How Many Calories Should You Eat A Day?

The amount of calories you should consume a day depends not only on your goals (to lose weight, maintain weight, or gain weight), but also your gender, age, current weight, and height.

Minimum Calories Needed:
Your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is the amount of calories your body needs to carry out its normal bodily functions.  The BMR does not take into account your activity level.  Experts recommend you not going below this amount so that your body doesn’t go into starvation mode.

I found this formula interesting because I didn’t realize that I need at least 1370 calories a day.  When I diet, I often consume less than this amount, which might be why I have a hard time with diets.   I guess my body switches to the starvation mode since I would often stay around the 1000 calorie range.

Find out your minimum calorie intake needs using an online BMR calculator or the BMR formula.

Calories Needed to Maintain Weight:
Once you know your BMR amount, then you can use the Harris Benedict Equation which factors in your normal activity level to figure out how many calories you would need to consume to maintain your current weight.  Based on my current workout level of 1-3 times a week, I can consume about 1900 calories a day to maintain might weight.

Calories Needed to Lose Weight:
Since it takes 3500 calories to equal a pound, you need to decrease your caloric intake, but not go below your Basal Metabolic Rate.  If you decreased your calories by 500 a day, then that would average about 1 pound a week.  If you wish to lose more than this a week, then you need to also increase your workout level.

Therefore, decreasing your calorie intake and increasing your workout level would help you lose the most weight.

These formulas do not take into account the amount of muscle mass that you have, which burns more calories throughout the day.  However, these formulas are great guidelines to help you stay or get on track with your fitness goals.

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