Methods to determine daily caloric needs
There are many formulas for calculating daily caloric requirements but which one is the best for us meat heads?
The BMR (basal metabolic rate) formula for men is:
(12.7 x your height in inches) + (6.23 x your weight in pounds) - (6.8 x your age in years). Add 66 to the total for the BMR.
From here one could use the Harris Benedict formula to calculate your caloric needs based on your activity level and BMR.
If you don't exercise or exercise little, multiply the BMR by 1.2 for daily calories.
If you take part in light exercise or sports 1-to-3 days each week, multiply the BMR by 1.375 for daily calories needed.
People who exercise moderately and/or play sports 3-to-5 days a week should multiply their BMR by 1.55
Active people who engage in strenuous sports or hard exercise 6-to-7 days a week need to multiply their BMR by 1.725.
People who engage in very physically challenging jobs or exercise, such as 2-a-day workouts, should multiply their BMR by 1.9 for daily caloric needs.
Another method is to simply multiply either your weight or LBM by a certain factor to determine how many grams of protein is needed an then extrapolate from there. For example:
A 200lb person at 10% BF would have a LBM of 180lbs. One could then multiply that number by 2.0grams of protein per lb of LBM to get 360grams of protein per day. Using this number one would simply decide the percentages of macros they want in their diet and calculate from there.
The last method that I'll discuss is multiplying your total bodyweight by a certain factor depending on what your goals are. For example:
A 200lb man wanting to only maintain his current weight would simply multiply 200lbs x 15 calories/lb = 3000 calories.
I know this is only a small fraction of the methods used and would like to know what method do you guys use and what has or hasn't worked for you in the past.
GeauxDATY
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WithdrawlI always go by how my body is responding and not by using formulas. If I'm trying to gain and not gaining, I eat more. If I'm trying to lose fat and I'm not losing, then I eat less There's just too many variables from person to person to be able to use a math equation. I think you can use those formulas as a starting point for you first time but by now we should all know about what our starting calories should be, and then adjust based on results. Like TropicanaJuice said, macros are just as important, if not more important than total calories. I don't even count calories anymore. I haven't for years. I just adjust my macros (amount of protein, fat, carbs) based on how I'm responding. I'm more strict with macros when dieting or trying to gain just lean mass, but when focusing on bulking I just eat as much as I can, lol.
TropicanaJuiceCalories are not nearly as important as countin macros. Look up the thermocouple effect of food and how energy is lost when different macros are consumed, you can take two identical 2,000 diets with different macros and end up with different calorie amounts the body ends up with
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html
http://www.muscleandstrength.com/tools/bmr-and-daily-calorie-calculator....
I understand that there are 1000's of sites that can calculate your daily caloric needs but they don't teach you how it's done. The idea of this thread was to give others some tools for dialing their diet in and hopefully learning some new info myself.
I'm not trying to be snarky but, actually, the 2 links of the 1000s I provided do just that...
The first one I found interesting is that it is more granular with your activity level by counting the hours of rest, light, medium, and heavy activity in a 24 hour period.
Basically it's all a rule of thumb with guesstimation for your perceived activity level.
What I did for myself is to start off with my BMR + Harris Benedict to determine what I thought would be my maintenance needs and tweaked it after a week if I lost or gained weight.
Thank you for the clarification.
The BMR formula with the Harris-Benedict formula has worked pretty good for me. One thing to note is that even if you workout 6-7 days a week but you sit behind a desk all day you may want to start off using the HB multiplier of 1.55 instead of the 1.725.
Thank you for that info.