Information on minimum calories per day

Darth Pooh

Darth Pooh

New member
Hey Guys,

I was on the BL website last night because I wanted to see what Neill looked like after I had fallen asleep on Tuesday night. I saw there were tips from Bob and stuff about minimum calorie intake for the day and it should be at least what your RMR is.

I find that to be a little weird but who knows... I guess I am asking because I am 6' even, 203 lbs, and 28 years old. It says my RMR according to several sites is about 1930. I take in anywhere from 1800 - 2000 calories a day. I work out 5 days a week and my work outs vary from 700 - 850 calories (according to my Polar Heart Monitor). I calculate a daily deficit of around 1300 calories on days that I do work out and 550 on days that I don't. Which equates into a 2lb a week weightloss. Irony is, I am not losing 2 lbs a week. Ah well, just wondered if anyone heard of the eat at least your RMR. Btw, I never calculate the thermogenic (sp?) effect of foods into my daily calories.
 
Darth Pooh said:
Hey Guys,

I was on the BL website last night because I wanted to see what Neill looked like after I had fallen asleep on Tuesday night. I saw there were tips from Bob and stuff about minimum calorie intake for the day and it should be at least what your RMR is.

I find that to be a little weird but who knows... I guess I am asking because I am 6' even, 203 lbs, and 28 years old. It says my RMR according to several sites is about 1930. I take in anywhere from 1800 - 2000 calories a day. I work out 5 days a week and my work outs vary from 700 - 850 calories (according to my Polar Heart Monitor). I calculate a daily deficit of around 1300 calories on days that I do work out and 550 on days that I don't. Which equates into a 2lb a week weightloss. Irony is, I am not losing 2 lbs a week. Ah well, just wondered if anyone heard of the eat at least your RMR. Btw, I never calculate the thermogenic (sp?) effect of foods into my daily calories.
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I've gone well below my BMR when dieting. But it's probably a good rule to throw out there due to the simple fact that many people diet too aggressively and this nets out to a lack of progress once the psychological factors of it all are accounted for.

The fact that you aren't losing what your said caloric deficit suggests you should be losing isn't ironic in the least.

You've got things like:

*you're working with a lot of estimates
*metabolic rate is adaptive in nature
*you don't ONLY lose fat while dieting

Etc, etc.
 
I work out 5 days a week and my work outs vary from 700 - 850 calories (according to my Polar Heart Monitor).
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Are you saying you burn 700 - 850 calories doing your workout???

Don't forget, if you hadn't done a workout, your body would still have burned calories anyhow - your RMR.

To get a true calorie "burn" you would have to subtract your RMR from the amount shown on the scale.
 
Steve said:
I've gone well below my BMR when dieting. But it's probably a good rule to throw out there due to the simple fact that many people diet too aggressively and this nets out to a lack of progress once the psychological factors of it all are accounted for.

The fact that you aren't losing what your said caloric deficit suggests you should be losing isn't ironic in the least.

You've got things like:

*you're working with a lot of estimates
*metabolic rate is adaptive in nature
*you don't ONLY lose fat while dieting

Etc, etc.
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I guess the irony I was referring to was in regards to me being a Math Teacher and I live by numbers (depend on them very highly). So when it doesn't work out I assume it is the formulas that fail me but never the calculations (because I can NEVER be wrong ;)).

Still, I wanted to just say that it was thrown out there and really had never heard it before and wanted to know if it was a good rule of thumb.
 
Doc Bunkum said:
Are you saying you burn 700 - 850 calories doing your workout???

Don't forget, if you hadn't done a workout, your body would still have burned calories anyhow - your RMR.

To get a true calorie "burn" you would have to subtract your RMR from the amount shown on the scale.
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Not sure what you mean by "subtract your RMR from the amount shown on the scale." Seems vague and confusing to say the least.

I pretty much have this whole weightloss thing in check, I just figured I'd throw out some additional information out there.

My weightloss is also slowing down dramatically because my body is beginning to come into a period of balance. I am nearing (or so I think this is the case) where my body is comfortable with an ideal weight. So I am less likely to lose as much as I first did back when I started this mission.
 
Doc Bunkum said:
Are you saying you burn 700 - 850 calories doing your workout???
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Yes, about that. I do 50 minutes of cardio (15 row machine, 20 elliptical, 15 treadmill). If you would like to know at what intensities and models I can provide that too. I also do weight training 3 times a week, which is why it can vary from 700 to 850 depending on what I do in the weight room (squats can get that heart REALLY going).

