The energy that gets transferred from the food you eat to your body is measured in calories. Calorie units are your fuel, just like gallons of gasoline power your car. Every function your body performs, including resting, burns calories. Your weight, age and gender determine how many calories your body uses. To calculate your average daily caloric expenditure, first estimate the calories you burn at rest and how many calories you spend when you perform physical activities.
Step 1
Step on a scale and convert your weight into kilograms by dividing it by 2.2. If you weigh 136 lbs., for instance, your weight in kilograms is 61.81. Round it to 62. This step and the ones that follow are part of a formula explained by David Alan Krupp, Ph.D., professor of Biological and Marine Sciences University of Hawaii's Windward Community College.
Step 2
Find your age and gender below. Use the equation next to your age range to calculate how many calories your body expends at rest. For example, if you are a 44-year-old female and your weight is 62 kilograms, you burn 1,368 calories at rest a day. The formula is (8.7 x 62) + 829 = 1,368.4.
Male (Age in Years)
10 to 18: (17.5 x weight) + 651
18 to 30: (15.3 x weight) + 679
30 to 60: (11.6 x weight) + 879
Over 60: (13.5 x weight) + 487
Female (Age in Years)
10 to 18: (12.2 x weight) + 746
18 to 30: (14.7 x weight) + 496
30 to 60: (8.7 x weight) + 829
Over 60: (10.5 x weight) + 596
Step 3
Determine which description best defines your level of daily physical activity:
Sedentary: You mostly sit while someone else takes care of you.
Lightly Active: Besides doing work at home or in an office that requires little physical effort, you engage in two hours of light physical activity, such as playing golf or doing the laundry, as well as one hour of moderate activity, tennis or aerobics, for instance.
Moderately Active: You're a light laborer in the construction, farm or fish industry. Or you do work that demands the same physical exertion that being a light laborer in one of these industries demands.
Very Active: Your daily activity level is comparable to that of a full time athlete, even if all that energy is spent working, not engaging in sports.
Extremely Active: Your activity level is similar to that of someone who runs 14 miles a day.
Step 4
Find your activity factor in the tables below. Use the description you picked in Step 3 for your level of activity. If you're a lightly active woman, for example, your activity factor is 0.5. Calculate how many calories you burn while performing your daily routine physical activities by multiplying the calories you burn at rest by your activity factor. In the example of the 44-year-old woman, she burns 1,368 calories resting. If her activity factor is 0.5, she expends 684 calories by going through her daily tasks: 1,368 x 0.5 = 684.
Men's Level of Activity/Activity Factor
Sedentary -- 0.3
Lightly Active -- 0.6
Moderately Active -- 0.7
Very Active -- 1.1
Extremely Active -- 1.4
Women's Level of Activity/Activity Factor
Sedentary -- 0.3
Lightly Active -- 0.5
Moderately Active -- 0.6
Very Active -- 0.9
Extremely Active -- 1.2
Step 5
Add the calories you burn at rest to the calories you expend while active. Then, increase the result by 10 percent to come up with the total calories you burn on an average day. In the 44-year-old-woman example, this total is 2,257: 1,368 + 684 = 2,052. Ten percent of 2,052 (2,052 x 0.1) is 205.2. Add both figures (2,052 + 205) and you end up with 2,257 calories burned on a daily average.
Things You'll Need
- Scale
- Calculator
Member Comments