Your Basic Metabolic Rate and you!

[BlueBird]

A family member of mine is a dietitian and we were talking about my diet and exercise plan. He made an interesting point and I would like to share it with you. If you are over weight and you want to reach your ideal weight then you should only consume the daily calorie intake based on what you would need to maintain your ideal weight. Makes sense and we will all lose weight if we simply consume fewer calories then we need to maintain our current weight but by consuming much less and only what you need based on your metabolic rate than you will lose much quicker. I'm doing well with this as I've based my calorie intake on my ideal weight which is about 800 calories less than what I would need to maintain my current weight. I found this BMR calculator that I have found very useful. Use your desired weight and not your current weight to determine how many calories you need.

BMR Calculator

As of today I have lost 6 pounds!

 

[hitchicken]

By my calculations and your posts, you were 300 lbs, lost 6 lbs in 8 days, meaning in 1 year you will weight about 26 lbs if you maintain the same rate of weight loss. Let's arm wrestle on the first anniversary of your diet. Just kidding. You'd probably still beat me. You're too tall.

 

[BlueBird]

By my calculations and your posts, you were 300 lbs, lost 6 lbs in 8 days, meaning in 1 year you will weight about 26 lbs if you maintain the same rate of weight loss. Let's arm wrestle on the first anniversary of your diet. Just kidding. You'd probably still beat me. You're too tall.

26 Pounds! Eventually my calorie intake will match my actual metabolic rate so the least I could weigh in a year is around 185. I haven't seen 185 in 30 years. I think 200 pounds is a good weight for me so when I get there I'll adjust to maintain. I know you were kidding of course... I feel like the weight is really falling off, a good thing.

 

[getbent]

I put in my current weight, to see how many calories to maintain then put in 20lbs less. The caloric difference was only 109 calories? That doesn't make sense.

 

[hitchicken]

I put in my current weight, to see how many calories to maintain then put in 20lbs less. The caloric difference was only 109 calories? That doesn't make sense.

If I may, the BMR calculation is the calories you would need to consume to maintain whatever weight you enter. If you enter a weight 20 lbs less than your current weight, then you would need 109 calories less to maintain that newly entered weight. The less you weigh, the fewer calories you need to maintain that weight. Make sense now?

That doesn't mean if you start consuming 109 calories less a day you will instantaneously drop 20 lbs from your weight.

All else being equal, another person 20 lbs lighter than you would need 109 calories a day less to maintain their weight.

 

[getbent]

Thanks. A little confusing when other sites say I'd need 1700 +/- to maintain my weight. How is the BMR different than what those sites are telling me?

 

[hitchicken]

Thanks. A little confusing when other sites say I'd need 1700 +/- to maintain my weight. How is the BMR different than what those sites are telling me?

What other sites? No doubt they will all give you marginally different numbers. If there is one thing very exacting about calories, it's that they are never exact, neither the calories you burn or the calories in food. People burn calories at different rates such as a young person verses an older person, an active person verses a sedentary person. Nutrition labels required on food are allowed to be erroneous by 20% or more and that includes calories. Some even exceed these limits which are FDA guidelines, but no one bothers to check. The FDA even allows outright lying.

Next time you are in a store, look at the nutrition label on a can of cooking spray. It will no doubt say, "0 calories, 0 fat per serving". Of course, a serving is 1/4 or 1/3 a second spray and there are over a thousand servings per can. Yet the cooking spray is made up of a cooking oil (usually canola or vegetable oil) and a propellant. No, they have not invented a 0 calorie cooking oil. But the FDA says if the calories per serving is less than 5, the company can say it has '0' calories. The FDA says if the fat content is under .5 grams per serving, the company can say '0' grams of fat. And so the company divides its serving into small enough sizes to fall under these limits. Now they can lie with FDA approval. (I love the people who spray second after second of '0' calorie butter flavored cooking oil on their popcorn and say, "...but it's 0 calories." They are, in fact, getting a tad less than 5 calories per 1/4 or 1/3 second. If 5 seconds, that can be nearly 100 calories and 10 grams of fat. )

I guess what I am trying to say is when it comes to calories, you can get numbers all over the place. One person might jog a mile and say he burned 100 calories while another would say be burned 500 calories. Another person might put a small smear of butter on a bagel and say, "That's so tiny, it doesn't count." while another might say, "That's 11 grams of 100 calories of mostly fat." It's all in one's interpretation.

In general: calories in < calories burned, you lose weight. Calories in > calories burned you gain weight. The principle is simple, the numbers computed aren't.

 

[Bann]

In general: calories in < calories burned, you lose weight. Calories in > calories burned you gain weight. The principle is simple, the numbers computed aren't.