Calculating Your Metabolic Rate

Calculating Your metabolic Rate

Learn how to maintain a healthy body weight by calculating how much energy your body burns.

Healthy Explorer...... has heard many people talking about their metabolism as a problem to lose weight. Metabolism to simply define is the amount of calories your body burns, there is basal metabolic rate which is the amount of calories your body uses to stay alive. Actual metabolic rate is very hard to calculate because people may lead very different lifestyle in terms of exercise, diet, stress levels and age play apart in how much energy your body uses.  Below is an example of how to calculate you basal metabolic rate.

Example....... A female who is aged 32, who is 132cm metres tall and weighs 60kg.

Formula-BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )

BMR= 655 + (9.6×60kg=576) + (1.8× 132cm=237.6) - (4.7 × 32years=150.4) = 13182 Kilo calories.

Tips.... when calculating, work out the sums in the brackets first, I have included the formula for men, and in non metric measurements at the end of this article. Also the result you get is just the calories your burn at rest, does not take into account any physical activity you may do.

Pros and Con....... the downfall is that this is not personalised to an individual and to find out one for an individual is a difficult and an invasive method. The Pro is that it’s a close calculated estimate as the formula would have been developed from taken averages from a large group of people. It’s a great tool to determine how much food you should be eating, plus you can use it to either gain, maintain or lose weight. Which I will cover in future posts.

Thanks for reading

Have a go at calculating your BMR, let me know how you get one.

English BMR Formula

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years ) Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

Metric BMR Formula

Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) - ( 4.7 x age in years ) Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) - ( 6.8 x age in years )