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Pro Ana Calculators: Using BMR Calculator

Pro Ana Calculators: Using BMR Calculator

If you never heard of or used a BMR Calculator for calorie counting freaks then this article is for you.  For most of the Pro Ana crowd out there you use calorie counting as your main tool to help you loose weight.  BMR can be a great an efficient tool to help you figure out how many calories you need to withdraw from your daily intake in order for you to tighten up and lose that excess fat.  You don’t have to take your daily intake down to incredibly small and dangerous levels to lose the fat.  Calculating exactly how much you need to drop and making a plan on how to do it is the best and the BMR calculator can help you get there.

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The BMR calculator, short for Basal Metabolic Rate, works just like the BMI calculator asks for some basic data and it gives you a numeric response.  Neither calculator will give you pinpoint exact responses for your particular body type.  They can, especially the BMR calculator, be used to get you started.  I prefer the BMR calculator over the BMI just because it seems to be more exact however your results may vary. You can find both calculators on our main page on the right side.

This calculator will show you how many calories you will burn if you basically did nothing all day and stayed in bed.  So basically this is what your body needs to function every day.  Now if you eat less than this amount it doesn’t mean you will get sick but if you do this for many days in a row you could hurt yourself and potentially end up in the hospital (or worse).  So to use the BMR calculator you input your age, current weight and height.  It gives a numeric response.  Write down that number and use the figures below to figure out how much you normally burn on an average day.

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To do this you take the Harris Benedit Equation (don’t worry, it’s not hard math).  This equation basically takes your BMR result and then multiplies it by a certain number to figure out how many calories your body burns during a normal day.  You then take this amount and figure out how much to subtract to slowly burn away excess fat.

Here’s the Harris Benedit Equation:

Multiple your BMR result by these figures:

If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2

If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375

If you are moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55

If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : 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
So for example if you are 5’5″, currently weigh 120 lbs, and you are 21 years of age your BMR result is around 1,380 calories (I like to use round numbers).   Say you do light dance exercises twice a week and light yoga once a week but you do nothing else as far as exercise then you’ll probably fall in the lightly active area.  You take 1380 and multiply it by 1.2 to get 1,660 calories you need each day to maintain this current weight at this current age.  If you eat more than this, you’ll gain weight and if you eat less than this and keep the same schedule you’ll lose some weight.

Test this out yourself and play around with the numbers.  Thinking about joining the gym and adding some hardcore exercise once or twice a week along with 2-3 days of light exercise (walking)?  Check out how many calories you’ll need to maintain that and then you can see how many calories you eat each day on an average day and you’ll see the difference there.  Remember, there is around 3,500 calories per pound of fat.  We’ll get into the calorie intake to lose weight in the next article.  I hope this clears up some questions about the BMR calculator and how it can be used.

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