To lose weight you need to consume fewer calories than you use. More precisely, the National Institutes of Health suggests either eating 500 fewer calories or burning the equivalent of 500 calories a day. While you can create this calorie deficit based on your current diet, if you're aiming for maximum weight loss, figure out how many calories you should eat each day, a formula based on your gender, height and activity level.
BMR
Your Basal Metabolic Rate is a formula that estimates the number of calories you burn in day while being completely inactive. This number indicates how many calories you can consume without gaining or losing any weight at all. Your BMR is determined by a number of unique factors. In a 1993 report published in "The American Physiological Society," author Paul Arciero wrote that women have a lower basal metabolic rate than men because they have less muscle and a higher percentage of body fat.
BMR Formula
Calculating your BMR requires you to know your weight in pounds and height in inches. The website BMI Calculator offers this formula for determining an average female's BMR. If you are very muscular and lean, your BMR will be higher. The formula is: 655 + [4.35 x weight in pounds] + [4.7 x height in inches] - [4.7 x age in years] = BMR.
Calorie Requirements
If you consume the number of calories determined by your BMR, you won't gain weight, but you will not lose weight either. To lose weight, the nonscientific approach is to create a 500-calorie deficit, according to the National Institutes of Health. You can eat 500 fewer calories a day based on your BMR, burn 500 calories a day or use a combination of both methods. One formula, the Harris Benedict Equation, calculates the number of calories you should consume to maintain your weight based on your activity level.
If you are not active multiply your BMR by 1.2.
If you exercise one to three days a week, multiply your BMR by 1.375.
If you exercise three to five days a week multiply your BMR by 1.55.
If you exercise most days of the week multiply your BMR by 1.725.
Warnings
While limiting calories is the best way to drop pounds, consuming too few calories is also likely to backfire. The American Academy of Family Physicians warns that eating too little may show immediate results, but in the long run it can cause you to overeat and even binge. The Academy of Family Physicians suggests eating five or six small meals and a snack if eating three low-fat meals a day leaves you wanting. Women should get at least 1,200 calories a day. Eating fewer than 1,200 calories means that you could be losing lean muscle mass and water weight instead of excess fat.
Considerations
If you're trying to lose weight, it's not enough to just know how many calories you need based on your gender, height and activity level. A 2006 study by researchers at Cornell University found that overweight people consistently underestimate how much they eat by about 40 percent. Instead of relying on even an informed guess, using a website like the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Nutrient Database and nutrition labels on food packaging can help you determine healthy portion sizes and keep track of calories.
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