Calculators

You can find online calculators for both men and women. For me, apparently my ideal weight is 145. Which means I’m about 50 pounds over weight. I don’t believe that. But, if I look down at the different frame styles (small, medium, and large), maybe I can get away with with being only 20 pounds over weight if I have a large frame – whatever that means.

These calculators are working off a simple look up. You enter in your height, and they look that up and display what what their spreadsheet says is your ideal weight. The calculator on this page will show you a few more options. It will look at your height, current weight, age, and gender and find the average weight for people with similar measurements – this is called the Ideal Weight. It also shows what medical recommendations are for those measurements. My average is 175 and my medical is 169. I can believe I’m 20 pounds over where I should be.

There doesn’t seem to be one clear and concise answer to this question. Unlike calculating your BMR, there is no easy formula to plug in to. I recommend looking across a few calculators and then taking an average.

Tags: Weight, Diet, eating

Wine ranges from 65 to 160 calories per 4.0 glass. White wine checks in the lowest at 65, followed closely by Red (70 calories). Try and avoid the ports. They can be upwards of 160 calories per glass.

Beer ranges from 95 to 210 calories per 12 oz bottle. If you are gonna drink beer, shoot for the lights. Michelob Ultra Light is a good choice for 95 calories, but most the lights are less than 100. Stay clear of the darker fuller beers like stouts.

As for liquor, it’s actually quite high. A 1.5 ounce shot of rum will tag you for 125 calories. Same with whiskey. The real trouble with liquor is when you start to make the mixed drinks. Depending on what you are mixing it with, you are most likely doubling the calories.

If you have the extra calories by the end of the day, have 1 drink. But when the weekend rolls around and you decide to have a few, remember you are basically substituting a meal or a snack with drinks.

Added Note
I said above that I wouldn’t cop out and tell you not to drink – after all, I haven’t stopped. But a word of caution: Drinking messes with your metabolism. When you drink, your liver converts the alcohol to acetate. Your body prefers to burn acetate as energy before burning fat. And beyond that, any acetate that isn’t burned, gets converted to stored energy (fat). So a beer belly truly is a beer belly.

[source University of Rochester]

Tags: Fat Blogging, Diet, Drinking, Beer, Wine, Liquor

Part of the weight loss was probably just a natural correction from a few days of over eating and drinking.

Technorati Tags: Weight

1) Calculate your BMR
This is your base number of calories a day you burn just by being alive and doing activities like breathing.

Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years)

Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years)

So for me it would be:

BMR = 66 + (6.23 x 195.2) + (12.7 x 70) – (6.8 x 29) = 1,973.89*
* Here’s a quick tip – you can paste the formula into a Google Search, Google will calculate the equation for you.

2) Calculate your Activity
Using the Harris-Benedict Equation, you can calculate how many additional calories you need for daily activities.

• If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
• If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
• If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
• If you are very active (hard exercise/sports) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
• If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

Since I sit at my computer for about 12 hours a day, I would say I fit into the sedentary lifestyle. So I need to take 1,973.89 x 1.2 to get 2,368.67 calories. That is the number of calories I need to eat a day to maintain – not lose or gain weight.

3) Lose Weight
Approximately 3,500 calories equal one pound of weight. If you ate an excess of 3,500 over what you need to maintain, you would gain one pound. That’s one extra Big Mac a day for a week right?

So to lose weight, I need to create a calorie deficiency. The bigger the deficiency, the faster I’ll lose weight. So, combined with exercise, which would burn additional calories, a goal of 2,000 calories a day is good. It will be slow but steady weight loss – about a pound every week.

One thing to note though. Part of the BMR calculation is your current weight. As you lose weight, you need less calories per day and therefore need to continually adjust your daily caloric intake as you lose weight. 2,000 calories a day may be a good goal for me now, but, for example, when I’m 180 pounds, I need to cut that to 1,900.

Technorati Tags: BMR, Calories, Harris-Benedict Equation, Weight