How Many Calories Do You Need?

Let’s break this down back into basics -

Food = Calories

Calories are essentially energy. That is to say, that you need them for literally every activity that you partake in. Basically, your body uses calories as fuel for walking, jogging, running etc. etc.

Anyways, this post will just breakdown how many you actually need.

Method 1-
The most basic way. It’s just a simple formula to work out how much calories you actually need. The only downside is that it doesn’t really work if your really small or really large. And also, it doesn’t really count your daily exercise etc. etc.

  • Your body-weight in pounds x 18kcal = your daily caloric needs

So for example, if you weighed 180lbs, your calorific needs would be:

180 x 18 = 3240 kcal.

Eat less/more on either side to gain or lose weight. However, as you might of guessed, if your really big, you would get a ridiculous number. And if your really small, you’d get another ridiculous answer.

Food-Safety

Method 2-
The Cunningham Equation. As you’ve probably guessed, there’s some weak points to the above method. Namely the fact that it doesn’t actually take into account your food choice, your exercise schedules or anything like that. Obviously if you have a big body, but are not fat, the above method is awful. It’s downfall is similar to the one of BMI measurements.

I’m not going to go into detail about this method right now (it’s long), but make sure you search around for it, or (hopefully), I’ll put up and article about it sometime.

People seem to believe that their body revolves around calories. BS in my opinion. It’s so much less about the actual size and calorific content of the food, and the actual food. Just to give you an idea why I think this is because NOT ALL CALORIES ARE THE SAME.

A balanced diet is far more important. Diet Coke claims to have 1 calorie inside, but that 1 calorie is not the same, as say, a calorie from a steak. There is a difference, and its large.

If you’ just want to lose some fat, or are just maintaining yourself, counting calories isn’t too important, just eat the right foods. If you eat 6 healthy meals a day, you’ll be fine.

However, if you’re looking to gain weight, then I do recommend counting calories, it works out.

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Posted by AntD on Nov 20th, 2009 and filed under Diet & Nutrition, Man's Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

1 Response for “How Many Calories Do You Need?”

  1. gain muscle says:
    November 22, 2009 at 12:11 am

    Yes i got it…great info…thanks for the sharing. I am going to discuss about this site with my friends. Waiting for your next article.

    Reply

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