How Many Calories Do I Need?
If you’ve set a goal of losing weight or getting in shape, you may be wondering how many calories do I need each day to reach my goal?
The first step in knowing how many calories you need is to set a specific goal. Would you like to lose 5 lbs, reduce your body fat %, tone up, build muscle, or just maintain your current weight? Are you planning to train for a marathon, go on a walking tour, or take a 2 week back packing trip?
If you are really serious about your success, I recommend keeping on one or two specific goals in mind as you answer the question “how many calories do I need?”. Focusing on one or two specific goals will eliminate the confusion that comes from attempting to do too many things at once. It will also keep you motivated and help you put all your effort in one direction. Some of the common goals my clients have are: lose weight, gain strength, build muscle, & 10 push-ups by my 50th birthday.
Once you’ve determined you’re goals, you can move on to the second step, calculating your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and daily calorie expenditure. Your BMR indicates the number of calories required for your bodies natural functions like digestion, breathing, waste removal, etc. (At the end of the post, I give you a link to a free tool that helps you figure out your approximate BMR and daily caloric expenditure.)
Once you’ve calculated your BMR, daily caloric expenditure and you know your goals, you’re ready to answer the question “how many calories do I need”. Take your BMR and add the calories you normally expend during the day. This will help you determine how many calories you need to maintain your current weight. If maintaining your current weight is your goal, you’ve completed all the steps to answering the question.
If your goal is to lose weight, you’ll want to eat fewer calories than the amount you calculated by adding your BMR and daily caloric expenditure together (in a future post, I will discuss the role of hormones in determining caloric intake to achieve weight loss). If your goal is to train for a marathon, you want to calculate how many calories it will require for each training run and add that to the BMR and daily caloric use you calculated in step two. Do this accordingly for each of your goals.
Now that you’ve answered the question “how many calories do I need“, I would love to hear your goals and any questions you have. If you want to figure out your BMR and daily caloric expenditures, you can visit my free tools page to learn more.
* Special note: if your goal is losing fat, you might want to check out this online program. It’s pretty cool.
Jes Reynolds holds a B.S. in Kinesiology, is a personal trainer, online fitness teacher, and
Another great post. Somehow I’d missed this in your uncharacteristic five tweets on inauguration day.
I’m going to throw in a couple of observations. For me, I tend to do an inventory of how many calories I happen to be consuming, and I measure my weight. Am I going up or down. Then I adjust food intake.
It can be hard to go through all these calculations.
Bud Gibson
23 Jan 09 at 3:24 am
Hi Bud,
The point isn’t necessarily to run through all the calculations every week, but instead understanding what factors are playing a role in weight loss/gain and other fitness goals people have. It would be quite arduous to attempt these calculations repeatedly, but still worth understanding.
JesR
27 Jan 09 at 1:44 pm