ACTION STEPS
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For Men:
Resting Metabolic Rate (in calories/day) = 10 (weight in kilograms) + 6.25 (height in centimeters) – 5 (age in years) + 5
For Women:
RMR (in calories/day) = 10 (weight in kilograms) + 6.25 (height in centimeters) – 5 (age in years) – 161
Alright, let’s do some math. Or if you’re tapping your mental energy just reading this article, we’ll make it easy on you and have you use this Online Calculator to determine your RMBR.
Up for a little math today? Great, here’s an example of how it works in action.
Let’s say you’re a 25-year-old guy who’s 6 feet tall and weighs 200 pounds. To figure out your weight in kilograms, divide 200 by 2.2, which is approximately 90.91.
Six feet in centimeters is 182.88.
Let’s plug in the numbers:
RMR = 10 (90.91) + 6.25 (182.88) – 5 (25) + 5
RMR = 909.1 + 1,143 – 125 + 5
RMR = 1,932.1
So you need 1,932.1 calories to maintain your body weight at rest. That’s assuming you’re not moving during the day.
But obviously, we’re active individuals who want to put on some muscle or lose fat.
We’ve got to account for our energy expenditure during the day. Here’s how we’re going to do that, as accurately as possible using an activity multiplier.
Step #2 Determining Activity Level
Sedentary (little or no activity) = RMR x 1.2
Mild activity level (intense exercise 1-3 times per week) = RMR x 1.3
Moderate activity level (intense exercise 3-4 times per week) = RMR x 1.5
Heavy activity level (intense exercise 5-7 times per week) = RMR x 1.7
Extreme activity level (intense exercise multiple times per day) = RMR x 1.9
Let’s say you exercise four days per week. Multiply 1,932.1 by 1.5, and you get 2898.2.
But once again, that’s just to maintain your body weight. If you want to lose about one pound per week, subtract 500 calories from that total.
So that’s 2,398.2, or approximately 2,400 calories per day.
Back to our example – if you’re a 25-year-old male who’s six feet tall and 150 pounds, you’ve got to take in 2,400 calories per day to lose one pound per week if you’re exercising four times per week.
But what about macros?
I’m glad you asked. To figure out your protein, carbohydrate and fat requirements, you need to do just a little more math.
You want to keep protein at one gram per pound of body weight, so keeping with the same example, you’ll need 200 grams of protein per day.
Then, you multiply your body weight by somewhere between 0.3 and 0.6 to get your fat requirements in grams for the day. If you have a preference for fats more than carbs, use a number closer to 0.6. If you have a preference for carbs more than fats, use a number closer to 0.3.
Let’s say the 200-pound man leans more toward carbohydrate, so we’ll multiply his body weight by 0.4. That gives us 80 grams of fat.
Carbs will fill in the rest of the calories for the day.
To figure this out, you must know the following: one gram of protein is four calories, one gram of fat is nine calories and one gram of carbohydrate is four calories.
Two hundred grams of protein equates to 800 calories, while 80 grams of fat equates to 720 calories. Let’s do some math:
2,400 – 800 – 720 = 880
880 / 4 = 220
So a 200-pound, 25-year-old man who’s trying lose one pound of body weight per week will need 200 grams of protein, 80 grams of fat and 220 grams of carbohydrate per day.
