06 Jan How much should I eat?
Computing Macronutrients for your Body weight
By: Coach JJ Ogacion, PTRP, CSN-CANADA
It’s the start of the year, the season of buffet, parties, and social drinking have passed by and here you are listing down your “New year’s resolution” on a brand new planner that you’ve got by collecting stickers from a Coffee shop. Included in the list is “being fit and Healthy”, but where do you start? In the past years, you’ve tried different exercises and fitness facilities but still it seems like you’ve been stuck on a hole of not achieving that elusive target weight that you’ve been longing for.
Well you might just have missed out on something that is truly essential, “NUTRITION”. This may be the missing key toward your goals! Just like any engine, our body needs fuel sources in order to perform daily tasks and recover from the rigors of our daily life. And this fuel comes in a form of Macronutrients which are Carbohydrates, Fats, and Protein. These 3 nutrients provide 100% of energy needed for normal function.
How can you know how much to eat? As a rule of thumb a well balanced daily food intake should consist of 25% Protein, 20% Fat, and 55% Carbohydrates. The ratio of these Macronutrients will vary on your age, height, gender, and physical activity. In order to compute for your daily Macronutrient intake we need to know first your ”Basal Metabolic Rate” or commonly called as Resting Metabolic Rate. This is the amount of energy needed to keep the body functioning at rest.
For ease of use we will apply the Harris-Benedict Formula:
Male = 66 + (13.7 x weight in kg) + (5 x height in cm) – (6.8 x age)
Female = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kg) + (1.8 x height in cm) – (4.7 x age)
As an example, if we have a 25 y/o Female office worker weighing 55kg and 173cm (5’7”) tall:
Female BMR = 655 + (9.6x55kg) + (1.8 x 173cm) – (4.7 x 25y/o)
BMR = 1,376.9 kcal
Now that you have her Basal Metabolic Rate, we need to determine the activity level based on her lifestyle:
|Sedentary||No exercise at all||1.2 x BMR|
|Lightly Active||Office worker, involves short walks going to work||1.37 x BMR|
|Active||Performs 1 hour exercise a day / Nursing mother||1.55 x BMR|
|Very Active||Performs 1 hour and 30 minutes of exercise a day||1.72 x BMR|
|Extremely Active||Professional athletes, performs 2 hours or more exercise a day||1.9 x BMR|
Since our example is a Female office worker we can consider her as a lightly active individual:
BMR = 1,376.9kcal x 1.37
= 1,886.353 kcal
Now that we got the adjusted Basal Metabolic Rate for our client, it’s time to know how much Macronutrients she will need. To do this, just simply divide the BMR to the percentages of macronutrients and you will get the following:
|BMR||PROTEIN (25%)||FATS (20%)||CARBOHYDRATES (55%)|
|1,886.353 kcal||471.58 kcal||377.27 kcal||1,037.49 kcal|
And that’s it! We have computed for the daily Macronutrient intake. Knowing how to compute for the Basal Metabolic Rate and daily macronutrient intake, you’re ready to apply it to yourself in order to jumpstart achieving the coveted goal weight that you’ve been aiming for.
Curious to know more? Training for a race and would like to optimize your food intake? Visit us at here Sante Fitness Lab inside Vermosa’s world class sports hub for a consultation or email me firstname.lastname@example.org for more information.