Half of Jess Tips

Tip #2 – Calculating Your Daily Caloric Allowance

Jess — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:03:00 +0000

Now that counting calories has become second nature, you need to find out what your daily caloric allowance actually is. Grab a pen and paper. Oh wait, you have your handy notebook from calorie counting available! How efficient. To calculate your daily caloric allowance, we’ll need to calculate your BMR. *Warning: this post is a bit mathematical but don’t worry. Google can be your calculator.

First off…

What is BMR? BMR stands for basal metabolic rate. BMR is the amount of energy, measured in calories, used by the body if it remains asleep in bed all day. It is one of the largest factors in determining overall metabolic rate and how many calories you will need to maintain, lose or gain weight. There are a bunch of factors that determine BMR but I won’t go into that.

How does the BMR equation work? I know it sounds like calculus but believe me, it’s not. The first step is to find out how many calories you burn in a day. This is called your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).

TDEE can be seen as the number of calories your body uses in a 24 hour period. More importantly, it is known as the maintenance level. Knowing your TDEE will give you a reference point since you will know what your body requires to stay at a certain weight.

Calculating Your BMR: The Harris-Benedict Formula Big words, big formula, easy solving. The formula uses height, weight, age and sex to determine BMR. The formula does not take into account lean body mass, so the result will be less accurate for those who are extremely muscular (not me) or extremely overfat (why, hello!)

Men: 66 + (13.7 x wt in kg) + (5 x ht in cm) – (6.8 x age in years)

Women: 655 + (9.6 x wt in kg) + (1.8 x ht in cm) – (4.7 x age in years)

Oh hey, I know what the Americans are thinking. Kilograms and centimeters?! Oh no! Don’t worry. Google will tell you.

For me, I type in 204 pounds in kg and I get 92.53. Brilliant!

Same thing for centimeters. I would convert your feet to inches however, and give your height in total inches. There’s 12 inches in a foot. I’m 5 feet 6 inches, or 66 inches. In Google, I typed 66 inches to cm and got 167.64 cm.

Age in years is 23.

Now that all the variables are present, I plug the information into the woman equation: 655 + (9.6 x 92.53) + (1.8 x 167.64) – (4.7 x 23)

This is where your calculator may come in handy, or if you’re like me, I copy and pasted the equation into Google. The result: 1736.94. For the sake of using nice round numbers, let’s just say 1737. This means that if my body was sleeping all day, no movement, no eating, no nothing, it would burn 1737 calories.

Now that you know BMR, what do you do? Time to calculate your TDEE. There’s an activity multiplier that you use.

Sedentary = BMR x 1.2 (little or no exercise)
Lightly active = BMR x 1.375 (light exercise, 1-3 days/week)
Mod. active = BMR x 1.55 (moderate exercise, 3-5 days/week)
Very active = BMR x 1.725 (hard exercise, 6-7 days/week)
Extreme active = BMR x 1.9 (hard daily exercise, 2 times daily training)

I think only people like Michael Phelps would use the last equation. For me, I decided to be modest and selected the moderately active even though I workout like a beast in the gym. Why? Because I figure it’s better safe than sorry.

So, my TDEE = 1.55 x 1737. Plug into Google and I got: 2692.35 We’ll round that to 2692. That means that I will maintain my weight of 204 pounds if I eat 2692 calories a day. Well damn, that’s a lot of calories!

Whew, now that all the math is finished, what next? Now that you know what you need to maintain, you can adjust accordingly. A negative calorie balance is required to lose weight. It doesn’t matter what you eat. If you eat more than you expend, you just won’t lose fat. You have to be in a calorie deficit in order to burn fat. This forces your body to use stored body fat in order to make up for the deficit.

Remember when I said 3500 calories equals one pound? If you create a 3500-calorie deficit in a week through diet and exercise, you will lose one pound.

A good place to start… is to reduce calories by 15-20% below TDEE. So for me, 2692 x 0.2 gives me 538.4. Subtract that from 2692 (2692 – 538.4) and I get 2153.6. Right now, I’m averaging roughly 1500 calories a day, which gives me a significant amount of deficit and probably explains why I lost 9 pounds in 2 weeks.

BUT, how much is too low? The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 per day for women and 1800 per day for men.

Wrapping it up… Now that you have an overall idea of BMR and how many calories your body roughly requires every day, you can adjust your caloric intake accordingly. Remember to not go too low. Starving your body won’t help you lose fat. It’ll only create a starvation response in which your body actually RETAINS the fat for fear of death. The best way to lose weight is by decreasing caloric consumption while increasing physical activity.

Is it tiring? Yes. Worth it? Definitely.

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Tip #1 – Counting Calories

Jess — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:20:00 +0000

But calorie counting is so much work… I realize how anal retentive my blog must seem. For crying out loud, I hand write everything I eat and read the nutritional information on every package and if it’s not there, I search online for what I’m missing.

