How do You Determine Your Caloric Requirments?

What is "Your Caloric Requirements"?

When making a diet plan for yourself, the first thing your going to need to do, is to find out how many calories you need to burn in one day. Basically your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). Whats a TDEE? Your TDEE is the amount of calories your body expends, or uses, in a days span including all activities, etc. Getting your TDEE or also called your "maintainance level" will give you your starting point for a diet customized for yourself. The average maintainance level for a female in the US is 2000-2100 calories a day. For a male, it goes up to 2700-2900 per day.

Determining Your Caloric Requirements

There are different methods or ways of calculating your caloric requirements. These methods take into factor your age, height, weight, activity level, sex, and lean body mass.

Calculating Your Caloric Requirements

There are many different methods on taking your caloric requirements. A quick method to determine calorie needs is to use total current body weight times a multiplier.

Fat loss = 12 to13 calories per lb. of body weight
Maintenance (TDEE) = 15 to 16 calories per lb. of body weight
Weight gain: = 18 to 19 calories per lb. of body weight

This is a very quick method of taking your caloric requirements, but not as accurate. This method, because it doesn’t take into account activity levels or body composition, is not as accurate as others. Extremely active individuals may require far more calories than this formula indicates. In addition, the more lean body mass one has, the higher the TDEE will be.

A more accurate way of calculating your caloric requirements is to determine your basal metabolic rate or BMR using multiple factors, including height, weight, age and sex, then multiply the BMR by an activity factor to determine TDEE.BMR is the total number of calories your body requires for normal bodily functions including keeping your heart beating, inhaling and exhaling air, digesting food, making new blood cells, maintaining your body temperature and every other metabolic process in your body. In other words, your BMR is all the energy used for the basic processes of life itself. Heres how you calculate your caloric requirements more  accurately.

Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) – (6.8 X age in years)
Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X ht in cm) – (4.7 X age in years)
Note: 1 inch = 2.54 cm.
1 kilogram = 2.2 lbs.
Example:
You are MALE
You are 15 YEARS OLD
You are 5′ 6 ” TALL (167.6 cm)
You are 120 lbs. (54.5 kilos)
Your BMR = 66 + 1644 (weight) + 838 (height) – 102 (age) =  2446 calories per day

Now that you know your BMR, you can calculate TDEE by multiplying your BMR by your activity multiplier from the chart below:

Calculating Your TDEE

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)
Extr. active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.)
Example:
Your BMR is 1339 calories per day
Your activity level is moderately active (work out 3-4 times per week)
Your activity factor is 1.55
Your TDEE = 1.55 X 1339 = 2075 calories/day)








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