You'll lose weight whenever your calorie expenditure exceeds your calorie consumption. You can calculate your calorie expenditure from your activity level and personal factors such as age, height and weight. Medline Plus generally recommends a minimum daily intake of 1,200 calories for women and 1,500 calories for men, regardless of the desired weight-loss rate.
Calories
A calorie is the quantity of energy that will heat a kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius. Scientists have largely replaced the calorie with the joule. Nutritionists currently use the calorie to measure the energy in food. A pound of has approximately 3,500 calories.
Weight Loss
An excessive weight-loss rate can be dangerous and may prevent you from meeting your weight loss goals in the long term. You should not attempt to lose more than 2 pounds per week, according to the National Institutes of Health. A weight-loss rate of 2 pounds per week is equal to 7,000 calories a week, or 1,000 calories per day. Your calorie deficit should be no more than 1,000 calories a day.
Activity Factor
The calculation of your calorie expenditure requires you to determine your activity factor. The lowest possible activity factor is one, and most lifestyles have an activity factor between one and two. Multivitamin provides activity factors for common lifestyles. For example, a generally sedentary lifestyle has an activity level of 1.2.
Basal Metabolic Rate
Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the rate at which you burn calories without performing any activity. The most accurate method of determining your BMR is to measure your calorie expenditure rate while you're not digesting food. This method is not practical in most cases, so you must estimate your BMR from age, height and weight.
Calculations
The Harris-Benedict equations estimate the BMR with a different equation for each gender. Women use the following equation: BMR = (Weight x 9.563) + (Height x 1.850) - (Age x 4.676) + 655.1. Men use this equation: BMR = (Weight x 6.25) + (Height x 12.71) -- (Age x 6.775) + 66.5. Your weight must be in kilograms and your height must be in centimeters. Multiply your activity factor by your BMR to get your daily calorie expenditure.
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