Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

• What is Basal Metabolic Rate?
  • Simply put, BMR is the rate at which your body burns calories for energy, at rest.
• How do we calculate your BMR?
  • First, we take into account 4 basic health-related factors: weight, height, age, and sex (male or female)
  • Next, with the help from a BMR calculator, we determine approximately how many calories you need for your body to function normally.
    • A true BMR value best represents the rate of calories burned when your body is at rest and this can be expressed as closely as possible when you sleep.
    • Chemical processes that occur while at rest include, but are not limited to:
      • heart pumping blood to your muscles and organs
      • lungs continue to take in oxygen and dump it into your bloodstream.
      • immune functions release anti-inflammatory agents to help flush our your systems.
      • muscle repair begins to take place by using proteins in your body to help repair micro trauma of muscle fibers caused by training.
      • brain and nervous system continue to coordinate all of the above processes, and more!
• Here is the Mifflin-St Jeor equation used to calculate BMR for Males and Females:

BMR (kcal/day) = 10 * Weight (kg) + 6.25 * Height (cm) – 5 * Age (years) + “S” (kcal/day)

“S” = +5 (males) or -161 (females)

Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE)

• Once we establish your BMR, we then take into account what your goals are and how they will impact your daily caloric intake (how much food you should eat every day).
  • If you want to lose weight, we focus on a calorie deficit (negative energy balance)
  • If we want to gain muscle, we focus on a calorie surplus (positive energy balance)
  • If we want to live healthy and become fit, we must achieve a balanced calorie intake that will essentially “zero-out” and not change our body composition too much.
• How do we calculate our exercise, training, and activities into our daily caloric intake?
  • We use constants graciously given to us by the Mifflin-St Jeor equation to estimate how many calories we need to support our physical activity.
  • Here are what these values represent:

If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) = BMR x 1.2
If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) = BMR x 1.375
If you are moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) = BMR x 1.55
If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) = BMR x 1.725
If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) = BMR x 1.9

• • We multiply your BMR by one of these constants to determine your TDEE, taking into account basic chemical processes AND physical activity.

Testing Your Numbers

• Finally, before asking you to take on this new challenge, we need to understand how much you are eating now and how this compares to these numbers we calculated above (BMR & TDEE).
  • You must do this by tracking your food intake.
  • Tracking your food is a challenging, sometimes tedious process and can add stress to eating that most of us don’t want.
  • This is not something we will force you do to, but it is necessary for you to become more aware of your eating habits and how to best change them to support your nutrition and training program.
• After taking some time to track your food intake, we compare this to our BMR/TDEE numbers and decide what the best plank of action will be to help you be most successful.