How to Determine Your Calorie Intake for Weight Loss

Calorie intake for weight loss is all about creating a calorie deficit. In order to create a calorie deficit you must first know what your calorie intake needs are to sustain your current weight, meaning what are the number of calories you should eat to stay at your current weight.

Each person's daily calorie intake needs will depend on their age and gender, height and weight and activity level. In order to explain how the calorie intake is calculated I will walk you through an example using a 30 year old woman weighing 135 pounds at a height of 5 feet 4 inches. The woman in this example is sedentary, meaning very little activity during the day.

Things You'll Need

• Online BMR Calculator

Show More

Instructions

• 1

  Determine your basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR is the rate at which you burn calories while at total rest, like sleeping. It is used to determine the amount of calories you would burn during the day with no activity other than normal body functions in order to survive like breathing, digesting, etc.

  To determine your BMR, the quickest and easiest way is to use an online BMR calculator (see link below). The variables used are age and gender and height and weight. So using our example woman her BMR calories would be 1,380 calories per day.

• 2

  Next you want to factor in your activity level to determine the amount of calories you need to maintain your current weight. Even if you have a desk job and are primarily sedentary, you are burning some calories above and beyond the BMR calories by performing everyday activities like walking, cleaning, etc. So you want to factor this in.

  In my example this 30 year old sedentary woman would have an additional 276 calories burned by doing these everyday activities. So in order to maintain her current weight she would need to consume 1,656 calories a day. However, if this same woman was moderately active she would need to consume 2,139 calories. So you can see how activity affects your calorie intake needs.

• 3

  Lastly you need to create your calorie deficit in order to lose weight. To lose 1 pound a week you want to create a deficit of 500 calories and for 2 pounds create 1,000 calorie deficit.

  You can create your deficit several different ways. One you can reduce the amount of calories you consume by eating fewer calories in a day. Two you can increase the amount of calories you burn by exercising more and three you can create a deficit by combing these two methods.

  If the woman in the example added 35 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise she would burn about 200 calories. This means she would only have to reduce the calories she eats by 300 calories to create a total calorie deficit of 500 calories. This means her new daily calorie intake for weight loss would be 1,356 calories.

  Use the link below for an online interactive BMR/Weight Loss calculator. This calculator will show you your BMR and the suggested calorie intake for weight loss.