Let’s talk about what maintenance calories are so you can manipulate your calorie intake at your will.
In a previous article, I talked about basic concepts behind losing weight. I also shared how your body requires energy. Calories are just a measure of energy. You need calories to breathe, to control your body temperature, to circulate your blood, contract your muscles, and to perform other bodily functions. If you did nothing other than sleep all day, your body would still require calories.
You get your calories from food, and as we discussed excess calories from food are converted into fat. But it also means if you don’t give your body enough energy, it’ll look for it in other places. Not only will it use your stored fat for energy, but it can eventually use your stored muscle as an energy source, too.
Eventually, if your body doesn’t get energy from food and runs out of its internal sources of energy, like stored fat and muscle, you’ll eventually die.
How your body uses your calories is broken down in three main ways, which makes up your Total Daily Energy Expenditure. Let’s quickly talk about them.
Thermic effect of food
The first way your body uses your calories is called the thermic effect of food. Your body needs energy to break down the food you eat. For example, it takes way more energy to chew a steak than to drink a shake. The effect of your physical activity is about 10% of your body’s overall calorie requirements.
Thermic effect of physical activity
The second way your body uses your calories is called the thermic effect of physical activity. Your body needs calories to perform basic activities like walking, talking, moving, and exercising. This is what people try to manipulate the most when they want their body to burn or use calories. The more you move, the more calories your body is going to use.
But the number of calories your body uses based on the exercises you do is probably less than you think. For example, most folks only burn about 100 calories per 10 minutes of exercise, if they are working hard enough. So, a 30-minute exercise session only burns 300 calories. The effect of your physical activity is about 20-30% of your body’s overall calorie requirements.
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
The last way your body uses your calories is called its basal metabolic rate or BMR. Your BMR is the number of calories your body requires to function even if you stayed in bed and did nothing else all day. It’s by far the most important energy component that uses your stored calories. The effect of your BMR is the other 60-70% of your body’s overall calorie requirements.
What’s more important than this background information though, is how you can use it. So let’s now get to the good stuff by learning how to estimate your maintenance calories.
Estimating Maintenance Calories
Let’s finally talk about finding an estimate of your body’s maintenance calories. You can easily get this estimate using mathematical formulas that were determined years ago and are currently in use today.
Ultimately, I have my clients use the “Auto-Diet” template and a food planner to put their maintenance calories into practice, but for now you can simply use an online BMR calculator, which gives you the same number you would see in my “Auto-Diet” template and in the food planner my clients use.
It’s important to note that all maintenance calorie calculators are just estimates. They give you a decent estimate as a starting point. You will have to monitor and adjust this overtime until you land on a range that’s most fitting for you. But it’s nothing you need to worry about because the Auto-Diet template takes care of this for you.
This online calculator, my “Auto-Diet” template and my recommended food planner app all use the formula which is considered to give the most accurate estimate. The formula uses your weight, height, age, and gender.
If you input your information into this calculator, it’ll spit out a number for your BMR. Using an example of a 42-year-old, 5 feet-11 inches, 200-pound male, it gives 1,829 calories/day.
Remember, your BMR is the number of calories your body requires to function and maintain your weight if all you did was lay in bed all day. However, you don’t just lie in bed all day, so you still need to know how many calories your body requires based on the amount of activity you do.
Using an estimate of your activity along with your estimated BMR gives you an estimated number for your maintenance calories. This is where the thermic effect of physical activity comes into play.
Just like mathematical formulas were created to estimate BMR, activity factors were created to estimate energy usage based on activity levels. So, to get your maintenance calories based on your activity levels, you must use activity factors with the BMR equation.
You would use these activity factors by multiplying the factor that represents your level of activity by your BMR. For example, let’s say you don’t work out at all and have a job where you sit all day. You would use the sedentary activity factor of 1.2 and then you would multiply your BMR by this number. The online calculator does this for you and gives you a total daily calorie need of 2,195.
If you performed intense exercise daily, or say, work at a factory that has you moving and sweating for 8 to 10 hours per day, you’d use the highest factor of 1.55. The online calculator gives you a total daily calorie need of 3,476.
The real answer for how many calories your body requires daily, based on your activity, lies somewhere within the range you find using this calculator.
So, this is it. Simple as that.
There are other, more methodical ways such as tracking both your food intake and weight over a week to see what happens, but using an online calculator works.
Again, all ways to determine your maintenance calories give you an estimate because nothing can tell you definitively how much your body burns outside of a controlled scientific lab environment. Even fitness trackers are notoriously incorrect.
The takeaway is you have a “number” of calories called your maintenance calories and eating no more (or no fewer) than these calories daily is how you maintain your existing weight!
Remember calories are just a measure of energy. So many people aren’t familiar with this basic concept, but now you are and you’re one thousand percent ahead of them.
It doesn’t get simpler than this, eating under this number is how you lose weight. If you wanted to gain weight, eating over this number is how you’d do it.
Once we cover food choices in detail, you’re going to have an even better understanding as to why everyone around you gains weight, even though they’re blaming their weight gain on carbs, fats, or bad genes. I don’t want you to just lose weight, though. I want you to lose fat. So, let’s talk about it.
