How much should I weigh? Before setting weight goals, it’s a good idea to understand what research has determined is a healthy weight for you. Height is the major determining factor: Women should weigh 100 lbs. for the first five feet of height. Add 5 pounds for every inch thereafter (i.e. a 5’6″ woman should weigh approximately 130 lbs.) Men should weigh 106 lbs. for the first five feet of height and 6 pounds for every inch after (i.e. a 5’6″ man should weigh 142 lbs.)
How many calories should I be eating? Nancy Clarke is to Sports Nutrition what Stephen Hawkings is to Quantum Physics…that said, I will be referring to her work quite a bit…Clarke recommends the following 4 steps to calculate your daily caloric intake:
- Estimate Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) (these are the calories you need just to exist [i.e. breath, think]). Equation: Goal Weight X 10. If you want to stay at your current weight, use that. Otherwise, use your goal weight for this equation. If your current/goal weight is 125, your RMR is 1,250 calories (125 x 10 = 1,250). If you are overweight by a significant amount, cut the difference between your current weight and your goal weight in half and use that number. For example, if you weigh 170 and you would like to weigh 130, use 150 for the equation.
- Routine Daily Activities: If you are sedentary most of the day, add 20-40% of your RMR to your RMR. Moderately active, add 50%. If you are very active, add 60-80%. Equation: RMR + % RMR Routine Activity. It’s pretty simple. Here’s an example: if your RMR is 1,250 calories and you are moderately active throughout the day, you would take 50% of 1,250 = 625 calories and add this number to your RMR and you get 1,875 calories.
- Exercise: Just add the number of calories you burn in your daily workout to the total you’ve just calculated. In the previous example of 1,875 calories – if you were to burn 500 calories in a workout, just add this to the 1,875. The result would be 2,375 calories. Equation: (RMR + % RMR Routine Activity) + Exercise.
- Lose Weight: If your goal is to lose weight, subtract 20 percent of your caloric needs. Just take the number of calories you calculated thus far and subtract 20%. Equation: (RMR + % RMR Routine Activity + Exercise) – 20%. For the ongoing example of 2,375 calories you would: 2,375 X 20% = 475. Then subtract 475 from 2,375 and you will get a daily caloric intake total of 1,900 calories.
To some of you this may seem like too many calories, but it’s not! If you want to be a top performer on game day, during your workouts, at work, and in your personal life – eat what your calculated caloric intake says you should. It is the proper amount of calories you need to feel healthy throughout the day. Don’t cheat yourself. You will lose in the long run because your body knows when it needs more calories … the end result will be the munchies … and we all know that never works out for best…
I feel like I just helped a certain 12-yr old with her math homework after doing those equations!
I’ve come up with different daily intakes based on what exercise I’m doing that day since the calories burned are different. Is that right or should I average all combined activities and stay at the same intake throughout the weekly routine?
I would adjust your daily intake to your workouts, if you don’t find that to be too much work. Otherwise, find a moderate number between the two and eat that consistently throughout the week (i.e. if you eat 2,000 calories on a non-workout day and 2,500 on the 3 days/week you work out, then eat 2,250 cals per day). From personal experience and from info I’ve been reading, a lot of athletes have a need to eat more calories before and after a workout … so you could try splitting those workout calories into pre and post-workout snacks. I’ve read a lot about what the best pre and post-workout snacks are and I will get into that on another post