The main idea behind weight maintenance is to burn as many calories as you consume. To figure out how many calories your body needs to stay at your current weight, figure out your basal metabolic rate. The BMR is widely respected as the formula to determine the number of calories your body needs to maintain weight.
Identification
The American Council on Exercise explains that your BMR is the number of calories your body uses when you are not exercising. For instance, your body burns calories to sleep, to breath and to use its organs. This makes up about 60 to 75 percent of your daily calories used, according to the ACE.
Formula
To determine your BMR, you need to start with your weight, height, gender and age. The formula differs depending on your gender. For men, determine your BMR with the equation: 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in year). For women, use: 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years). This gives you the number of calories to consume per day to maintain your current weight.
Considerations
Although the BMR formula is generally an effective method to determine your caloric intake needed to maintain your weight, it has flaws for certain populations. Since the equation does not include lean body mass, which is the amount of muscle compared to fat in your body, it does not give an accurate picture of the caloric needs for people who are obese or those who have a lot of muscle, according to the BMI Calculator website. In the obese population, it will over-estimate your caloric intake needs and if you are muscular, it will underestimate them.
Exercise
Exercise affects your BMR, since you burn more calories the more you exercise. Also, the more muscles you have from weight training, the more calories you will burn while resting. You have to factor this in, because if you do not exercise much, you should eat less to maintain your weight, but if you exercise a lot, you can eat more.
Prevention/Solution
To account for exercise, you can do another equation to determine your caloric needs, according to the ACE. If you rarely perform any exercise, multiply your BMR result by 1.2 to discover your calorie level for the day. For those who exercise about one to three days a week, multiply your BMR by 1.375. Multiply the BMR by 1.55 if you exercise moderately for three to five days of the week. Multiply by 1.725 if you exercise strenuously for six to seven days in a week. If you are "extra active" and do very strenuous exercise, multiply your BMR by 1.9.
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