Did you know that you burn calories even when you sleep? Your basal metabolic rate is the number of calories your body requires in order to live and just lie in bed. This is the number of calories required to keep your heart beating, your brain working and your respiratory system pumping. (1)
You may have noticed that it becomes harder with each passing year to eat whatever you want and still stay slim. This is because your basal metabolic rate slows as you age, approximately 2 to 4% every decade. So a person who is sedentary will find that their basal metabolic rate can slow up to 12% between the age of 30 and 50! This is a significant number of calories which now cannot be eaten if you would like to maintain your weight.
However, depriving yourself of calories will also slow your metabolic rate significantly and you will find that it is even easier to gain weight. For this reason weight-loss experts never recommend that anyone eats less than 1200 calories per day.
There are several calculators on the Internet in which you can plug-in your height, weight, age and gender and it will give you a generic basal metabolic rate, or number of calories required to keep you alive. Using that number and comparing it to the number of calories that you already eat each day and the number of calories that you burn in exercise, you can calculate the number of calories you require in order to lose approximately 1 pound a week (a very safe weight loss regimen).
It requires 3500 calories for 1 pound of body weight. This means that in order to gain a pound a week you have to eat 3500 calories more than you already do. The reverse is also true, you must eat 3500 calories less per week if you would like to lose 1 pound per week.
For example, if your basal metabolic rate is 1300 calories at the ideal weight you want to achieve, you burn off 250 calories in exercise each day and you normally eat 1800 calories per day to maintain your body weight of 200 pounds: 1300 plus 250 equals 1550 calories per day that you are allowed to eat to attain your ideal weight.
If you were eating 1800 calories per day without exercise you now only have to decrease your calorie intake by 250 calories in order to lose 1 pound per week. Without exercise you would have to decrease your calorie intake by 500 calories per day, which can be a significant amount of food that you are unable to eat.
Some of the online calculators also allow you to include the amount of exercise you usually get on a daily basis. This may be tempting to do but unless you are getting that much exercise seven days a week it can also be dangerous to estimate how many calories you are allowed based on the amount of activity you may only get four days a week.
These calculators usually give you choices of light, moderately light, moderate, heavy and very heavy activity. It is up to you to choose the amount of activity that you do. Light activity is usually just daily activities such as reading, driving or cooking a meal. Moderately light may be walking or easy bicycling while moderate exercise is dancing skating. Only boxing, rowing and mountain climbing really make it to the very heavy activity at level. Even running is included under heavy.
Without using a calculator online you can also calculate your BMR with a simple desk calculator. Here’s the formula for women:
BMR= 655 + (4.35 X weight in pounds)+ (4.7 X height in inches) – (4.7 X age in years)
For men:
BMR = 66 + (6.23 X weight in pounds) + (12.7 X height in inches) – (6.8 X age in years)
You may see why most people choose to find an online calculator that does these calculations at the click of a button. But also notice the numbers in the formula for both men and women. Men appear to be given an added in advantage with the multiplication of weight and height using greater coefficients. This is because men normally have a higher lean body mass which accounts for a higher basal metabolic rate. In fact, for a 5’4″ 165 pound 50-year-old woman, she requires 1431 calories to maintain her body weight. However, a man with the same measurements and age requires 1564 calories. That’s the difference of over 130 calories!
By using your basal metabolic rate based on your age, height and current weight as well is the number of calories you are able to burn each day in exercise you can quickly and easily determine how many calories you are able to eat in order to lose 1 pound a week.
So good luck and let’s get calculating!
(1) Dictionary.com: Basal Metabolic Rate
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/basal+metabolic+rate
RESOURCES
http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/
http://health.discovery.com/tools/calculators/basal/basal.html
http://walking.about.com/cs/calories/l/blcalcalc.htm
http://health.drgily.com/basal-metabolic-rate-calculator.php
http://www.fitwatch.com/qkcalc/bmr.html
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