With this personal BMR Calculator you can quickly and accurately work out your Basal Metabolic Rate as well as your average daily calorie expenditure.
Your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR, is a major contributor to the calories your body burns each day. In some cases it can be responsible for up to 73% of your daily calorie expenditure (for particularly inactive women).
It’s not hard to see then, how knowing your BMR can be of great help in putting together an effective weight loss plan.
The Weight Loss Equation
The only way in which it’s possible for your body to lose weight is by maintaining a calorie deficit. In plain English, that means you need to burn more calories than you consume on a daily basis. If you did the opposite – consumed more calories than you burned on a daily basis – you’d be in what’s known as a calorie surplus, and you’d gain weight.
At the end of the day, this balance of calories is what lies at the heart of your weight loss equation.
Weight loss and weight gain simply both come down to the balance between calories in and calories out.
Monitoring your calories coming in is a fairly straightforward process. Calorie counters are widely available these days that give you quick and easy reference to the calorie content of any foods you eat.
Figuring out how many calories you’re burning, on the other hand, isn’t always so simple. This is where a BMR Calculator can be of enormous help.
How Your Body Burns Calories
Generally speaking, you can break down where your body burns calories into 4 main areas:
- Basal Metabolic Rate
- Daily Activity
- Exercise
- Digestion and Processing of Food
Your BMR basically refers to the number of calories your body burns each day whilst totally at rest – in other words, if you were laying in bed all day doing nothing. You can look at it as being the same as an engine that’s idling.
It’s a measure of the energy your body expends just in running the essential processes that keep you alive. These are things like your breathing, circulation, maintaining your body temperature, cell regrowth, and so on.
When people talk about having a fast or slow metabolism, they’re talking about your BMR.
So, what about daily activity and exercise?
Well, different women naturally have different levels of activity and exercise as a regular part of their life. Of course, this depends on your lifestyle, your pastimes, how often you work out, your job, and so on.
The more active your lifestyle, the more calories you’ll burn each day over and above your Basal Metabolic Rate.
You can get a pretty good estimate of how many total calories your body burns each day on average, based on your Basal Metabolic Rate and the average level of activity that your lifestyle routinely involves.
This is called your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or TDEE.
TDEE and BMR Calculator
The TDEE and BMR Calculator below works out your Total Daily Energy Expenditure and your Basal Metabolic Rate.
There are two ways it can do that for you. The best and most accurate way is for you to enter your weight, and your Fat Percentage – if you know what it is. Using these values the calculator can get a pretty precise measurement of your body’s Fat Free Mass and therefore estimate your BMR more accurately.
If you don’t know your Fat Percentage, you can leave that field blank and just enter your weight, height and age instead. Using those values the calculator will simply estimate your Fat Free Mass and give you a pretty good, but less accurate, estimate of your BMR.
Please note that if you happen to enter your Fat Percentage as well as your height and age, the BMR Calculator will disregard your height and age and only use the Fat Percentage value, since this will be the more accurate option.
To work out your TDEE you’ll also need to enter your lifestyle activity level. If you’re not interested in working out your TDEE you can simply leave this field blank and the TDEE and BMR Calculator will only calculate your BMR.
The table below will help you choose an activity level that’s most representative of your lifestyle.
| Lifestyle | Activity Level |
|---|---|
| Sedentary | Little or no exercise and a desk job |
| Lightly Active | Light exercise or sports 1-3 days per week |
| Moderately Active | Moderate exercise or sports 3-5 days per week |
| Very Active | Hard exercise or sports 6-7 days per week |
| Extremely Active | Hard daily exercise or sports and a physical job |
TDEE & BMR Calculator
Please keep in mind that the values given by this TDEE and BMR Calculator are only approximate figures.
A variety of factors, for example the number of meals you eat per day, can naturally affect your BMR and therefore also the total calories your body burns on a daily basis.
Any BMR Calculator should therefore only be used as a guide. At the end of the day, your measured personal weight loss or weight gain results are the final word on your calorie balance.