Losing Weight: Why Knowing Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) Is Important – Part 2

Here is a quick formula that you can use when calculating your basal metabolic rate.

For women, it will take 655 + (4.3 x whatever your weight in pounds) + (4.7 x whatever your height in inches) – (4.7 x whatever your age in years).

So for example, for a woman who is 35 years old, 5’6 “tall, and weighs 150 pounds, it will look like this:

655 + (4.3 X 150 = 645) + (4.7 X 67.2 = 316) – (4.7 X 35 = 164.5) = 1451.5, and I would round this to 1452, these would be the requirements minimum calories for a woman at complete rest with the above statistics.

For men, I would add 66 + (6.3 x whatever your weight in pounds) + (12.9 x your height in inches) – (6.8 x whatever your age in years) following the same sequence and formula as above but using these numbers.

This particular formula can be applied only to adults, for children it will be a little different.

Now we need to incorporate the general physical activities that are done on a daily basis. Based on your activity level, you would add the following to your BMR.

For sedentary people, it will multiply your BMR X by 20 percent.

If you are a little more active then it will be your BMR X 30 percent.

For more moderately active people (you can do light exercise 3-4 days a week). It will be your BMR X 40 percent.

If you are extremely physically active (you can do an exercise routine 6 to 7 days a week), then it will be your BMR X 50 percent.

In very rare cases of those who train as or are a professional athlete, then it will be their BMR X 60 percent.

Once you find this number, add it to your BMR and you will get your higher daily caloric intake.

For instance. Take the woman’s BMR in the example we did earlier, she had a BMR of 1452 and is in a sedentary job and does not exercise, we would do the following:

1452 X 20% = 290.4 and then we add this number to your BMR which is 1452 + 290.4 = 1742.4

Then you will need about 1742 calories per day to maintain your current weight. So the trick here is to limit this amount to say 1700 the first two weeks, then 1600 the nest week, we can safely reduce the amount to around 1500 calories per day. Doing this will only force the body to convert fat into calories to be burned by the body, leading to weight loss.

I would not recommend limiting the calories for this example below 1500 as you are getting too close to your BMR. Doing so can do more harm than good. To increase the amount of fat your body loses each day, you must add an exercise routine to your program.