Counting Calories

Hey there Chris, as far as calories go, rule of thumb is that if you burn more than you take in you will lose weight or not gain it, and if you take in more than you burn you will gain. But the cool thing is that you burn calories when you exercise. But the real good thing that happens is that your metabolism gets a boost and you will burn more and more the higher your metabolism gets. And you also have to keep in mind that I burned around 30 calories just typing this reply. You burn calories every minute of every day. That’s why I have always found it really hard to count calories. For one, the machines at the gym that calculate that are grossly inaccurate and impossible for them to tell what kind of metabolism you have. And it is also hard to calculate how many calories you burned while doing normal every day activity. There are tons of lists out there for doing just that but it is a pain to keep track of all those numbers! It is better to just watch what you eat and get your calories from good quality foods. And a big one is the size of portions, and SUGAR. Stay away from all sugar. That one will get you every time. Just my two cents. Jack. Oh.. and here is a link about calories. Kind of informative. http://health.howstuffworks.com/calorie.htm hope that helps

It is hard to just "figure" out how many calories you burn a day. There are many factors. How much muscle you have is one big factor. I forget the actual number, but for each pound of muscle, you burn 40-60 calories a day doing normal activities. And as stated above, everything you do burns calories. There are tests that can determine how many calories your body burns a day at rest.

There isn't an easy answer to how many calories from fat. There are many different camps on percentages of protein, carb and fat to make up your diet ranging from no carbs to no fat. I follow BFL which doesn't count calories, just portion sizes and what you can eat for 6 meals a day. Counting calories is too much time for me. Do some research and see what lokks best for you and give it a try.

the link at the bottom of my post, (in my signiture), is for Fitday.com. They can give you a fairly good idea of how many you burn per day. I htink their math is pretty close to being correct. Just thought I'd throw this option out there for you.

Generally for active people:
Take your body weight:
10-12 x : Wane
14-16 x : Maintain
18+ : Gain


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More specifically use this website to calculate you BMR according to the harris benedit formula: http://www.hussman.org/fitness/bmrcalc.htm

BMR: stands for Basal Metabolic Rate and it is basically how many calories you burn by being alive.

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www.fitday.com is a great free site to calculate/count calories

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generally it is a game of calories in versus calories out... so the total calories is what you should initially focus on.

3,500 calories in a pound of fat. so if you eat 500 under your maitenance calories per day then you should lose about 1lb a week.

also, be careful not to lower your calories too much or your body will not repair itself in your training and the body has an incredible ability to slow down its metabolism if it feels like you are starving it

Edited by ssyba 2004-01-21 8:28 AM

total calories matter more than calories from any specific group. The body will burn the carbohydrates first as a preferred fuel, but if you're limiting calories it will burn dietary fat as well as body fat and proteins. They all look the same to a cell once they enter metabolism.

The difference between cal from fat and cal from carbs is in their relative ease of availability. Carbs are soluble or rapidly become so and absorb quickly into the bloodstream where they're available to cells for energy, or to make amino acids, or stored as fat. Fats, like oils e.g., dont mix with water and are absorbed later in the intestine with the aid of bile. Then they float around the body as droplets till they collide with cells that have the right receptors (like muscle cells) and are either metabolized like carbs for energy, used to make cell membranes, or stored away with your other fat.

But so long as cal in < cal out you'll lose weight. The healthiest thing, atkins to the contrary, is to have both available since they serve different functions in the body.

Also, in calculating basal or resting metabolic rate, you need to use your lean mass in the formulas. Your mass w/o fat.

Edited by wrybosome 2004-01-21 8:50 AM

Here's a formula for met. rate that takes all the important factors (like 86% of variation) into account:

Females: RMR = 655.1 + (9.56*BW) + (1.85*Height) - (4.68*Age)

Males: RMR = 66.47 + (13.57*BW) + (5.0*Height) - (6.76*Age)

RMR in kcal/day
BW is Body Weight in kg
Height in cm
Age in years

Most of the rest of the variation is genetically determined.