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Calorie Intake For Weight Loss

Tracking Your Calorie Intake

If you are trying to lose weight, then you want to know your daily calories for weight loss. Losing weight, while in reality can be very difficult, is in actuality a very simple formula. Your calories consumed, or caloric intake, must be less than your calories expended or burned.

Download this free Excel Caloric Intake chart to start tracking your calories for weight loss today. If you don't have Excel, you can print off this PDF version of the chart.

The Excel version has a tab to record and chart your weight loss and a tab to record your exercises.

As an alternative to Microsoft Office Tools, visit Openoffice.org to download their free software. The above Excel file can be used with this free software.

Basal Metabolic Rate

For instance, a 5’3” woman weighing 160 pounds would have a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) of 1482. This is the amount of calories per day that her body would burn while at rest. BMR varies by age, gender and height. Read this article to understand your basal metabolic rate.

Once you know your BMR, then you would need to adjust this for your activity level to determine your daily calorie intake needs in order to maintain your current weight. Let’s take this same 5’3” woman as an example. If she was sedentary, meaning little or no exercise, then she would need to consume 1779 calories to maintain her existing weight. If she was moderately active, then the amount of calories she would need to consume to maintain her weight would be 2298.

Weight Loss Calculator

To calculate your calorie needs for weight loss, start by determining your basal metabolic rate. Then adjust this for your activity level. Use this interactive weight loss calculator to determine your calorie intake.

Note: The results of the weight loss calculator will show you your calorie deficit to lose weight. This is a deficit of 500 calories. If you want to create a larger deficit, just reduce the calories even more.

Remember the number of calories you consume must be less than the calories burned. This can be done by either reducing your calories, creating a calorie deficit, or by adding activity. Or a person can do both, reducing daily calorie intake and adding exercises.

So, if this same woman currently consumed 1779 calories a day and added exercises, which burned 200 calories, she would have created a calorie deficit. If she also reduced her daily calorie intake by 300 (in addition to her exercise routine), then she would have a deficit of 500 calories.

Here's a searchable calorie intake calculator you can use to find out how many calories are in the foods you eat.

Can I Reduce Calories By Too Much?

calorie intake chart

Although it would be tempting to reduce your calories by more than a 1000, this would actually cause your metabolism to slow down, meaning you have lowered your basal metabolic rate.

Experts say to decrease your calorie intake by 500 calories and no more than 1000 calories. If you are closer to your ideal weight, then even reducing your caloric intake by 1000 may be too much.

When a person reduces their calorie intake by too much, the body reacts by going into survival mode. This survival mode dates back to the cave man days when it was literally feast or famine.

If the body received very little food, it would assume it was a time of famine and therefore would begin to store food intake as fat and slow down the body’s metabolism, saving energy for when it was needed. Although food is readily available to us now, our body still reverts to the feast or famine concept and will go into survival mode.

So how much is too much when reducing calories? This will really depend on your current situation and how close you may be to your ideal weight. As a general rule however it is recommended that a woman get at least 1200 calories per day and for a man this would be 1800 calories per day.

Do not go below these levels. Also, monitor your progress. If you see that you are losing weight too slowly or not at all, try adding some calories as this may increase your metabolism and get you back on track.

If you are a teen, then reducing your calorie intake by too much can harm your growing process. Be sure to read this article to understand teen calorie intake.