Calorie target for later

I just followed a link called “John’s BMR calculator” on the Fatfighterblogs site to calculate what I thought was going to be my base metabolic rate. I was asked to put in my gender, age, height, weight and my body fat percentage.

Now, I’m aware that they measure this with a pinchey thing, from between your thumb and index finger, or from your bingo wings (the bits of skin and fat under your arm). However, because there isn’t anything in the world you can’t find in the Internet, I did a quick search to see if I could find a way calculate it without measurements.

I came across the U.S. Navy Circumference way to measure your body fat, for which you need to submit your waist, hips, neck and height. This I did, and the son of a bitch gave me a body fat percentage of 35, with the note that 22 is recommended for a woman.

“The Bodyfat Percentage (BF%) of a 167.5cm female with a 35cm neck, a 83cm waist and 106cm hips is 35% Recommended BF% for a woman is 22%. “

I then look back to the first window (John’s BMR thingy) and there it says “20 is average and 35 is very overweight. Bastard!

Now I feel like I’ve just gained weight within seconds from reading that. It’s like a corset has been taken off and all my “real fat” is now hanging out, over my jeans and from under my arms.

Of course this can’t be true. There must be something wrong with the navy measuring system. My BMI is actually 25.7, and I am overweight but not very overweight. I decide that my body fat percentage is 25. There.

Now, let’s see what John has to say for himself.

Your Base Metabolic Rate (BMR) is in the area of 1269 (Harris-Benedict formula) and 1600 (Schofield formula) calories per day. (If you got the default figure of 1000 and zeros elsewhere, reload this page and make sure you didn’t input something incorrectly.) Your lean weight is about 120 pounds.

Workout program

Rule of thumb: Target a ballpark 1180-1620 honest calories per day if your main goal is fat-loss, and about 1800-2350 calories per day for muscle gain without fat loss.

Theoretical: Estimate your daily burn, then substract 500 calories daily for every pound of fat you want to lose per week. With energetic daily workouts, you’ll burn about 2200 calories daily (we’re assuming you’re at least moderately active and not totally sedentary the rest of the day).

An achievable fat-loss target for you is roughly 1.5 pounds per week.

And how many calories does breastfeeding burn? It’s about 200-500 calories per day, so I would say the amount my baby is nursing takes about 400, because he eats a lot. Assuming that my resting energy is 1480, I would say that I burn about roughly 3000-3500 calories on the days I managed to get myself and Lukas out the door.

So according to today’s googling and musings, I’m going to set myself a calorie target of no more than 2000 a day. That’s taking the breastfeeding into account. Before I can start applying the target to my diet, I will have to count calories for a while to get the hang of it because I’ve never done it before. I reckon it’s going to be easier to estimate your calorie intake when you have some sort of idea of the calorie content of the foods you normally eat, no?

~ by pandalino on November 27, 2006.