how to work out calories for maintenance ?

scottie pippen

what is the best way to work out (roughly) how many calories & how much protein I need for maintenance

I have heard that you need 1gram of protein per lb of body weight?

Thanks

scottie pippen

Bump Please

Liamo08

scottie pippen wrote: »

what is the best way to work out (roughly) how many calories & how much protein I need for maintenance

I have heard that you need 1gram of protein per lb of body weight?

Thanks

You should find what you're looking for here - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055963342

And specifically this post:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50956807&postcount=12

Bottle_of_Smoke

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/

enter details here.

It will give you your bmr - the amount of calories you consume by just being alive.

When you know that you can work out how many calories you'll need:

To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows:

If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2

If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375

If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55

If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725

If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

rubadub

In a similar thread recently I said

rubadub wrote: »

These (calculators) are all just estimates, if you think it is too much or too little than adjust it to what you think it should be, and see if you get results and just adjust accordingly.

People fuel their cars this way so why not your body. If your car ran out of petrol every friday going to work you would learn to put more in on the monday, you would not sit about saying "but my calculations say I should be getting this many miles from my car", it is unnecessary theoretical calculations when you can see the real results empirically.

Calories have nothing to do with humans, 1 calorie increases 1 gram of water by 1degree Celsius, that is an exact repeatable science and how it is defined. You will hear that people will lose/gain 1lb of fat with 3500kcal, but this is only an estimate, yet some treat it like exact science. If you ate 3500kcal of uncooked rice you would get less usable energy from it than 3500kcal of overcooked rice. Also 3500kcal of alcohol will probably have less of an effect on your fat levels than 3500kcal of sugar. In one study prisoners were overfed and came to a plateau of fat gain, some were eating over 10,000kcal per day and unable to gain more fat.

Using calories as a guide to energy for humans is just one method, and it is fairly OK. You could similarly use weight or volume as a guide, like say "the average man needs 1kilo/1litre of food per day" -this will usually be open to more variation than calories if you just eat 1kg of food which gives lots of energy usable by humans. -but just like calories you could empirically work out what weight/volume of food in your usual diet will result in your required 1lb per week weight loss.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Ah definitely rubadub, nothing in this game is gonna be airtight, i think the bmr x activity gives you a good idea thoguh