“How many calories should I eat a day?” is the first question that most people ask their doctor or dietician when they find that they need to lose weight. Most everyone is familiar with the concept of weight loss as a matter of simply burning more calories than you consume, but there is a bit more to it than that.
When determining the answer to, “How many calories should I eat to lose weight?” the first step is to determine how many calories your body burns each day. When you have that number, you can create a caloric deficit, albeit with a few caveats, in order to lose weight.
Know Your BMR
BMR stands for basal metabolic rate and can be thought of as an estimate of how many calories you are eating per day. There are tools and medical tests on the market that allow your daily calorie expenditure to be more accurately determined, but BMR is a relatively accurate estimate and will give you a good starting point when planning your meals and activities.
In order to determine your BMR, follow the equation below:
BMR for men = (13.75 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.76 x age) + 66
BMR for women = (9.56 x weight in kg) + (1.85 x height in cm) – (4.68 x age) + 655
Remember that these numbers are just estimates. They do not take into account body composition, individual variations in metabolism and hormone levels, and other factors that make you unique from everyone else. Still, this estimate is close enough to give you a baseline to work from.
Create A Calorie Deficit
Needless to say, in order to lose weight, you need to consume fewer calories each day than your metabolism burns. There are two different ways that you will be able to do this. The first way involves engaging in activities that burn more calories than you normally would. This is the dreaded exercise that we constantly hear about. The second method involves simply eating fewer calories per day through modifying your diet.
So, how many calories should you eat to lose weight? The answer to this question involves how many calories to lose a pound. It is generally accepted that one pound of adipose or fat tissue contains 3500 calories. That being said, if your goal is to lose one pound per week, you will want to create a daily caloric deficit of 500 calories. Most doctors recommend that safe weight loss involves losing one or two pounds per week, but there are cases where you might be able to safely lose more.
How Low Is Too Low?
You may be tempted to follow the logic that a greater daily calorie deficit will lead to even greater amounts of weight loss. There is some truth to this, but only to a point.
When your daily caloric intake is too low, your body will respond by dramatically slowing down your metabolism. Your body developed in order to survive, and if it feels that you are going into an extended period of famine, it will slow down your metabolism and burn fewer calories as a survival technique. This will make fat loss much more difficult, as the body will want to hold on to it.
In order to prevent this survival mechanism, you need to be careful to keep your daily calories high enough to stop it from kicking in. Like anything else involving metabolism, this number is going to vary somewhat from person to person, but a daily minimum of 1200 calories for women and 1600 calories for men is a pretty safe estimate. If you are engaging in vigorous exercise, you may want to add 200 calories to that.
Some fad diets such as the 1000 calorie diet, as well as many medically supervised weight loss diets, create severe caloric deficits that involve eating fewer calories than this. I can’t stress highly enough that you should only engage in these sorts of diets while under medical supervision.
So, there you have it. When you want to lose weight, the most basic way of looking at it is in terms of the, “calories consumed vs. calories burned,” equation. Unless you have a severe hormonal imbalance, which is unlikely, losing weight is largely a matter of keeping this equation tipped in your favor. When determining how many calories I eat each day, I start by calculating my BMR and then create a caloric deficit based on that number using a combination of meal planning and exercise.
Just remember to maintain a minimum daily intake of 1200 calories if you are a woman or 1600 calories per day if you are a man in order to keep your metabolism going. If you have any special medical needs, be sure that you speak with your doctor before making use of any weight loss tips you find, either here or elsewhere.