Basal Metabolic Rate

Each moment of your life, you expend energy no matter what you're doing. Even something as simple as taking a breath or picking up a feather requires energy. Your basal metabolic rate, BMR, represents the minimum energy required to sustain your daily bodily functions and is based on you remaining at rest all day-- yes, the ultimate couch potato.  

Knowing your BMR value, measured in calories, helps to establish an important energy baseline for creating a program for burning fat. This value, along with other factors, is used to determine the total number of calories you consume to maintain your present weight. It is an important value in a weight loss program since it may represent up to 70% of the calories you burned in a day.

The value is dependent on such factors as gender, age, weight, height, lean mass and body surface area. The equation applied most uses only gender, age, weight and height to determine the value. As such, the following equations are used to determine the BMR for women and men. Once calculated, this value is used to determine your total daily caloric needs.

BMR Formula

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 year)

The Metric Version for the equation is: Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kilos) + (1.8 x height in cm) - (4.7 x age in years)
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kilos) + (5 x height in cm) - (6.8 x age in years)

Now that you know how to calculate your BMR, it's just a simple matter of assessing your level of physical activity to finish determining your total caloric need. To find out how to do this go to www.How-To-Burn-Fat.com/total-daily-energy-expenditure.html You can also find a simple basal metabolic rate calculator below.

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