Calorie Calculator Weight Maintenance

Weight maintenance ultimately comes down to keeping your calorie intake and expenditure as close to equal as possible. Dietary requirements differ from person to person. Calorie requirements for weight maintenance can't be set because of this. You have to take your activity level, base metabolism and body type into account when determining your calorie requirements. Knowing the nutritional value and calorie content of the foods you eat complements the knowledge of your metabolism.

Finding Daily Calorie Use

• ShapeFit states that most of your daily expenditure of energy goes to basic life processes such as heartbeat, breathing, digestion and neural functions. The energy that powers your body adds up to the basal metabolic rate, or BMR. You can't eat any less than your basal metabolic rate without your body's functions slowing or halting. Also, your daily activities require calories. You can calculate your BMR with the Harrison-Benedict Equation. For men, the BMR in calories per day is 660 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) - (6.8 X age in years). For women, the equation is 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X ht in cm) - (4.7 X age in years). After you calculate BMR, add your activity multiplier. For moderate activity, multiply your BMR by 1.55.

Maintaining Weight

• After you find your total energy expenditure in calories, you can find your daily dietary requirements. Of course, proper weight maintenance requires more than just the right number of calories; they have to be nutritious. Proteins, carbohydrates and fats provide the main sources of calories. Proteins provide the building blocks for your body, carbohydrates serve as an energy source and fats act as long-term energy storage. Try to have relatively equal amounts of all these nutrients. Divide your daily calorie requirement by three to get your required amount of each nutrient. Depending on your dietary requirements, you may need more or less of one nutrient.