TL Fitness Initiative (Weight Loss/Gain) - Page 74

Estimating Your Daily Calorie Requirement

Its important to know how many calories you should consume per day to achieve the maximum amount of weight loss while maintaining your lean body mass. If you eat too few calories you lose muscle, if you eat too many you don’t make progress or even go backwards. Previously when I’ve gone on a diet I’ve tried to eat healthy and eat less without actually recording what I’ve eaten. The problem is I eat too little because I am so anxious to achieve my goals and I end up losing muscle mass and not much fat because my body goes into starvation mode.

I think its important to note that calorie counting can be rather time consuming in the beginning and that I'm not saying you absolutely have to do it. Feel free to ignore this bit and continue on with the rest of the guide, because by roughly estimating how much to eat (and by constantly revising this amount based on your results) you can still achieve excellent results. However, although counting calories may seem pedantic, it is effective. You dont have to do it forever, only long enough for you to learn what works best for your body. It took me about 2 months to really pin point my needs and then down the track at certain intervals I have resumed counting calories for a couple of weeks to reevaluate my calculations. Once you get past the first week and work out the figures for most of your meals it becomes really easy. So to conclude, this part is not essential, but recommended.

Below I’ve listed the equations necessary to estimate (its impossible to be spot on) how many calories you should be eating per day. Your Basal Metabolic Rate is the number of calories your body uses when at rest to perform vital bodily functions. We start off by calculating your BMR and then you times it by an activity factor. I’ve used some of my stats to demonstrate.



If you need to convert any of your measurements, check out this site:

http://www.onlineconversion.com/

My Stats
Height – 178cms
Weight – 77kg
Age – 21yrs

Harris Benedict BMR Formula For Men

BMR = 66 + (13.7 X weight in kgs) + (5 X height in cms) – (6.8 X age in yrs).

Harris Benedict BMR Formula For Women

BMR = 655 + (9.6 X weight in kgs) + (1.8 X height in cms) – (4.7 X age in years)

So to calculate my BMR I do the following: 66 + (13.7 X 77) + (5 X 178) – (6.8 X 21)

BMR = 66 + 1054.9 + 890 – 142.8

BMR = 1868

Now we need to take into account the amount of energy burned through activity.

1. If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) – BMR X 1.2

2. If your are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days a week) – BMR X 1.375

3. If you are moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days a week) – BMR X 1.55

4. If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) – BMR X 1.725

5. If you are extra active (very hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or training twice daily – BMR X 1.9.

I fell into category number 3 therefore 1868 X 1.55 = 2895.4

Therefore 2895.4 is the number of calories I need per day to maintain my current weight. As you know to burn fat I eat less than I consume. So how many calories do I take off this figure without the risk of burning muscle.

They recommend that a person lose 1-2 lbs per week maximum. The example I’m going to use is for my aim to be to lose 1 lb per week. I believe this is fast enough and I won’t be losing any muscle. 1 lb of fat is 3500 calories. Therefore to lose 1 lb a week you do the following: 3500 divided by 7 = 500 cals. I then minus 500 from 2895.4 = 2395.4. So to burn 1 lb of fat per week I must consume no more and no less than 2395.4 calories per day.

Now that you know how may calories per day you should be eating, where do you get these calories? You can’t just go down to McDonalds and eat your required amount of calories and think your job is done. You need to be eating the correct percentages of macronutrients and then you need to know the best foods with which to get these macronutrients.