Calories Needed for Women
The calories needed for women are less than those needed for men. That means if both eat the same food portions then the woman may gain weight while the man keeps his trim waistline.
Calories Needed for Women Differ
In general, men have leaner muscle mass than women and as a result will burn more calories. A woman doesn't burn calories as efficiently as a man and needs fewer calories. The caloric requirement for women can also differ from one woman to another. Caloric needs depend on a number of factors that are unique to your physical makeup.
Caloric Need Factors:
* Age
* Gender
* Genes
* Height
* Amount of exercise (activity level)
* Ratio of fat to muscle
* Weight, ratio of fat to muscle
Along with this standard list, you'll also need to take into consideration other variables such as being pregnant, breast feeding, or fighting an illness. All of these factors may increase your caloric need.
How Your Body Burns Calories
You don't want the process of determining how many calories you should eat to become an unsolvable puzzle that makes you throw your hands up in surrender. The easiest way to evaluate your individual caloric needs is to focus on your basal metabolic rate and level of physical exercise.
Basal Metabolic Rate
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) controls the amount of calories your body burns in order to keep running. Even when your body is at rest, you’re burning calories to keep all of your automatic body functions operating. Your lungs breathe, your eyes blink, your heart pumps, and your liver and kidneys continue to filter your blood. That just skims the surface of the automatic body systems that don’t require your conscious thought in order to function. When it comes to the number of calories women need, more than half of the required calories are used to fuel automatic functions.
Physical Exercise
The second factor to take into consideration when determining caloric needs is your level of physical activity. Physical activity burns calories, and the more you exercise or move around the more calories you need.
Determine Your Caloric Needs
Learning your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and factoring in your physical activity will help you determine how many calories you need in order to maintain your current weight. If you plan to lose weight, then you'll need to burn more calories than you consume. This is the crux of any successful weight loss.
One formula commonly used to determine caloric needs for women is the Harris Benedict Formula. This mathematical formula determines calories needed based on height, weight, gender, and age. The calculation also takes into account your level of exercise and adjusts the caloric intake requirement accordingly.
Harris Benedict Formula
To figure out how many calories you need in a day multiply BMR by the most fitting activity factor:
Harris Benedict Formula
To figure out how many calories you need in a day multiply BMR by the most fitting activity factor:
| Harris Benedict Formula |
To figure out how many calories you need in a day multiply BMR by the most fitting activity factor:
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It's always beneficial to understand how to calculate the calories you need. If you want to bypass the math, you can try some of the handy online calculators that use the Harris Benedict equation. These online calculators make determining your caloric needs easy.
Eating Too Many Calories
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service, women and men are eating too many calories. It's easy to overeat when you're served giant portions of food. Many advertisements and TV commercials encourage you with slogans that claim you need and deserve a break. All of these messages translate into eating more than you need. Knowing the calories needed for women is a tool you can use to help break this unhealthy trend.
Calories Needed to Maintain Weight
How many calories needed to maintain weight? The answer varies from person to person and will depend on a number of factors.
The total calories (kcal) consumed each day by men varies from 1500-4000 for most males: the total for females varies from 900-2500. In extreme cases, calorie intake can vary wildly, from 0 for someone on a water fast, to over 8000 kcal for a logger who burns them all while working, without gaining an ounce, and as high as 12,000 kcal per day for weight-lifters and bodybuilders.
The Weight Is Off. Now What?
Sometimes maintaining weight loss can be even more difficult than losing the weight in the first place. A lot of this is mental, arising from a diet mentality. It is very easy to relax once you’ve lost all of your weight and think that the diet is over, and with this that you are free to return to eating whatever you want. Unfortunately, this type of thought process often results in the rapid return of the weight that was lost in the first place. This is so common, that there is even a term for it-–yoyo dieting. The best way to avoid yoyo dieting is by realizing that weight loss and maintenance of that loss is a lifestyle that must be managed and adhered to most days for the rest of your life.
Do Calories Count?
When considering how many calories needed to maintain weight loss, you may ask yourself whether calories count or not. Provisionally, the answer is yes; however, calories are not the only thing you need to consider when you are seeking to maintain a healthy weight. Along with the calories you take in, you also need to pay attention to the nutritional quality of the food you eat, as well as your physical activity level. All of these things factor into your metabolism and the body’s ability to maintain weight loss.
Factors that Affect Metabolism
Everyone’s metabolism is unique. No two people have exactly the same caloric requirements. There are a number of factors that affect your metabolism, including:
- Lean body mass (LBM) - LBM is everything in your body that is not fat. This includes muscle, bone, water, and organs. The more lean body mass you have – particularly muscle – the more calories your body will burn as a general rule. If you want to increase how many calories needed to maintain weight, then, one of the best ways to do this is by increasing your muscle mass through strength training.
- Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) - Your BMR is how much your body burns if all you did was sat around all day. Caloric energy is required for all of your biological processes such as thinking, breathing and pumping blood through your body. You can get a general idea of your BMR by using a BMR calculator. If you’d like a more specific calculation of your BMR, many physicians and health centers offer BMR testing.