Well, why do you count calories then? Calorie counting is extremely effective. It gives you an almost exact measure of how much you are consuming a day. Losing weight is a lot of work, and if writing down a few numbers here and there every day helps me drop a pound, then it’s worth it. Besides, writing burns calories too!

Why does caloric intake matter? For weight loss, one pound equates to roughly 3500 calories. That is to say, if your body has a deficit of 3500 calories, you should lose one pound. Is this the case every day, every week? No. Your body adapts extremely quickly, but 3500 calories provides a rough guide for you to follow.

Hypothetically, if you consume less than you exert (through exercise, daily metabolic functions, etc.), you will lose weight.

Well, how do you count calories then?
1. Look for nutritional information on packaging. You know those annoying labels that you can peel off of the back of Ranch dressing bottles? Yeah, those things. Read them before you peel it off!

1a. Look at the serving size. It is the first line you see. You’ll see one tablespoon, one ounce, one liter, one cup, whatever.
1b. Look at the calories. The caloric information is by serving! If you are doubling the serving size, then remember to double the calories.
1c. Can’t find information? Go online! I use Calorie King but there are tons of websites out there.
1d. Measure your food. If it’s a cup of milk, then use a measuring cup. If it’s one slice of ham, use one slice of ham (or multiply the calories by the servings you intend to use.)

2. Get a pen and pad of paper. I have a little notebook that I tote around every where. It’s on my dinner table, it’s on the kitchen counter when I’m making recipes, it’s next to my laptop. Keep it handy.

3. Write down what you eat, the amount, and the total calories. Say you have one cup of skim milk. You would write: Milk. 1 Cup. 90 calories. When you get familiar with your own system and shorthand, by all means adapt and be creative!
3a. Write before you eat. As you’re creating your sandwich, write everything you’re putting in it first along with the portion size. The caloric information can come later, but the important thing is to not leave out things because you forgot.

4. Total at the end of each meal. Use your phone, a handy dandy pocket calculator, Google math, your laptop calculator, it doesn’t matter.

5. Subtract individual meal total from daily caloric allowance. If you have a daily caloric allowance of 1600 and breakfast was 300, subtract! That means you have 1300 for the rest of the day. I am really familiar with this process so I no longer do the subtraction, but this is essential to start off with. That way, you can plan your meals, or at least realize what you might not get to eat for dinner tonight (and in turn, save for tomorrow!)

And that’s it! There are also phone apps out there (which I haven’t tried and don’t intend to, I like my old-fashioned way better) that can help you.

What you might ALSO need…
1. Measuring Cup. Get one. It’ll help you cook, it’ll help you bake, it’ll help you count your calories. Trust me. Even fat free chicken broth has calories.

2. Measuring Spoons. Those little plastic sets that seem like beach toys are extremely useful when it comes to soy sauce, peanut butter, etc. Do I measure EVERYTHING? No. I guesstimate a good amount but that’s also because I have experience on what one tablespoon of vinegar looks like. They’re cheap at Wal-mart but priceless in terms of weight loss.

3. Food scale. Oh, you thought weight loss was all about you. Well, it is, but your chicken, beef, pasta, etc. need to be weighed too! What does 2 oz. of dry pasta look like? Beats me (very little actually but cooks out to be more than you’d expect). Weigh in. Then cook it. Sound meticulous? Yes. Worth it? Definitely.

BUT…

How do you decide your daily caloric intake then? The recommended consumption for a normal adult is 2000 calories a day. I leave that to American nutritionists in coming up with the math. I’ll just use it as a guideline. That means, if you eat 2000 calories a day, you will maintain your weight. This is a very, very rough estimate since it disregards physical activity and extremely obese and overweight individuals. For a more exact amount, I use the BMR equation.

Find out what the BMR equation is and how to calculate your daily caloric allowance here.

Wrapping it up… Calorie counting is meticulous. It’s almost obsessive compulsive. But it works. And, you’ll be surprised at what’s worth spending the calories on (yeah, calories are almost like money! I wish I got $2K every day) and what’s not. You’ll find that you’ll make more health conscious decisions if you know exactly what you’re eating. Believe me, a bowl of pasta is not bad. And no, that brownie isn’t bad either, but is it worth it? Well, that’s up to you to decide. If you’ve got 500 calories left to eat, then by all means eat that big scoop of ice cream. Only 50 left? Hm, might go with some yogurt then. Besides, having a pen and paper handy leads to creative doodlings throughout the day. AND, you get to practice that basic elementary math that you haven’t had to use in awhile. In short: calorie counting stimulates the brain and burns the fat. What more can you ask for!

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Tip #2 – Calculating Your Daily Caloric Allowance