BMR
Your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR, is the minimum caloric requirement needed to maintain life, even when you are completely ate rest.
Think of it this way, were you to remain asleep in bed all day, this is the amount of calories your body will burn. Makes it tempting to stay in bed for the duration of your weight loss efforts huh? But we all know that won't happen.
Well why do you need to know that number? How can you use it to your advantage? When you understand your body's energy requirements, it can help guide your nutritional choices.
To start losing weight, subtract calories from your BMR. First use the BMR (with your activity level) to determine how many calories you should eat each day to maintain your current weight. Then to lose weight safely (1-2 pounds per week), cut 500-1000 calories each day from your BMR. When you cut a total of 3,500 calories, you’ll lose one pound of body weight.
Since your body will require fewer calories as you get smaller, recalculate your BMR along with your activity level as you lose weight, about every 10-15lbs. This is a very important step I never factored in when I dropped about 10lbs last year. It also explains why people stall out or plateau for a while, one solution may be to just recalculate your BMR. So this year, I made a mental note that every new decade I reach, 180's, 170's etc, I'll crunch my numbers again.
How low should you go? Don’t reduce too many calories thinking you will lose more. Going lower than 1200 calories a day isn’t anymore effective for long-term weight loss than just lowering your calories to achieve the recommended 1-2 pounds a week rate.
You know the routine, tomorrow we'll learn how to calculate our BMR's...I'll post my BMR…yada yada yada...you guys will ignore me...blah blah blah...I'll softly sob onto my keyboard...
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2 Comments
08.14.06 | Note: Comments are closed. Please use this form to leave a message.
One thing to take into consideration when you are reading into BMR is that it a guide as well. It falls apart really when you are serverly obese, as BMR mostly shows maintenance calories to keep a healthy person (good ammount of muscle/fat ratio) the same weight. If you weigh in at serverly obese, than your weightloss BMR is not going to be 3500-4500 Calories :P