How To Calculate Daily Caloric Expenditure

Regardless of your fitness goals, knowing how many calories you burn in a given day is vitally important to reaching those goals. If you're looking to lose weight, knowing how many calories you burn informs you on how many calories you can consume. If you're trying to gain weight, it tells you how many calories you have to consume. Finally, if you're just looking to maintain your weight you know exactly how many calories you need to eat in order to do so. Calculating your daily energy expenditure requires the use of several equations and tables.

Step 1

Convert your weight in pounds to weight in kilograms by dividing your weight by 2.2. Find your specific equation in the tips section below. This will provide you with an estimate of your resting metabolic rate (RMR). For example, if you are a 34-year-old, 150-pound female, your weight in kg is 68.18 and your RMR is 1422 (rounded down).

Step 2

Determine your thermic effect of exercise (TEE). First you need to figure out how active you are: Sedentary is defined by very little movement throughout the day (playing cards, watching TV). Lightly active people are standing, walking, performing household chores, and are moderately active one hour per day. Moderately active people include some laborers, and people who exercise for 1.5 to 2 hours per day. Very active people are full-time athletes and those with other active labor jobs (comparable to running 9 to 13 miles per day). Extremely active individuals are heavy laborers (or exercise the equivalent to running 14 to 17 miles per day).

Step 3

Multiply your RMR by the appropriate activity factor. This will give you your TEE.

Activity Factors for Various Levels of Activity
Activity Factor
Level of Activity Men Women
Sedentary 0.3 0.3
Lightly Active 0.6 0.5
Moderately Active 0.7 0.6
Very Active 1.1 0.9
Extremely Active 1.4 1.2

If the 34-year-old, 150-pound female is moderately active, her equation would look like this: 1422 * 0.6 = 853

Step 4

Add RMR and TEE together. Estimating daily caloric expenditure requires an additional 10% to the RMR and TEE total. This is due to the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF, yes you burn calories when you eat!). Using the same example, 14,22 +853 = 2275. Ten percent of 2,275 is 227.5 (rounded up is 228), for a grand total of 2,503 calories burned per day.

Tips and Warnings

Estimating RMR in Males Age Range (years) Equation for RMR(Calories/day) 0-3 (60.9 x weight) - 54 3-10 (22.7 x weight) + 495 10-18 (17.5 x weight) + 651 18-30 (15.3 x weight) + 679 30-60 (11.6 x weight) + 879 >60 (13.5 x weight) + 487 Estimating RMR in Females Age Range (years) Equation for RMR(Calories/day) 0-3 (61.0 x weight) - 51 3-10 (22.5 x weight) + 499 10-18 (12.2 x weight) + 746 18-30 (14.7 x weight) + 496 30-60 (8.7 x weight) + 829 >60 (10.5 x weight) + 596