Good Food: Phase III. Calories

So here we are Good Foods Phase III. We have talked about
Phase I. Water

Phase II. The Food
And here we go.
Phase III. The Calories

Now as I have said I am not a nutritionist. I am working on being certified as a Personal Trainer. This is going to be a difficult chapter because this will really fluctuate from person to person.
To be able to burn the right amount of calories and take those in we will to know some information. We will need to know what our RMR or Resting Metabolic Rate. RMR is the amount of energy expended while at rest. It can decreases with age and with the loss of lean body mass. Increased muscle mass and cardiovascular exercise can increase RMR. Illness, previously consumed food and beverages, environmental temperature, and stress levels can affect one's overall energy expenditure.
Let’s go back to the car and fuel analogy. When you cut calories BELOW your RMR, your body fights back. Restricting calories below your RMR is like asking your car's engine to run on too little gas. If your car is sitting in the driveway with the engine on, it is burning gas as it sits there. If you put the car in drive and step on the gas, it burns gas at a faster rate. What happens if you cut off the supply of gas to your engine? It sputters and eventually stalls. The same is true for your metabolism. We touched on this a little last time about cutting to much food, many people restrict their caloric intake too severely when trying to shed unwanted fat pounds. This causes an adverse affect, the metabolism slows down and the body goes into energy conservation mode, also known as starvation mode. . This is why we so often see individuals not losing fat weight while they are consuming a low calorie diet. The price of following this type of regimen is eventual weight gain in is often the case more weight than when you started the diet.
So why is this all important? So if we know what are resting rate is then we can figure out what our Caloric Burn is and then we can adjust our calories accordingly. So how do we find this out.
This little calculation should help:

RMR = 9.99(WEIGHT in Kilograms) +6.25(HEIGHT in centimeters) - 4.92(AGE in years) + 166(GENDER)-161

Weight in Kilograms-Take your WEIGHT in pounds and divide it by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms.
Height In Centimeters- Measure your height in inches. Once you have your height in inches, multiply that number by 2.54.
Age in Years-Exactly what it says.
Gender- Add a number for your gender into the GENDER. If you are a FEMALE, you will enter a 0, if you are a MALE, you will enter a 1.

Then we do the calculations. We would multiply those in Parentheses against their numbers first. So in this equation RMR = 9.99(79.545) + 6.25(182.88) - 4.92(28) + 166(1)-161. We would first multiply 9.99 x 79.545. We would then go to the next number and do all those till we are ready at the end to do basic addition and subtraction.

You will then have a basic number for your RMR. Why is this important? Your RMR is generally 60-75% of your total daily caloric expenditure; rest of this should be burned through physical exertion. This number is now your baseline and whether you want to gain weight, maintain or lose weight; this is your base and you can modify it to help achieve those results!
Calorie wise we then have an idea on what we should be eating to lose weight. But how can we be sure were doing it all right. I would suggest for a while to keep a calories Diary. Everyday right down exactly what you ate. Every calorie. Anything that touches your mouth! Then you can get an idea of how things are going and were you might be struggling. Another good idea if you can afford it is some sort of Body Calorie Expenditure device. Bodybug© or Exespy© are two great systems that you wear on you and it gives you a daily number of expended calories. Then you know what you need to be taking in to drop the weight!

Another thing I definitely suggest is the getting a Metabolic Test done! This is a pretty accurate break down of your metabolism. The calculation I gave you earlier is close but its not going to be exact! A Metabolic Test can help you hit that target for sure! When It comes to food remember that we can EAT ourselves out of ANY workout we do! This is a great mindset to get ourselves into! When we go to eat and buy food look at that and say is this going to make the workout I do this week useless! FOOD IS FUEL!