<p>I would like to figure out how many calories I burn each day so I know what my intake should be to lose weight. I see FitBit, Fuelband, Jawbone and a bunch of other stuff out there. Does anyone have an easy way to do this? I’d like to actually lose weight this year. I go to the gym 5 days a week doing HIIT training and kickboxing, but I don’t lose weight. It’s got to be my intake. thanks</p>
<p>I used this: [BMR</a> Calculator | SparkPeople](<a href=“http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness_articles.asp?id=385]BMR”>http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness_articles.asp?id=385)</p>
<p>For me, though, it was easier to just experiment with different intakes. For the first 10lbs I needed to work out strenuously every day and eat 1300-1500 calories each day. For the next 10 I need to eat 1200-1300 most days, and actually work out less so that I can safely eat that little. I am currently calorie cycling between 1200 and 1500, but I don’t lose if I don’t have those 1200 days. It’s a pain.</p>
<p>I am learning it is not an exact science. It isn’t just calories in calories out like some will have you believe. It’s calories in/out, stress, sleep, hormones, genes, and sometimes it seems like luck. What will work for a while won’t always work forever.</p>
<p>I’m sure you will get a ton of replies but I found that myfitnesspal is a great resource. I don’t know if you have a smart phone or iPod but you can enter all of your food and it will track how much you should eat in a day and it will add in exercise. You put in your height and weight and how much you want to lose and it will calculate. </p>
<p>I find that I can eat less than I think and exercise burns less than I want. Sad but true. It is very hard to lose weight by exercise alone.</p>
<p>The common formula is to simply multiple your weight by ten. Of course, your burn more calories than this on a daily basis, but if you were to simply sit in bed all day, that is how many calories you’d burn.</p>
<p>I second Emaheevul07’s advice, for me, it was just easier to experiment with different intakes and see which ones actually resulted in me losing weight.</p>
<p>It is almost impossible to accurately calculate how many calories you burn. It is almost impossible to calculate how many calories you consume. To try to lose weight with a “calories in/calories out” approach is almost impossible.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, if you are not losing weight as quickly as you would like (and your goal is reasonable), then you have to cut something out of your diet. In general, you want to cut things that tend to make the body store fat (sugar and processed carbs). So, step one would be to look at your diet and see if there is any place you can cut sugar, especially sugar that you drink (fruit juice, etc.) Once you’ve cut all the sugar, start progressively whacking carbs from your diet (flour, bread, pasta, cereal, etc.) Try to keep protein consumption up. Try to emphasize exercise that builds/maintains lean muscle mass. Don’t go nuts with “low fat” products because most them substitute sugar for fat.</p>
<p>Losing weight is about what you eat. The simplest way is to write down everything you eat along with estimates of calories. Thanks to the internet, that’s easy. Some apps almost do it for you, though I prefer writing it out by hand in a little notebook. Writing it down means you become aware of how much you take in, so you can cut it. </p>
<p>You can only lose weight by exercise if you do a ton and a half of exercise a day and then don’t eat more to compensate, which is really hard. I know cyclist who may eat 5k calories a day in training, but then they’re riding 100+ miles a day. </p>
<p>One basic problem with exercise is people over-estimate how much they burn and then forget to subtract what they would have burnt anyway. If you’re alive, you probably burning 50-75 calories just by breathing and basically moving around. Add on top of that what you might be doing during exercise time and maybe that workout which burnt 400 calories or so only netted you maybe 200-250. You eat a few pieces of bread and you’re even. We’ve all seen people eat a muffin which may have 500 calories and that’s why they gain weight when exercising.</p>
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<p>Actually, losing (or gaining) weight by calories in vs. out works if the difference is larger than the fuzziness due to errors in counting calories and whatever else. People can starve to death after not eating enough food for a while.</p>
<p>But many people consume more than they think they are, or do not stick to whatever diet and exercise plan they say they are doing.</p>
<p>same as lns for needed calories… 500 less calories per day one pound loss per week.</p>
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<p>That’s part of the problem. But, we are not talking about independent variables. Eating at a starvation level (severely restricting calories in) slows metabolism and reduces the energy being burned by the body. Or, exercising heavily (to increase calories burned) signals the body to eat more (increase calories in). And, both sides of the equation impact hormonal regulation (such as insulin sensitivity). </p>
<p>But, forgetting all that… let’s say the fuzziness in measuring calories eaten or burned is only 50 calories a day. That’s a miscalculation of either losing or gaining 50 pounds every ten years, 100 pounds every 20 years. Nobody can measure either side of the equation within 50 calories a day, unless they are living in a metabolic ward.</p>
<p>Short term, yes, you can lose weight by restricting calories, but over the long haul counting calories (eating or burning) hasn’t proven to be a successful strategy.</p>
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<p>Counting calories may be prone to errors, but calorie restriction does work. Indeed, popular diets, if complied with, do typically end up greatly restricting calories. This includes low carb and low fat* diets, where studies have found that calorie intake for those complying with the diets but not counting calories or otherwise restricting intake is low enough to by itself explain the weight loss.</p>
<p>*Not the mainstream “slightly lower fat” diets, but the more radical ones with <10% of calories from fat.</p>
<p>Years of managing my dogs’ weight have taught me that the easiest way to lose weight is to measure input and weight on a regular basis. If the weight is up, reduce the input. If the weight is down, increase the input. Keep exercise level at a consistent amount for fitness and to keep up metabolic rate and don’t think of it as a method of weight loss.</p>
<p>I have noticed that, for myself, carbohydrate calories seem to be in some way more likely to slow my weight loss rate than fat or protein calories. In short, I restrict myself to very few carbohydrates and I have them early in the day (breakfast or lunch). </p>
<p>I have, over time, determined that I hate eating fewer than 1500 calories a day, but that I can lose weight (about a pound a week) at 1500 calories a day if I also take three fast 15 minute walks during the day. This amount of exercise keeps me fit and keeps my dogs fit.</p>
<p>As far as I’ve seen, all diets that reduce weight reduce calories with the exception of an Atkins type diet which can, instead, reduce water weight. To explain, by not taking in carbs, you end up reducing the amount of water that binds to them (in a more elaborate process than just “carbs and water”). I once sat down in a bookstore and calculated the daily calories in a number of diets, including the early Atkins-style ones. They were highly calorie restricted. I did like 5 and 3 were barely 1000 calories a day.</p>
<p>Food diaries work if you stop lying to yourself about what you eat.</p>
<p>The only way I could figure out my relative metabolic rate was to keep track of my calories for 2 weeks, then start dropped calories a week at a time doing zero exercise other than normal day to day life to hit the level where I would drop a pound a week. Then after a couple weeks of that I started adding the exercise back in to hit a 2 pound per week loss (except for weeks where I would plateau). I’m severely hypothyroid and my metabolic rate is alittle lower than many of my friends as we did this all as an experiment. It’s not exactly rapid weight loss, but we had fun comparing “notes” about how many calories we actually burned per day. Most people just want to drop weight as fast as they can and don’t have the patience to figure out a more realistic metabolic rate. For me, I maintain weight with zero exercise at only 1200 calories per day and with exercise I maintain weight at 1700 calories per day. Charts would say I can eat 1800-2000 with exercise, but I know I would gain weight at 1800-2000 albeit very slowly, maybe a couple pounds per year if nothing else changed.</p>
<p>Highly recommend the MyFitnessPal app (or website if you don’t have a smartphone). It kept me honest for 13 weeks (lost about 1 pound per week). I took a break over the holidays but am starting back up now. </p>
<p>It’s so much easier than doing your own calculations!</p>