Calorie intake - Diet & Nutrition Message Board

Vixen541 · 05-24-2005, 01:49 PM

Where or how do you calculate the number of calories you should be taking in each day?

dustie03 · 05-24-2005, 04:10 PM

There is a WONDERFULL website called www.nutrawatch.com. They have a link that you can go to where you find out your requirements. At Nutrawatch, you can set up your own goals for calories, fat, carbs, etc. and then track them everyday by typing in what you have eaten. I have used it since January and have lost 25 pounds, and I'm still going! It's free, unless you wish to use the exercise tracker portion, but that's still only $14.95/year. Not bad for the great success that's to come! You can program in custom foods and recipes (it's so hard to calculate lasagna manually!) and it keeps it all in there for you. I can't say enough about this great site! Try it out.

sbdot · 05-24-2005, 04:15 PM

One way to calculate your caloric requirement is with the Harris-Benedict Formula:
I use the following formulas:

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)

This gives you your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
Now that you know your BMR, multiply your BMR by your activity multiplier from below:

Activity Multiplier
Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extra active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job

Your BMR X Activity Level = Calories needed for maintenance: what you need to sustain your body at status quo.

sbdot

Lenin · 05-25-2005, 08:32 AM

That's pretty good sbdot...gets me almost right on. I agree completely with the BMR (mine at 1905 seems almost exact) but the effect of exercise seems less for me.
But the Mod. activity (where I'm pretty sure I am) takes me to 2952.7 and I'll put on weight there.
Even the 2619 of Light Activity might cause a very very slow weight gain...
And I do hit the gym 5 days a week.
Perhaps though I am not working as hard as the averages (but I AM 62) and maybe that 2619 might be closer than I think.

Good formulae though.

I guess that from the CONSTANTS (women: 655, and men:66) women are much more alike than men in BMR because something like HALF of their BMR is determined by their "femininity." Interesting!

I'm putting the formulae in my DOCUMENTS folder!