Daily Caloric Needs Calculator
How To Use This Daily Caloric Needs Calculator
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Determine Your Daily Caloric Needs
How Often / Intense Do You Exercise:
Estimated Daily Caloric Need For You Is:
How Many Calories Do You Need?
Great Question! Next time you have a chance, take a look at any traditional food label. Looking at such, you’ll see all those numbers are in relation to something known as “The % Daily Value (DV).” This tells you how much a nutrient, in a serving of food, contributes to a daily diet of around 2,000 calories.
The Daily Caloric Needs Calculator above takes into account for all the needed pieces of information like: height, weight, age, gender, and physical activity levels to give you a great starting point for next steps!
Not to get too science / geeky on you, but if you’re curious to know how that tool above gets it’s numbers, you simply have to understand the following Harris-Benedict concept:
Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR for short is equivalent to the amount of energy (calories) that your body needs to function if it were to rest for 24 hours.
For men: BMR = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (years) + 5
For women: BMR = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (years) – 161
- 1 (lb) = 2.2 (kg) and 1 (in) = 2.54 (cm)
You then take that above result and multiply such by your daily activity levels
- Sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
- Lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
- Moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
- Very active (hard exercise/sports 5-6 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
- If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports 7+ days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9
Now that you know how to use / understand a Daily Caloric Needs Calculator, you’ll have a great starting point towards maintaining / gaining / losing weight. As always, this number is just an estimation and we highly recommend talking with your healthcare professional before deciding to gain or lose significant weight.
How Many Calories Do I Need To Burn To Lose Weight?
If you have a personal goal of losing a couple extra pounds, then getting a good understanding of the weight loss process is key!
In one pound of stored body fat, there are approximately 3500 calories. In any given weekly total, if you’re able to do a little more movement, and eat a little less, to the tune of around 3500 calories, you’ll lose one pound of body weight. This one pound would be made up of around 70-80% fat and 20-30% lean tissue.
You can do the math to calculate how much it would take to lose two pounds or ten pounds, the proof is in the results when you start to track your intake and overall exertion / activity levels.
A good starting point would be to cut your daily caloric intake by 500 to kickstart the fat loss process
Avoid cutting the above amount of Daily Caloric Needs by more then 1000 calories, especially if you don’t have too much weight to lose.
One last note, the American College of Sports Medicine, also referred to as ACSM, recommends that the above Daily Caloric Needs amount level never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 calories per day for men. This cut amount can place significant stress on the body to the point where you can get injured or sick much easier.