How Many Calories Should I Eat When Working Out – You’ve probably heard many experts, influencers, nutritionists, and fitness people talk about “calories in vs. calories out,” keeping track of the calories you eat and the calories you burn throughout the day. It is a very basic and complex physiological principle to lose, maintain and gain weight, there must be a proper balance of caloric intake and caloric output. But how do you calculate the number of calories you need per day to achieve the right balance? It’s nice to say ‘stay in a calorie deficit to lose weight’, but how does that translate into a magic number for you? There is no magic number that works for all of us, we are all individuals with different shapes, sizes and lifestyles, so what should that balance be and how many calories should we be eating each day?
This article answers the age old question – How many calories should I eat? I will simply explain how to calculate your calorie intake based on your goals.
How Many Calories Should I Eat When Working Out
I recently published an article on ‘Metabolic Adaptation’ which I defined as “eating less food in an attempt to conserve stored energy (body fat) and slowing metabolism (metabolism) after significant fat loss”. In this article, I detail Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), the ‘calories’ part of our equation and the components that make it up. Let me give you a brief summary as it sets the stage for today’s discussion.
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It is the sum total of all bodily functions required to keep the body alive. Like breathing, processes our organs go through every day.
The thermic effect of food, or TEF, refers to the number of calories your body needs to process the food you eat.
As you can imagine, this is the amount of energy expended in a conscious exercise. So running, resistance training, HIIT etc all fall into this category.
NEAT is all about your subconscious physical activity. Activities like running, gardening, cleaning the house, dancing in the shower.
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As you can see, there are many factors that affect the ‘calories burned’ part of our equation, and it’s important to understand how to calculate the sum of these factors here. Calories are important to understanding what your ‘calories in’ should be. Fortunately, a very clever equation was created in 1918 (and later updated to improve accuracy) that gives you everything you need to calculate this magic number – introducing the Mifflin-St George principle!
This equation is widely recognized as one of the most accurate ways to calculate TDEE, and it gives you an individual calorie intake based on your gender, age, gender, and weight each day before taking your activity levels. Observation A 2005 systematic review by David Franklin comparing the most commonly used BMR calculators found that the Mifflin-St. George equation outperformed its competitors in predicting BMR within 10% of the measured value. There are many online calculators available that do the hard work for you, but they aren’t always accurate, and often the best approach is to get your own calculator and do the math yourself.
For example, a 39-year-old, 57 kg, 5-foot-6-inch woman has a BMR of 1338.8 (Equation: (10 x 57) + (6.25 x 167.64) – (5 x 39) – 161 = 1261.75 .
For example, a delivery driver who walks all day for his job would have an activity level of 1.725 depending on the length and difficulty of his route.
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An office worker who walks several times a week for exercise has an activity level of 1.55. On the other hand, an office worker who sits a lot at work and trains at high intensity 6 times a week will use a multiplier of 1.725.
It’s easy, just take your BMR and multiply it by your activity level. Returning to the example of a 39-year-old woman, this person works at a desk but takes regular desk breaks, walks 40 minutes daily during her lunch break, exercises 6 times a week, her coefficient is 1.75, and is very active.
BMR x 1.75 becomes 1261.75 x 1.75, which gives an estimated daily caloric expenditure (TDEE) of 2208.
Now we understand how to calculate how many calories we burn every day. Let’s talk about how this balances out with ‘calories in’ so we can use that knowledge to achieve our goals.
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Once you know how many calories you burn per day, you can use that information to calculate the exact amount of calories you need to burn per day to get the results you want.
So there are three outcomes to consider – weight gain, weight loss and weight maintenance. Let’s look at each of them.
For those wondering ‘how many calories should I eat to gain muscle’? To gain weight, you need to consume more calories than you burn. This is called ‘caloric (or calorie) surplus’. Unless a person is extremely underweight, they usually want to gain weight in the form of muscle, not fat. It is also known as ‘lean bulk’. For many of my clients with muscle mass goals, I recommend that they have a 10% calorie surplus, so that they consume 10% more calories than they burn.
Returning to my example of the 39-year-old, her current total daily calorie intake is 2208, and I calculate 10% of this figure, giving her an additional 220 calories to add to her daily intake level, so she aims to eat 2428. calories per day while maintaining her current activity level.
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It is checked regularly and if body weight gain is fast, significant or fat instead of muscle, it is adjusted and vice versa. Although this article is not usually about lean mass, I would be remiss to mention that the macronutrients that create this caloric surplus must be adequate. The diet should be rich in protein, carbohydrates and nutrients – eating enough protein does not support muscle growth, so weight gain is caused by the accumulation of body fat.
How many calories should I eat to lose weight?… If my 39-year-old client wants to lose weight by reducing body fat, I would reduce her caloric intake by 10-40% (40% extreme), while maintaining her activity level – also known as a ‘calorie deficit’. Let’s be smart and reduce them by 10%, which will bring the daily calorie target down to 1988, which we will review regularly to ensure weight loss is at the right pace and adjust. As required. We also talk about how they feel, if they are very hungry and tired, these are all indicators of an unsustainable deficit, which may lead to short-term weight loss, however, we need to increase our caloric intake a little. Maintain enough deficit to reach our target.
Of course, we can reverse this person’s week and add more activity, however, given their current activity levels, this may lead to overtraining. If a person is sedentary, we consider increasing activity for a more generous caloric intake to increase TDEE. Or we can do both, reduce calorie intake and increase activity. An effective weight loss diet is sustainable, so cutting calories too low leaves little room for the foods we love and becomes harder to maintain.
I would say that a low calorie diet should include protein and nutrient dense foods to promote muscle growth and repair and ensure you are getting the vitamins and minerals your body needs to sustain itself when in deficit. The body is healthy and functioning properly.
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No math needed here, just balance your calorie intake and calorie expenditure. So, to maintain her weight, my 39-year-old wife maintains her current activity levels and takes 2208 daily. Very simple.
That’s all! Now you know how to calculate your daily calorie intake and use that knowledge to calculate how many calories you need to eat per day to reach your goal. However, there is another important thing that I should mention, and for some, it is even scarier than the weekend calorie deficit. Tracking.
Now we know that calories are important in weight management, so logically, you want convenience and, in most cases, a device that makes the arduous task of recording and tracking your daily food intake easier.
There are many effective tracking tools out there, both free and paid. There are many built-in features that make tracking easy, like a meal planner
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