- Your activity level - This one is simple. How active are you? Your activity level can be calculated into your daily caloric requirements using the Harris Benedict Equation. To calculate how your activity level affects your caloric burn rate, multiply your BMR with the following constant, depending on your activity level:
- 1.2 if you are sedentary and get little or no exercise
- 1.375 if you are lightly active and do light exercise one to three days per week
- 1.55 if you are moderately active and do moderate exercise three to five days per week
- 1.725 if you are very active and do heavy exercise six to seven days per week
- 1.9 if you are heavily active – such as working an extremely physically demanding job or training at a high level for a particular sport
- Your age - You can’t really do much about this one, but age does have an affect on metabolism. This can be countered by increasing your activity level and lean body mass.
- Hormones - Your hormones can also wreak havoc on your metabolism – especially for women who are in perimenopause or menopause. Additionally, hormonal imbalances of the thyroid and pituitary glands can also affect your metabolism and require medical support. Check with your doctor if you feel you suffer from disorders of the thyroid or pituitary glands.
How Many Calories Needed to Maintain Weight?
With all of the above factors in mind, you can generally calculate your body’s caloric needs by calculating your BMR and then applying your Harris-Benedict number, as outlined above. The number you achieve will tell you how many calories to eat to maintain your current weight. Try to eat within 100 calories either way of this number most days of the week. Remember, calorie intake is cumulative over time. Any calories not burned by your body will be stored, so if you eat an extra 100 calories every day without balancing it out in the other direction, you will slowly begin to gain weight.
Maintaining your weight is achievable with a little bit of planning and a few calculations. If you find that you are losing or gaining weight, in spite of the above recommendations, check with your doctor to rule out underlying health conditions that may need attention.
Calories Needed Each Day to Lose Weight
How many calories needed each day to lose weight depends on a number of factors and can vary from individual to individual.
What Is a Calorie?
When considering how many calories needed each day to lose weight, you hear the term calorie bandied about, but most people have a really nebulous idea of what a calorie actually is.
A calorie is a unit of food energy. Six nutrients contain calories. Carbohydrates and proteins have four calories per gram. Fats are more energetically dense, and have nine calories per gram. Alcohol has seven calories per gram. Other sources of calories include organic acids (such as acetic acid and lactic acid) and polyols (sugar alcohols such as Mannitol, Xylitol and Glycerol).
Calories and Weight Loss
One of the basic tenants of weight loss is that you need to burn more calories than you eat in order to lose weight. While this is true, the process is a little more complex than that simple statement indicates.
Calories – energy units – are burned by your body as energy. There is, however, a limit to the amount of calories your body utilizes as energy. This amount varies from person to person based upon a number of factors including your basic metabolic burn rate, the amount of lean body mass you have, and your activity level. Other chemical and hormonal factors may also affect how many calories your body burns each day, but they are beyond the scope of this article and are best discussed with a nutritionist or physician.
Any calorie consumed that your body does not convert to energy is stored as body fat.
Basal Metabolic Rate
Your basal metabolic rate is your minimal caloric burn rate. These are the calories you need just to exist and support bodily functions such as respiration, heart beat and digestion to name a few. This is an important number to consider when determing how many calories needed each day to lose weight. It is never advisable to have a daily caloric intake that falls below this basal metabolic rate (BMR). There are a number of methods that can be used to calculate BMR ranging from the very scientific which is done in a doctor’s office to an estimation that will work well for most people who are trying to get a handle on how much to eat. To get a general idea of your BMR, use this BMR calculator. This is the lowest amount of calories you should EVER eat unless directed otherwise by a physician.
Lean Body Mass
In general, the more lean body mass you have, the more calories your body will burn. Lean body mass is everything in your body that is not fat including muscles, bones, water and organs. Your lean body mass to body fat ratio is also referred to your body composition. There are a number of ways to measure body composition, including skin fold calipers and hydrostatic weighing. Most body composition calculations need to be done by an expert who has been trained in body composition. Skin caliper measurements are usually the least expensive method.
Activity Level
The more active you are, the more calories you will burn. Activity level includes more than formal exercise. It also includes how sedentary or active your job is, and whether you fidget a lot or sit still. There is a good basic equation that takes your activity level into account and recommends caloric intake based upon how active you are. This equation is called the Harris-Benedict equation. You can use a Harris-Benedict calculator to calculate your daily caloric needs.
How Many Calories Needed Each Day to Lose Weight?
Your individual answer will depend on the two numbers you derived – your BMR and your Harris-Benedict number. Since you need to burn more calories than you take in, a good rule of thumb is to take your Harris-Benedict calculation and subtract between 300 and 500 calories from that number. This, then, would be your required daily caloric intake for weight loss.
Eating Below Your BMR
Never eat below your BMR number, because your body will begin to convert your lean body mass to energy. This, in turn, decreases your lean body mass (even though your weight is dropping), which decreases your basal metabolic rate. This can become a vicious cycle that traps many dieters, who find they can eat less and less and need to exercise more and more to even be able to maintain their weight loss.
Increasing Your Body’s Ability to Burn Calories
Is the number of calories you can eat and still lose weight alarmingly low? You can increase your body’s ability to burn calories. There are two ways you can do this. First, you can increase your lean body mass through strength training. Secondly, you can increase your activity level. If you significantly increase your activity level, you will need to recalculate your caloric needs so that you can continue healthy weight loss that sacrifices minimal lean body mass.
Once you have determined how many calories you need to eat daily to lose weight, check out some of the different diet recommendations for a 1200 calorie diet, 1500 calorie diet and an 1800 calorie diet.