How to Plan Your Caloric Intake Correctly - Basics of Nutrition & Dieting Tips

How to Plan Your Caloric Intake Correctly - Basics of Nutrition & Dieting Tips
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The basics of nutrition involve understanding how to plan your caloric intake correctly. When you know precisely what your daily caloric intake must be, you can than begin to focus on the other basics of nutrition by creating a meal plan that incorporates the right amounts of foods that will give you the vitamins, nutrients, and trace minerals that your body needs to thrive. Assessing your daily caloric intake is the very first step in forming a healthy diet. There are several methods for determining what your daily caloric intake should be.

Defining Your Daily Caloric Intake

Your caloric intake is based on the amount of energy your body needs to derive from foods you consume every day within a 24 hour period. Frank Katch and William McArlde, two physiologists, assert that women require roughly 2100 calories a day and that men require roughly 2900 calories a day in order to maintain their present weight and to derive enough energy from daily food consumption. It should be noted that variances in weight, height, and age as well as the levels of activities one engages in can either lower or raise these values considerably. In addition, how fast you metabolize the foods you consume also plays a role in how many calories you require every day.

Simple Calorie Calculation Method

In terms of basic nutrition, if you are looking to define your caloric intake in order to maintain your present weight, you need to multiply your current body weight by 16 calories to determine your total daily caloric intake. For example, if you are 150 pounds, you would multiply 150 pounds by 16 calories for every pound to get a caloric intake of 2400 calories a day to maintain your weight. If you are looking to lose weight, you would multiply every pound of body weight by 12 calories; if you weigh 150 pounds, your daily caloric intake will be 1800 calories to lose weight successfully. Meanwhile, if you want to gain weight, you would then multiply every pound of body weight by 19 calories. A 150 pound person would need to consume 2850 calories a day to begin gaining weight successfully. This method of calculating your caloric intake does not include the consideration of your height, your age, your metabolic processes, or your exercise levels, but is a simple method for coming up with a caloric intake level to meet your basics of nutrition intake requirements.

Basal Metabolic Rate Caloric Intake Calculations

When you use the basal metabolic rate (BMR) to calculate your caloric needs, you will be taking into consideration how your body functions. When calculating your BMR, you are also considering your sex, age, height and weight to determine your daily caloric intake: this method of calorie calculation is therefore more accurate. There are two different formulas for men and women which include:

Females: 655 + (9.6 X weight in kg) + (1.8 X height in cm) - (4.7 X your age).

Male: 66 + (13.7 x your weight in kg) + (5 x your height in centimeters) – (6.8 x your age)

If you are a female that is 167.6 cm tall, 45 years old, and presently weigh 54.5 kg, you would use the formula to determine your caloric intake by multiply 9.6 by your weight of 54.5 kg which equals 64.1. You would then multiply 1.8 by your height of 167.6 centimeters which equals 301.68. Next, you would multiply 4.7 times your age of 45 years to get 211.5. You will then take your calculations and add them together by adding 655 + 64.1 + 301.68 + 211.5 to get your daily caloric intake of 1232.89 calories daily. If you are looking to gain weight, you can add 500 calories a day to your caloric intake to gain one pound per week. If you are looking to lose weight, you can subtract 500 calories from your caloric intake to lose one pound a week, but you do not want to go below a caloric intake of 1000 calories; otherwise your body will believe it is starving and your metabolic processes will be adversely affected. Therefore, you should exercise in conjunction with monitoring your calories to lose weight.

Resources

HealthRecipes.com for information on calculating caloric intake:

https://www.healthrecipes.com/calories.htm

Free Dieting.com for information on weight loss and calculating your caloric intake at:

https://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm