How to calculate your calorie needs

To lose weight and then develop a balanced diet and personalized, one must know their calorie requirements, ie, the amount of daily calories that we introduce.

The amount of calories established by our caloric needs, must be the right amount, which will allow us to maintain our body weight stable, if we are of normal weight. If we are overweight, our calorie needs must be calculated to afford to lose the excess pounds and reach our ideal weight. But how do you calculate the calorie requirements?

1.) First, to calculate your calorie needs, you need to calculate your basal metabolic rate. The basal metabolic rate is the amount of calories your body needs to introduce mandatory, because it is the calories corresponding to the energy that our body uses to perform the most important functions, like breathing, make the heart beat and then allow the proper functioning of all the organs of our body. How to calculate your basal metabolic rate? To calculate it using appropriate tables, characterized by different age groups and divided by gender, which were obtained through the studies carried out on different samples of populations.

2.) Once calculated the basal metabolic rate, we can calculate the energy demand, ie the amount of calories daily to be introduced, to maintain a stable body weight. In an individual of normal weight, energy requirements, corresponds to the caloric needs, as the weight should not vary. It is calculated by multiplying the basal metabolic rate for an index, which is called index LAF. The LAF index corresponds to the level of physical activity that the subject performs daily, which can be classified into three levels of physical activity: light, moderate or heavy.

3.) If the subject is overweight, the energy demand will not match the caloric requirements (ie the amount of calories to be introduced every day). In that case, you have to subtract the value of the energy needs, an amount of calories ranging from 500 to 1000 calories a day, depending on how many pounds you need to lose. In this way, we get then the proportion of calories that the subject should be introduced to lose her excess pounds.