Daily Caloric Needs

This is fun and informative. Remember, "Learn & Enjoy."

I used to have an online calculator that did this automatically for me and my patients, but this is more fun, if not more laborious. Follow along.

I did average out "Active" and "Very Active" somewhere in-between because of the weather. It's pretty hard to be "Very Active" with this virus thing I heard is going around.

Determine Your Daily Caloric Needs:

There are several ways to determine how many calories you need:

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

Physical Activity

Thermic Effect of Food

---------

The Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the amount of energy (calories) your body needs while resting. This accounts for about 60-70 % of calories burned daily. In general, men have a higher BMR than women +because muscle and testosterone). One of the most accurate methods of estimating your Basal Metabolic Rate is the Harris-Benedict Formula:

Adult male: 66 + (6.3 x body weight in lbs.) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years) = BMR

Adult female: 655 + (4.3 x weight in lbs.) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years) = BMR

To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows: 66+(6.3*170)=1203 +(12.9*71)= -(6.8*62)=2118.9-421.6=1697.3

If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2

If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375

If you are moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55

If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725

If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

Total Calorie Needs Example

If you are sedentary, multiply your BMR (1745) by 1.2 = 2094. This is the total number of calories you need in order to maintain your current weight.

Calorie Needs to Lose Weight

There are approximately 3500 calories in a pound of stored body fat. If you subtract 3500 calories each week through diet, exercise or a combination of both, you will lose one pound of body weight. (On average 75% of this is fat, 25% lean tissue) If you create a 7000 calorie deficit you will lose two pounds and so on. The calorie deficit can be achieved either by calorie reduction alone, or by a combination of eating less and doing more. This combination of healthy eating and physical activity is best for achieving and maintianing a healthy weight.

If you want to lose fat, a useful guideline for lowering your calorie intake is to reduce your calories by at least 500, but not more than 1000 below your maintenance level. For people with only a small amount of weight to lose, 1000 calories is too much. As a guide, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 calories per day for men. Even these calorie levels are quite low.

Fight, Flee, Freeze, or Fawn

A great article from Well.org. This is from my email but there is no link to to an outside site, so I copied and pasted it in its entirety. There are reference links, though.

Attention All “People-Pleasers”: Important Trauma-Healing Info People-pleasing is commonly considered to be an altruistic method of getting along with your neighbor. But according to prominent psychologists, it’s more accurately an acute response to trauma, called “fawning.” We’re all pretty familiar with fight or flight responses… it turns out, there are two others. “Freeze”... And “fawn.” These are our defense structures — and “fawn” is a response characterized by codependence. Meaning you either require too much of others, or others require too much of you. Here are some of the behavioral points common to fawning as a response to conflict, or the threat of conflict… Mirroring opinions Anticipating/appeasing needs Relaxing/ignoring personal boundaries  Absorbing the wants of another party as your own There are many different ways that these can manifest, but generally speaking, the “fawner” doesn’t assert their feelings and experiences as a valid stance (like a “fighter”), or obsessively strives for perfection to avoid conflict (like a “flighter”), or disassociates and becomes as invisible as possible (like a “freezer”). You see, matching your “opponent’s” posture and attitude is a way to blend in and convince the source of conflict that you’re on their side, you’re not the target, you’ll help them to make it better.  It’s usually a trained reaction to trauma or abuse — to get in front of a conflict before it gets in front of you.  The Psychology of Fawning  Therapist and author Pete Walker developed his “fawning” theory as an exploration of the affability of PTSD survivors.  Not only does fawning serve to diffuse conflict, it also creates a false sense of security in relationships by using constructed commonalities as a bond. Basically, it’s the long-con.  But what it all boils down to? Feeling safe. This means that you’ll often find fawners in relationships with people who are: controlling (so that they don’t have to make decisions which could later impact them negatively)  withholding (so that receiving affection feels “earned” and therefore less likely to evaporate)  or in some cases abusive (so that having no boundaries seems justified, since they wouldn’t have been respected anyway) Are you detecting the pattern?  Does This Sound Like You?  People whose trauma response is fawning tend to prefer relationships and situations that are inherently unstable because it feels comfortable, and because their required contribution is clear and familiar: soothe and supplement. If you suspect this might be you… Here are a few more checkpoints. Do you… Go back and forth between bottling up your emotions and unleashing them onto people, usually not the people who need to hear them? Have a really hard time saying “no”, even when you’re completely overwhelmed? Second-guess yourself when you’re angry at someone and end up feeling guilty for possibly misunderstanding the situation? Craft your behavior based on the perceived reactions of the other person involved as though you were responsible for their behavior as well as your own? Bend and mold your values depending on the situation? Those trends are an indication that you respond to conflict by fawning. What Should You Do? This is a personal journey, so everyone’s answer will be different. You could seek out therapy, with a focus on self-preservation through self-worth, and not through external validation that fawning seemingly secures. If you’d like to take matters into your own hands, you could start dismantling your “fawning” reaction by considering which people in your life illicit it the most from you. Who do you go out of your way to please? And who do you ignore as a result?  Noting who you ignore is helpful, because those people are often the people you actually should be spending energy on.  You see, they’re the people that you’re not afraid of — who aren’t mad when you take time for yourself, or who don’t question your feelings when you present them.  It’s likely that you’ve paid less attention to these people because their approval wasn’t conditional, and you weren’t punished for not paying attention. Consider starting there, but if you’d like something a little bit more hands-on… You could try a course in healing emotional trauma, like this one.  Whatever you decide to do, simply understanding when and why you engage in a “fawning” response is absolutely crucial. For full references, please click here.