I am actually changing my Tuesday and Thursday workouts to 25 minutes of HIIT training. This way my body doesn't get used to the program it has been doing for a few months now.
 
I'd like some clarification on this statement as well, please?
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What I'm saying, fellas, is this...

How can an exercise machine know how many calories you "burned"? There's only 2 ways. First, the the cheaper machines pick an arbitrary weight for a baseline that everyone weighs. (I believe that number is based on is a 154-pound male).

Better machines ask you to plug your age and weight to keep the error rate to a minimum. But what does this information calculate? Your BMR. So what you end up with is your "gross caloric cost" not "net caloric cost".

Gross caloric cost of an activity combines not only the actual calories burning during the activity but also your RMR for the number of minutes the activity is being done. Net caloric cost is how many calories the activity requires above what you burn at rest.

An example of this point given in the American College of Sports Medicine Health & Fitness Journal is that the gross caloric cost for a 160-pound man walking one mile at a speed of three miles per hour is 79 calories while his net caloric cost is 56 calories.

Doug McGuff, MD, in an article: "BODY FAT: HARD FACTS ABOUT SOFT TISSUE" puts it this way:

Why exercise doesn't burn many calories

"Go to the health club and climb on a stair stepper or treadmill. Program the machine by plugging in your weight, select your speed or program and begin your workout. As you plod along on the apparatus you are driven along by the ever-increasing number on the screen that indicates the number of calories that you have burned. Eventually you go long enough to burn 300 calories and you are left with a feeling of accomplishment.

Now, as you wipe the sweat from your brow and catch your breath, let me ask you a question. Why did the machine ask you to program in your weight?

If you answered to calculate how many calories you burn you are right. What you most likely failed to consider is the main reason it needs your weight is to calculate your basal metabolic rate. The average male will maintain his weight on about 3200 calories a day. That is about 140 calories an hour at rest.

So the 300 calories burned are not calories burned above your basal metabolic rate, they are calories burned including your basal metabolic rate. So for your time on the treadmill, you burned about 160 calories above your baseline. If you eat just 3 cookies, you have completely undone about an hour's worth of work.

Think about it...if we were so metabolically inefficient as to burn 300 calories at the rate the exercise equipment says you do, would we ever have survived as a species. The calories burned hunting and gathering would have caused us to die of starvation before we could ever have found anything to eat. At that rate of calorie burn, we would barely have enough metabolic economy to survive a trip to the grocery store.

Most people have accepted blindly the information displayed on exercise equipment and as such have turned exercise into a form of guilt absolution. Have dessert (600 calories of pie) and feel guilty? Just go to the health club and work on the stepper until 600 calories tick by on the screen. Other than the fact that this simply seems pathetic, it also just doesn't work."

That's my argument when I said you had to subtract your RMR from the calories shown that you "burned" to get a truer figure for "calories" actually burned.
 
Oh, I guess the word scale in place of machine is what through me off, fella.

Thanks for the clarification.
 
To get a true calorie "burn" you would have to subtract your RMR from the amount shown on the scale.
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Sorry, Steve/Darth Pooh, about the confusion of using "scale".

I couldn't think of another word at the time for that thing that displays the numbers.

The body is an incredibly efficient machine. Can do a tremendous amount of work on very little fuel. That's why I questioned the 700 - 850 calorie "burn" workout. Seems awful high for a "net calorie burn".
 
The body is efficient in some aspects and inefficient in others.

And I agree, that caloric expenditure seems high.
 
Steve said:
The body is efficient in some aspects and inefficient in others.

And I agree, that caloric expenditure seems high.
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Well, if we take that calculation into effect, my body is at a RMR of around 1950 calories a day. This is under 100 calories an hour, around I do about 80 minutes of workout, so lets say 100 calories, is already in my RMR that is being calculated as well. I say 600 - 750 is still pretty decent for my purposes.

I also do NOT take into account the thermogenic effect of food AND all my cold water for the day (which is about 10% of calories consumed, another 200 calories for digestion which I don't add) I feel that I have a very good rough estimate of what my body is doing.
 
Just for the sake of discussion, let me ask a question about what these machines tell you regarding the number of calories you are burning.

Anybody that works out will likely know the answer, but for those new to the game, let me ask...

