How To Know Your Calorie Burn

Knowing the numbers of calories you burn per day can be helpful when attempting weight loss or trying to achieve the right balance of calories for optimum energy and performance. Whatever the motivation, many people find it helpful to know the number of calories they are burning per day. Your calorie burn per day is the sum of your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, and the number of calories the body burns during physical activity.

Step 1

Use the BMR formula to calculate your daily calorie burn at rest. This number excludes any calories burned through physical activity. According to MayoClinic.com, "your basal metabolic rate accounts for about 60 to 75 percent of the calories you burn every day." The three factors that affect your BMR are your sex, body size and composition, and age. The formulas for BMR differ for women and men and are as follows:

Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) -- (4.7 x age in years)

Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) -- (6.8 x age in years)

Step 2

Approximate how many additional calories you burn -- on top of your BMR -- through physical activity. You can find calorie-burning calculators and charts on the Internet that can help you approximate how many calories you may have burned during a particular activity based on your height and weight.

Step 3

Add your BMR number to the number of additional calories you approximate you burn through physical activity and activities of daily living. The total you get is an approximation of the number of calories you burn per day.

Tips and Warnings

Get a better idea of the number of calories burned during any activity by wearing a heart rate monitor that is set to your own personal height and weight statistics. Make sure your heart rate monitor has the feature of counting calories burned. Heart rate monitors are available in sporting goods stores and online. Note that the formula for BMR only takes total body weight in pounds into consideration and does not consider muscle weight or fat weight. Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue. Thus, someone weighing 150 lbs. with a high percentage of fat weight will burn fewer calories per day than someone weighing 150 lbs. with a low percentage of fat weight and a larger percentage of muscle weight.
Consult a doctor, dietitian or nutritionist for further information on your daily caloric needs or before altering your caloric intake in any way.