Weight Loss Calorie Calculator for Fitness & Tracking

This Calorie Calculator will help users determine how many calories they need to take in to reach their desired fitness goal.

You will be able to match the calories to your goals and current activity level to allow for the best choices to be made.

It is important to know that we all have different bodies, various goals for these bodies, and different lifestyles. We must eat to match these said goals.

With the calculator, you can input your details to set a goal of maintaining your current weight, losing weight, or gaining weight. These are all very common goals and can be controlled through diet. And calorie intake.

To use the calculator below, you need to input your age, sex, height, weight, the goal you have, and your current activity level.

What Is The Formula Used For Calculating Calories?

For this calculator, we will use the initial formula, the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, to find the Basal Metabolic Rate.

The aforementioned formula for basal metabolic rate is:

• For men: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) + 5 (kcal / day)
• For women: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) -161 (kcal / day)

From there, the basal metabolic rate will be multiplied depending on the activity level you currently attain daily. They are:

• Sedentary = 1.2
• Lightly active = 1.375
• Moderately active = 1.550
• Very active = 1.725
• Extra active = 1.9

Then, from there, we will use the goal you set up and calculate it based on your total daily calorie expenditure that was found after activity level.

If your goal is to maintain your weight, you will shoot for the calculated total daily energy expenditure.

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If your goal is weight loss, you will aim to reduce this total daily energy expenditure by 10 – 20%.

The last goal is to gain body weight, which will involve adding around 500 calories to your total amount of calories expended. This will allow you to gain lean body mass optimally instead of too much fat.

Is It Ok To Count Calories?

Some people are very successful with their diets without counting their calories and listening to their bodies.

But, this might not work for everyone, so it is important to look into the positives and negatives of counting calories.

The advantages of nutrition ideas that are focused on calories:

• It allows you to compare meals and food options easily
• It gives you objective measures of portions
• It shows how snacks, sodas, and other small indulgences add to your daily diet.

The disadvantages of nutrition ideas that are focused on calories:

• It does not take into account the actual quality of the food or meal
• You might become obsessed with curring out calories or may do so too quickly.
• The food labels are not always the most accurate and are simply estimates, so counting may be degraded in value.

So, counting calories has its place in some people’s lives, but it is not without problems. We must be aware of these issues so we do not go overboard but also understand why it is valuable.

We recommend a mixture of counting calories and not counting calories. Knowing general estimates of food items and the overall health provided by your meals is valuable insight.

How Can I Calculate Food Calories?

Calculating calories in your food is an easy process.

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To do this, you must pay attention to the food labels and even weigh out your food with a scale to get close estimates of how many calories there are in each food item.

If you are eating something without calories shown anywhere on the product, then it will require past knowledge of similar food items to be recalled.

So, ensure you have a reference amount of calories for food items you eat often. It only gets easier for you to do the longer you do it. You may even be able to eyeball the food items to estimate how many calories are in them.

Weighing out food and counting the calories on the back of the food label is still just an estimate, but it is rather accurate and can be ideal for some people.

Portion Size Versus Serving Size

As we stated, the counting of calories is not always perfectly accurate. You need to ensure you have the serving size of foods down.

The serving and portion sizes are often confused, so we will discuss how these two vital items are used.

On the nutrition label will be the serving size, and you should notice this as one of the first items. All the food information will be based on this serving size.

The serving size can represent to reflect the entire bag or bottle of the product, but more often than not, it will be just a small amount of the product. This is where weighing the food item would come in handy.

The serving size estimates how much of the product a person eats in one average sitting.

For the pre-portioned products, it is rather easy, as they are usually the exact amount of each nutritional item and the same size as the advertised serving size.

If it has another measure less than the total size, then you may need to weigh it out and calculate the number of calories in your portion.

This brings us to portion size, which is the amount of food you choose to eat in one sitting.

This is where the difference in portion size and serving size comes in.

Serving size is the estimation of an average person eating in one sitting, and portion size is what you actually sit down and eat at the time.

Perhaps you could pre-measure the normal amount you take in and have that number ready for each time you eat it in the future.

We hope that this calculator and article have helped you with your health and fitness goals.

Make sure to check out the other calculators that we have here on PTPioneer!