I want 6 basic meals, using all the previous info to come up with my diet. This is just an example, using my own figures, of how you could put it together;
Protein; 270g divided by six gives 45/45/45/45/45/45.
Carbs; 370g, start big & taper gives 100/80/90/70/20/10.
Fats; 85g, divided to allow gentle taper of calories in the evening 10/15/10/20/20/10.
Gives;
Breakfast: 45g Protein, 100g Carbohydrate, 10g Fat
Mid-morning: 45g Protein, 80g Carbohydrate, 15g Fat
Lunch: 45g Protein, 90g Carbohydrate, 10g Fat
Afternoon: 45g Protein, 70g Carbohydrate, 20g Fat
Dinner: 45g Protein, 20g Carbohydrate, 20g Fat
Evening: 45g Protein, 10g Carbohydrate, 10g Fat
OK, that about does it for my ramblings for today (I should really do some work sometime???). If you think you need some more info…
…you don’t, quit makin’ excuses
© T-ha 20060 -
t-ha wrote:Are you using your total body weight or your lean body weight (minus the weight of your bodyfat)? You're probably meant to use lean body weight.
Total body weight - I don't think I actually have any lean body weight, there's nothing lean about me 0 -
t-ha wrote:but hey – sue me
I will
haha only joking, brilliant post! sheds more light on the whole " what should i be eating before and after ". Good stuff t-ha 0 -
t-ha wrote:Interesting point - onwards then!....t-ha wrote:Basics 101;
A kcal is a measure of the energy in food....t-ha wrote:Macronutrient Timing...
ooh, such music to my ears... nice one, and good on you for taking the time out to post all that. fair play to ye dude, some quality information there.
Between Dragan's motivational waffle, your indepth analysis of the intricacies of dietary requirements and my no-nonsense -and really quite basic -approach to diets for dummies there's surely a six-figure book deal between the three of us
At least it deserves a sticky?!!? 0 -
g'em wrote:Between Dragan's motivational waffle, your indepth analysis of the intricacies of dietary requirements and my no-nonsense -and really quite basic -approach to diets for dummies there's surely a six-figure book deal between the three of us
Too late my dears already copy pasted everything and the books is on the way to the printers.
T-ha what a post:D I think you've just posted more then i ever have in this forum keep it up.0 -
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Thanks guys
...sounds good :rolleyes: . Especially if I get fired for spending all day on the internet.g'em wrote:Between Dragan's motivational waffle, your indepth analysis of the intricacies of dietary requirements and my no-nonsense -and really quite basic -approach to diets for dummies there's surely a six-figure book deal between the three of us
I'll answer that with...amazingemmet wrote:Too late my dears already copy pasted everything and the books is on the way to the printers.t-ha wrote:© T-ha 20060 -
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Nah - in fact I was slightly worried about just this kind of reaction when I posted. It was really just in response to Transform's observation that some people have been on the boards for a long time and maybe want further info.Seraphina wrote:/me cries
i dont understand half of whats going on here, and i'll put heavy bets on that being the reason i cant loose any more weight
The truth is, accumulating information doesn't make your work-out goals come any closer, only the actual work you're putting in does. I have a friend who looks fantastic, muscular & jacked - basically like how most guys want to look when they start working out, and the guy doesn't even take a post-workout shake. He just eats clean, lots of protein & works out really hard and consistently.
Of all of the stuff I've learned about diet and exercise (and not blowing my own trumpet, but what I post here is much compressed, tip-of-the-iceberg stuff) it always tends to come back to the same basic principles. Eat clean, eat enough, get enough sleep, work out hard. The body has a knack of taking care of the complicated stuff by itself. G'em called her own advice 'basic', but i would say a better description is 'fundamental'. It's the stuff that really matters - everything else is tweaking and optimising. I personally try very hard to work out hard and consistently because otherwise I could be in serious danger of becoming an information overloaded muppet who just 'talks the talk'. I think my level of knowledge is quite likely too much for my modest level of training (I've posted some of my stats on this forum - I'm making no secrets about it - I'm smaller and weaker than many people on this board ).
Basically, don't stress about it. Work hard & eat well and you won't be able to help lookin' good.0 -
aww!! like t-ha said, don't stress the little things, just take care of the important stuff and the rest will fall into place. And just like him, the stuff I post about has come from a lot of information gathering, reading and actively taking an interest in diet and nutrition books and journals.Seraphina wrote:i dont understand half of whats going on here, and i'll put heavy bets on that being the reason i cant loose any more weight
Stick to the basics and ge them right before worrying about the more complicated stuff- are you eating 5-6 good, healthy meals a day? Have you cut out junk and processed foods from your diet? Do you make a concious effort to eat a varied, balanced diet? Do you sleep well? Do you keep alcohol to a minimum? Do you exercise a minimum of four hours a week?
Once you have those basic steps mastered its easy to take it to a more advanced level, you just need to make a bit of effort to educate yourself. Believe me, I've spent years folowing dieting fads and quick fix workouts but now that I actually know what I'm talking I know that its these fundamental prinicples that will produce more results than anything else.
As far as your diet is concerned- wholemeal rice, pasta, bread, loooaads of veggies, fruit, nuts, pulses, lean meats, fish, only good fats. Can't go wrong. And I don't know if you saw this other post, but follow the 'shopping list' and you'll always eat well.
So keep reading, don't get too overwhelmed, eat clean, train hard, play harder 0
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