Determine Calories Your Body Burns

[Rose50]

In the past year Cooking Light Magazine had a short article on how to determine how many caloreis your body burns daly. It was to aid in figuring out how mcuh weight you could safely lose. Does anyone happen to remember this?

[wallycat]

Rose50, this is the formula that dietitians (or at least what we were taught several years ago) used in hospitals:

women: TDE(total daily energy expenditure)=
(655+ 9.6W + 1.7H - 4.7A)(1.3)(1.44)

W=body weight in kg (conversion from pounds is 2.2)
H=height in cm (converstion is 2.54)
A=age

There are activity factors as well, but this is the basic.

I know there are some websites that will do this calculation for you...if I stumble on it, I'll post....

have fun...we had to do so many for clinical classes that I could do these in my sleep.....now I'd have to get my calculator :o :D

[Dewey]

Wallycat, I think I'm not reading this right. I tried the formula and cam up with a number around 7400!

You're writing that up like any basic algebra equation? Right? So that it's (((655 + (9.6 x W) + (1.7 X H) - (4.7 x A)) x 1.3) x 1.44)?

I'm sorry to appear so dense, I'm normally fairly good at this sort of thing.

Laurie

[wallycat]

I think I got all of those parens:D
did you do accurate converstion from pounds to kg and feet to cm??

[Dewey]

Probably not. I know I've got the inches - cm correct. I'm 6' which is about 182 cm. I weigh 147, which is 323.4 kg, I think. That's the one I'm not certain about.

Thanks for your help!

[wallycat]

Dewey, you should divide not multiply...your weight in kg. should be a little less than 1/2 of what you weigh in pounds. Good luck.

[Gracie]

I did it just now and got 2499. Does that mean that I can eat 2499 calories per day and maintain my weight? That's actually encouraging - maybe with a little trimming and my walking I could lose faster.

Loren

[Dewey]

Thank you! That makes much more sense. (I came up with 2698) I guess I should have paid more attention in school when we studied the metric system. Then I would have know that a kg is more than a pound! :p

Thanks again.
Laurie

[wallycat]

Gracie, that formula figures out what your body expends and requires in calories plus a factor.....1.44 is a factor number and they vary...
the formula I posted was average....here's how the whole formula works ...sorry, didn't realize there would be so many interested to use this....

the BEE (basal energy expenditure) for FEMALES is:
655 + 9.6W +1.7H -4.7A

to allow for illness/surgery/activity the factors are like this:

TDE (655+9.6W +1.7H-4.7A) (AF)(IF)

similar to before where AF is activity factor and IF is injury factor..
so I was using an example of 1.3 for no exercise and 1.44 for someone who may be planning surgery or some medical procedure....
the factors are as follows:
AFs:
1.2 = confined to bed
1.3 = ambulatory (walking around)
1.5-1.75 = most normally active persons
2.0 = extremely active persons

IFs are:
1.2 = have undergone minor surgery
1.35 = skeletal trauma
1.44 = undergone elective surgery
.16-1.9 = patients with major sepsis
1.88 = trauma plus seroids
2.1-2.5 = severe thermal burns

So the calories will vary....but not huge, huge amounts...
if I have confused you more, I'm sorry...maybe I better dig out that web site.:o

[wallycat]

Here's a website that should make it easier...
http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=question457.htm&url=http://www.wvda.org/calcs/fcals.htm

[Rose50]

Wallycat: Thanks. Went to the web site and it's got lots of good stuff on it! Rose50

[Gracie]

Thanks Wallycat! I did the BEE and got 1335 which sounded way more reasonable. Then I multiplied by 1.75 as I am reasonably active and got 2336 which again makes sense. I was thinking that the 2499 I got at first was without exercise.

I'm going to check out the website, too - this is interesting. Thank you!

Loren

[Angela]

Very interesting! I got 1711. I'm sure I eat more calories than that in a day. I'll have to keep track for a few days and see what the total calories are. I might be exercising more :D

[AmyBeth73]

Did you guys check out the other calculators on that web site? You can calculate how many calories you burn doing specific activities. I work from home, and I just learned I may be burning hundreds of calories typing!!!

:D