Calculating your BMR
(Basal Metabolic Rate)

We can do little to change Basal Metabolic Rate and it declines with age. The BMR for men will be higher than for women.

In addition, we burn about 10% of our daily caloric intake just digesting our food. This is called the Thermal Effect of Feeding or TEF. To figure your baseline calorie need, BMR plus TEF, multiply your weight (in pounds) by 9. For instance, a 40 year old women weighing 150 pounds, has a baseline calorie need of 1350 calories per day. If she wants to eat more, she has to move her body. Everything counts.

Some activities burn more calories than others. If she goes for a 30 minute run, she will burn more than if she plays the piano. She will burn more if she goes out dancing than if she goes to the opera.

Her more strenuous activities have an added bonus called EPOC, Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption, the after-burn from a workout. It can be 30 to 200 calories, depending on her own unique metabolism and how hard she worked.

As I said, we are all different, but you can work with this method and figure out how many calories you need. Multiply your weight by 9.

Journal your activities each day. After you have figured out how many calories you need for the day, eat 500 less and let your body burn some of it’s stored fat.

Basal Metabolic Rate: 150 X 9 = 1350 calories needed daily
One hour run, 5 miles-----------550 calories burned
EPOC--------------200 calories burned,
Total calories needed---2100 calories

Minus 500 calories to lose 1-2 pounds/week = 1600 calories

Multipling your weight by 9 may not work for you. You may need to multiply by 8, or by 10. Play around with this until you know how your own unique metabolism works.


BMR calculated? Go back to weight plateaus
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