How many calories do you need to eat everyday?
The number of calories the body consumes in a day is different for every person. There are three major factors which influence how much you need to eat everyday:
1) Your basal metabolic rate
Your basal metabolic rate or BMR is the amount of energy your body needs to function at rest. This accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of calories burned in a day and includes the energy required to keep the heart beating, the lungs breathing, the eyelids blinking and the body temperature stabilized. Men generally have a higher BMR than women. One of the most accurate methods of estimating your basal metabolic rate is the Harris-Benedict formula:
For an adult male: 66 + (6.3 x body weight in lbs.) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)
For an adult female: 655 + (4.3 x weight in lbs.) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)
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2) The level of physical activity you do
The second factor is the level of physical activity you do. Physical activity includes everything from doing household chores to cardiovascular activities like jogging. Walking, lifting, etc and just generally moving around also burns calories, but the number of calories you burn in any given activity depends on your body weight.
3) The thermic effect of food
The thermic effect of food is the final addition to the number of calories your body burns. This is the amount of energy your body uses to digest the food you eat. It takes energy to break food down to its basic elements in order to be used by the body. To calculate the number of calories you expend in this process, multiply the total number of calories you eat in a day by 0.10, or 10 percent.
The total number of calories a body needs in a day is the sum of these three calculations.
