Achieving your weight-loss goals is hard enough to do on your own. That's why sometimes you need to surround yourself with the most effective tools you can find to make your efforts to lose weight as effective and efficient as possible. Diet and weight loss calculators help you target in on exactly what you need to do every day to lose weight.
BMI Calculator
BMI -- or body mass index -- is a measure that takes into account your height and weight in determining whether you're at a normal weight or you're over or underweight. A BMI calculator computes your BMI by using a standard formula using your height and weight. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal weight. Anything between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight, with anything 30 and above considered obese. Knowing your BMI can help you set healthy weight-loss goals based on established government standards.
Calories Burned Calculator
Because not everyone can have a heart monitor strapped around their chest at all times, a calories burned calculator can come in handy when you're trying to determine the overall number of calories you've burned through exercise during the day or week. Different activities require different levels of physical exertion, and people who are overweight burn more calories than people at a normal weight. That's why using a calories burned calculator can make your weight loss more effective, allowing you to more accurately know your calorie expenditure for, say, an hour of basketball or 30 minutes on the elliptical machine.
Daily Calorie Needs Calculator
Losing weight really is about simple math. If you burn more calories every day than you eat, eventually you will lose weight. That's where a calorie needs calculator, like the one found on MayoClinic.com, is useful. The calculator uses a formula based on your age, height, weight and average physical activity level per day to determine how many calories you need to maintain your current weight. When using the calculator, you should only take into account the average physical activity -- such as any physical activity you do related to your job -- and not your exercise routine.
Benefits
Once you have the information provided by these three essential diet and weight loss calculators, you can start using them to help you lose weight. The BMI calculator helps you set a realistic goal for how much weight you should lose. Once you know how many calories your body needs each day, you can create what's called a "calorie deficit" goal every day. Since your body needs to burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 lb., a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day will get you 1 lb. of weight loss per week. Using the numbers from your calorie needs and calories burned calculator will help you achieve your daily calorie deficit goal.
Considerations
Not all the numbers from the calculators are 100 percent accurate. You may find your daily calorie needs slightly more or less than the number the calculator gives you. However, you can adjust to meet your goals. Some medical experts have also criticized the BMI as a tool for determining how overweight you are because it doesn't accurately measure body fat or muscle as part of your weight. Talk to your doctor before starting any new weight loss or diet regimen to get a more accurate assessment of your health.
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