Weight Loss – Determining Your Optimal Calorie Intake For Weight Loss
June 3rd, 2010 | Published in Weightloss Articles
If you’re looking to experience weight loss, you must be aware of your total calorie intake. If you aren’t and take a rather haphazard approach to weight loss, chances are you are going to have much less success than if you do.
While calorie counting can be a bit of a pain at times, it makes the process of weight loss that much more scientific, which then means you are better able to track exactly how you are doing and why you are not losing body fat – if you haven’t.
Total calorie needs are rather variable by the individual and as such, it’s really hard to come up with an exact number you should be consuming unless you go get your basic metabolic rate professional measured (which can be quite costly).
Further, obviously you are doing a variety of activities each day, therefore how much you are burning day to day will vary, meaning you need to think about averages more than anything.
But, this does not mean you cannot get a good estimate of how many calories you are consuming to use to then create your diet plan.
Here’s a simple way to do this.
The Multiplication Factor
There are a variety of different calculators, many of which you can find online, that provide intricate calculations to determine your calorie intake needs, but a much easier method is simply using the multiplication factor.
This is how it works.
All you simply need to do is take your current body weight in pounds and multiple by the following depending on your situation:
Sedentary – Body Weight X 10
Lightly Active – Body Weight X 11
Moderately Active – Body Weight X 13
Highly Active – Body Weight X 15
The different categories would be described as:
Sedentary – you have a desk job and sit most of the day, participating in little or not planned physical activity
Lightly Active – you either have a job that keeps you on your feet a little more and don’t perform a lot of scheduled exercise, or you have a desk job but manage to make it to the gym (or some other
activity) two to four times a week.
Moderately Active – in this category, you either have a desk job and visit the gym five days a week, or you have an active job and are doing other forms of exercise two to three times a week.
Highly Active – those in the highly active category are going to be working in a job that keeps them moving as well as doing some type of physical activity five days a week in addition to this.
Note that this is of course going to be your weight loss intake, not what you’d eat in order to maintain yourself. Thus, it has the calorie deficit already built in.
So, figure out what category you would fall in, determine your target calorie intake, and then aim to eat this for a few weeks. From there, have a look at your progress.
If you aren’t losing weight, reduce the intake by 10%. If you are losing weight too quickly (more than 1-2 pounds per week), increase it by 10-20%.
Real life results will always be better than any calculation you do, so it’s important to do both, compare, and then make any necessary adjustments.
Learn more about successful dieting techniques and end to your battle with weight loss permanently.
If you feel like you’ve tried every other diet out there without any success, please visit www.fatloss2day.com. We can help.