How to Determine Your Daily Calorie Requirements

Garlic pepper baked chicken tenderloins, mixed nuts, baby red potatoes.

Today’s nutrition lesson: how do you know how much you should be eating each day? What are your calorie requirements? 

Generic guidelines from the medical industry and the government are not tailored to your individual specific needs. 

There are many different formulas which can be used to calculate calorie requirements. 

Over the years, with many clients and myself, I adopted the method to calculate calories based upon activity level. For calorie requirement calculations there is a value for low, moderate, and high activity levels.

Some formulas use 10, 11, and 12 for their numerical values for activity levels, while others use 11, 12, and 13, some use12,13, and 14, and some use 13,14, and 15. 

Over many years of experimentation with numerous clients and myself, I have determined that the 13, 14, and 15 values are the most effective for the majority of people.

To perform the calculation to determine your calorie requirements using the 13, 14, and 15 method, you'll take your body weight x the activity level 13 for low activity level, 14 for moderate activity level and 15 for high activity level. This calculation will give you your maintenance calories. 

If you're trying to lose weight you'll take your calculated maintenance calorie number and subtract 500 from it. This will give you your deficit number for weight loss.

Example using my numbers:

220X13 equals 2860, 

220X14 equals 3080, 

220X15 equals 3300, 

these are my maintenance calories. 

For weight loss I would subtract 500 from each maintenance number and this would be my deficit calories.

So my deficit calories for each activity level would be as follows, 

low activity 2860-500=2360, 

moderate activity 3080-500=2580, 

high activity 3300-500=2800. 

To determine how many calories per meal I would simply divide each activity level number by the number of meals that I planned for the day.

An example would be my high activity level deficit number of 2800 divided by six meals =466 cal per meal.

This method will allow you to determine your daily calorie requirements as well as the number of calories per meal.

Periodic updates should be made as your weight changes and as your goals are met or changed. Modify and update your caloric requirements as necessary.