Calculation of Daily Calorie Requirements Question?

Red Cortina

g'em wrote: »

Once you've realised that all-important basic equation...

g'em wrote: »

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

Trying to calculate my daily calorie requirements at the minute using the above formula which g'em kindly posted in one of the stickies. Probably a stupid question but can somebody please clarify as to whether you use your body weight or your lean body mass in this formula?

cmyk

Your total bodyweight, it's only a rough calculation really.

EileenG

My personal rule of thumb is that anyone who commutes to a desk job, even if they kick ass in the gym, has a maintenance of around 13 cals per pound of body weight. This is lower than many of the calculators give, but unless you have an active job, chances are that you spend a frightening amount of time sitting on your arse, and it lowers your calorie requirements.