Five Steps to Figuring Out How Many Calories You Can Eat and Still Lose Weight
Beachbody gives you tools you can understand to help you lose weight and get into shape. Most people think they have to eat 1200 calories or less to lose weight. Then, they put the weight back on even faster than they took it off. Most people actually need to eat more than 1200 calories per day to continue to lose weight. That’s right. Eat more!
Eating less than 1200 calories in a day may lead to nutrient deficiencies and affect your health. You can follow a 1200 calorie per day diet for about a week, but after that, you need a smarter eating plan. Follow this short formula to determine how many calories you can eat each day and still lose weight: RMR + DAB + DE – CD.
RMR stands for resting metabolic rate. This represents approxiamately how many calories your body burns naturally while you are at rest to maintain body functions such as breathing, circulation, and digestion. To calculate your RMR, multiply your body weight times ten. So, if you are a 160 pound woman, your RMR is 160 x 10 which is 1600.
Next determine your daily activity burn or DAB. This number depends on whether you consider yourself sedentary, moderately active, or very active in your daily routine outside of an exercising program. Now, most of us probably project too high here, so let us assume we are the sedentary type. To get your DAB, multiply your RMR by ten percent. 1600 x 10% is 160.
The third step is to calculate the calories you will burn in your daily exercise or DE. According to Beachbody, an average TurboFire workout burns about 650 calories. So, if this same person used the TurboFire program, her DE would be 650.
The fourth step is to determine your caloric deficit or CD. Since one pound is 3500 calories, you need to have a CD of 500 calories per day to lose one pound per week. If you wanted to lose two pounds, you would need a deficit of 7000 calories per week or 1000 calories per day. This number depends somewhat on your current weight. Again, you do not want go below 1200 calories per day nor do you want to stay on a 1200 calorie per day diet more than one week.
Finally, plug all the numbers into the formula RMR + DAB + DE – CD to determine the number of calories to eat each day and still lose weight. Let’s plug in the numbers for our example of a 160 pound woman using the TurboFire program and having a goal of losing one pound per week. RMR (1600) + DAB (160) + DE (650) – CD (500) = 1910 calories per day to lose one pound per week. Nice!
While you are trying to lose weight, you should periodically go through this formula again to adjust your caloric needs. Let’s say this woman has lost ten pounds and is recalculating her eating plan. She now needs 1800 calories per day to continue to lose one pound per week. (RMR 1500 + DAB 150 + DE 650 – CD 500 = 1800)
If you do not know how many calories you are burning with an exercise program, you may be able to find a chart online or in a book to help you estimate how many calories per hour you burn with a particular activity. You can also get a calorie monitoring device based on your heartrate such as the Bodybugg from 24 Hour Fitness (retails at $199). Or, you can use the free tools from your free Beachbody account.
The Caloric Needs calculator is easy to use and will estimate the number of calories you will burn with various Beachbody workout programs. It also has a few other exercising activities such as aerobics and cycling. All you do is answer a few basic questions such as how many times a week you will be exercising and what activity you plan on doing.
The cool thing about this calculator is it will tell you not only how many calories you should eat to lose weight but also how many you should eat each day to maintain your current weight. To use this caluculator as well as a few other helpful weight loss tools, all you need to do is sign up for a free Beachbody account.
Once you have your account, go to the Eat Smart tab of the Teambeachbody website. Click on Nutrition Tools. Then, click on Caloric Needs and fill in your answers. Ok, so you can do the math with the five steps above or just answer a few questions and let the online caloric needs calculator work for you! I hope you have found this article useful. Keep pressing play!
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