You have two people that weigh the same and are the same age and height. One is 30% bodyfat, 70% lean. The other is 20% bodyfat, 80% lean.

Now they get on a treadmill and both do the same amount of work for an hour. The machine will indicate they both burned the same number of calories.

But did they?

Who actually "burned" more calories? The person with more lean body mass or the person with the higher body fat percentage?

Another reason why these numbers can be off and are only at best a "guesstimate".

BTW, Darth, never noticed before, but nice 80 lb drop in weight.
 
Doc Bunkum said:
Just for the sake of discussion, let me ask a question about what these machines tell you regarding the number of calories you are burning.

Anybody that works out will likely know the answer, but for those new to the game, let me ask...

You have two people that weigh the same and are the same age and height. One is 30% bodyfat, 70% lean. The other is 20% bodyfat, 80% lean.

Now they get on a treadmill and both do the same amount of work for an hour. The machine will indicate they both burned the same number of calories.

But did they?

Who actually "burned" more calories? The person with more lean body mass or the person with the higher body fat percentage?

Another reason why these numbers can be off and are only at best a "guesstimate".

BTW, Darth, never noticed before, but nice 80 lb drop in weight.
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Oh I am not arguing with you over the numbers game at all, as a matter of fact, I am totally agreeing. I almost never use the machine because my watch (which goes on BF % and other various information) is a much better indicator.

Still, I think that they are very helpful for someone new to the game and need to guesstimate their numbers for daily recording. Especially if someone is REALLY overweight it can be a huge help, as you get closer to your goal (like me) it becomes a very tight numbers game and not good at all to rely on machines (hell, even my watch has poor reliability at this point, the only thing I have going for me is that I never calculated the thermogenic effects of food yet).
 
Huh? I'm lost. Work done is work done. Just because someone has 50% more muscle than someone else doesn't mean they expend 33% or 50% less calories while doing the exact same exercise. YEAH, it feels harder for the person with less muscle (on average). But, energy spent = mass * (distance or force or whatever).

Let's say you have a 1000 calorie workout... 100# person going 10 miles at a certain pace. If they have 20# of muscle, each pound of muscle will do 50 calories of the work on average. If they have 10# of muscle, each pound of muscle will do 100 calories of work on average. In both cases, the person would do 1000 kcal of work.

The weight the person is moving is their total body weight, not just their muscle weight.

I guess I'm calling bullcrap.
 
Huh? Now I'm lost.

Just because someone has 50% more muscle than someone else doesn't mean they expend 33% or 50% less calories while doing the exact same exercise.
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Actually, it's the other way around. The person with 50% more muscle than another person of equal weight burns more calories simply because muscle is metabolically active tissue. Put another way, muscle burns more calories than fat does.

Let's say you have a 1000 calorie workout... 100# person going 10 miles at a certain pace. If they have 20# of muscle, each pound of muscle will do 50 calories of the work on average. If they have 10# of muscle, each pound of muscle will do 100 calories of work on average. In both cases, the person would do 1000 kcal of work.
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Your math is flawless - your logic isn't.

In one case you have 20 lbs of muscle burning 50 calories on average. In the other case you have 10 lbs of muscle burning 100 calories on average.

Can you explain to me how you managed to double that person's metabolism?

Work done = mass X distance traveled. It's the same whether you walk a mile or you run a mile. Of course if you ran for 15 min you will burn more calories then walking for 15 min, because you'll travel a greater distance.

But the total calories burned is a function of the amount of muscle you have. So no, in the scenario you present I'll argue that they both aren't having a 1000 calorie workout.
 
My math was that each pound of muscle expends that much energy on average. So for the person with 20# muscle and a 1000 calorie workout, each pound expends 50 calories, yet the person still does 1000 calories of work.

You can argue it all you want. Work done is work done.

MOST people do their BMR x 1.2 (for dietary + sedentary) and then add calories burnt on a per workout basis to figure out their calorie expenditure for a week. I get that you're saying that the BMR of a more heavily muscled person is going to be higher which makes them spend more calories ALL the time (regardless of workout). Once you subtract out that they are spending more calories all the time (which is how people figure it), they are still doing the same amount of work per 1000 calorie workout.

Or are you going to argue that the muscle on the person with 10# of muscle instead of 20# of muscle, that the muscle is the same amount of "strained" after the workout?
 
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