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What Is an Estimated Energy Requirement Template?

An individual's Estimated Energy Requirement (EER) refers to his daily need for energy. This varies from individual to individual, and depends on factors such as the person's sex, age, weight, height and level of physical activity. It is not always easy to gauge a person's level of physical activity. An EER template helps in the calculation of a person's level of physical activity in order to arrive at an EER for the person.

  1. Estimated Energy Requirement

    • The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (IOM) came up with a way to calculate EER, taking into account public health concerns and the need to assess a person's energy balance. The EER calculation uses equations to predict how much energy intake an individual needs in order to maintain her body weight. These equations take into account an individual's daily use of energy based on his level of physical activity and gauge the effect of this physical activity on his total use of energy.

    Physical Activity Level

    • The IOM categorizes an individual's physical activity level as either sedentary, low active, active or very active, based on her pattern of physical activity. These categories give an idea about the level of energy an individual spends during physical activity, in terms of metabolic equivalents. The IOM approach assigns each activity an individual performs in a day a metabolic equivalent depending on the intensity of the activity and how long it lasts. This provides input for the EER estimate.

    EER Template

    • The EER template is set up by providing fields for the entry of all the information about an individual necessary to go into the calculation of his EER. This includes his physical characteristics, the list of activities he performed in the past 24 hours, and the duration of each activity. The template also uses input to adjust for an individual's excess use of oxygen following a period of exercise. As well, there is an adjustment that takes into account the digestive processes associated with eating that increase an individual's energy metabolism.

    Limitations

    • There are some limitations to this approach of using EER to calculate an individual's expenditure of energy. The use of metabolic equivalents may result in the underestimating of the actual use of energy for some activities, while it may lead to overestimating the use of energy required for some other activities. As well, in the calculation of physical activity level, the use of four convenient categories to calculate a person's expenditure of energy could also lead to inaccuracies.

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