The Truth About Calories-How Many Should You Be Having?

This is still an area where people seem to really struggle.

Not knowing how many calories YOU require as an individual can cause all sorts of problems and frustration, especially when it comes to optimising your health and hitting your health and fitness goals.

I will often see people with calorie intakes that are far too low when trying to lose weight, giving themselves an impossible target to stick to long term.

I also come across people who are not eating enough and wondering why they are low on energy or can’t build strength and muscle in the gym.

Or another common mistake is when people have simply copied what their friend did in terms of calorie intake to achieve their goal and are then confused as to why it didn’t work for them!

When looking at calories we need to work out what we need as an individual to give us the correct amount of energy to hit our goals, whether that be health, body composition or performance, and consider our gender, size and how active we are.

Not only do we then set ourselves up for success but we prevent ourselves from falling into the trap of being disappointed because we didn’t get the outcome we wanted and so giving up altogether when in reality, we never had the write plan to get us there in the first place.

So here is a really simple way of working out your own specific calorie needs and then some considerations of how you might adjust them after you get a starting point.

Step 1

For Women - Body Weight (KG) x 22

For Men - Body Weight (KG) x 24

This gives us an idea for your calorie needs based upon your size and gender but we next need to equate for your activity level.

(This equation is known as Mac’s MET BMR Method for those of you who are interested!!)

Step 2

Take your figure from step 1 and multiply it by 1.1-1.7 depending on your activity level. Below is a guide to get a good starting point for this.

Sedentary (Little or no activity, desk job)

1.1

Lightly Active (Light activity, some of the day standing or walking)

1.3

Moderately Active (Moderate activity levels,on feet most of day)

1.5

Very Active (Hard daily activity or exercise e.g. working long days on a building site)

1.7+

Step 3

We now have a calorie estimate for how to keep you at maintenance i.e. staying the same weight because our energy input from food matches our energy output.

So if we take me as an example as a female weighing 70KG who is moderately active the calculation would look like this;

70KG x 22 = 1,540Kcal

1540 x 1.5 = 2,310Kcal

So my maintenance figure would be 2,310 Kcals and eating this amount would mean I’m adequately fuelling my body.

Let’s now work out how to match this specifically to our goal.

If my goals was weight loss- I would start with a deficit of 500Kcal making my daily in put 1,810Kcal

If however I wanted to build muscle- I would start with a surplus of 2-300 Kcals making my daily input 2,510Kcals.

Step 4

Once you have calculated the figure based on step 1-3 above, the final step is to measure what actually happens when sticking to these quantities.

We have to remember that these equations give us a very good estimate but what matters it what is actually happening in real time!

So if you had a weight loss or weight gain goal, the key thing would be to measure your weight frequently and see how it responds over 4-6 weeks of implementing the plan.

If we get the result we are looking for then great!

If not, for example we aren’t losing weight then I would make an adjustment of around 200 Kcals and test again!

It’s that simple!

Now obviously there are more things to consider to match and optimise your nutrition to your goal however this is a very good place to start and will definitely get you heading in the right direction!

I hope you have found this useful but any questions please email them to [email protected] or check out all the clients I’ve already helped hit their goals HERE!

Have a great week!

Lizzie

The One Percent Club