What is a "BMR"?You BMR is the amount of calories your body needs to function. You need to know this figure in order to ensure proper nutrition and maintain a healthy weight. Many people try various diets, with varying degrees of success, but many more do not find lasting success with fad diets. To reduce weight, and maintain weight, you should first understand this important tool. Your BMR, also known as your Basal Metabolic Rate, is the amount of calories your body burns, or uses to maintain biological function. Do you know yours?
If your goal is to lose weight, or maintain weight, you need to calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate. If your goal is to enhance your athletic performance, again, you need to calculate your BMR. Don't worry, its easy. There is even a great website that does the work for you! Go Here to calculate your caloric needs. In clinic, I usually tell people that this figure is a floor, a ground floor and they should not eat below this figure. This is how many calories your body needs per day with out movement just to function. I know many people will think that if they need 1800 calories per day to maintain their weight, they will simply just eat 1000 calories per day to lose the weight. Guess what happens.... they lose muscle, not fat, and this lowers their metabolism. Then, of course, when they start eating again, they gain everything they lost (which was most likely muscle ) and store it as fat. Have you ever noticed that many people who go on these crash diets, seem to gain more and more weight over the years? This is why. Consider this a floor, and work from there. It takes 3500 calories to make a pound of fat. If your BMR is 1800 calories per day, and its 2200 when you add in your activity level, you would need to eat and extra 500 calories per day to gain a pound in a week. Thats not that much, if you are eating junk food, but it is a lot of food if you are eating reasonably healthy. Consider this, "venti" Low Fat Milk, Mocha, is 446 calories! compare that to the 63 cups of raw spinach it would take to reach close to that caloric intake! You can see it is both hard, and easy to take in too many calories. It all depends on your food choices.
You do not need to starve yourself to get results in weight loss. First seek to fully understand our BMR. I always recommend that all of my patients do a 5 day foot diary. Write down everything you eat and drink. You may be surprised at your caloric intake. After you record everything for the day, add up the calories, you may be surprised at your caloric intake. Keep in mind, serving size. Most people do not eat one serving. A great website to help you calculate your caloric intake is Here. Second, make better food choices, eat whole foods. If you eat your caloric intake in calories, according to your BMR each day, in whole foods, you will come to realize just how much food you can eat. You will not need to starve yourself. There are other factors that may go into a diet plan, but I will discuss them in wellness diet and try and keep this page short and sweet and focused on what your BMR means to you. The other thing to consider is your vitamin and mineral intake. Aside from your caloric intake, your body needs proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals to function. When you eat below your needed intake level, your body must get these nutrients from some where. A good example of this is calcium. If you starve yourself, in order to lose weight, and your body does not have enough calcium to function, where do you think the calcium will come from? Where do you think your body can find large stores of calcium to extract and use? Your bones. This is another danger to improper food intake. If you need help, we are available to help you, go to the E-Clinic to make an appointment for a diet food therapy counseling session. If you need help, its available, but this should be an easy step, and for many, this simple step can give you great results! Try it on your own first, you may be surprised. Doing a diet food therapy session can help a lot, but the steps listed here, will be required as a first step anyway, if your goal is to lose, maintain, or build up weight.
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