NUTRITION ROUND TABLE: THE ENERGY EQUATION
WILKINSON
Understanding how many calories you should consume and setting up successful nutritional strategies to help you reach your goal of losing fat or gaining muscle requires understanding and measurement.
Starting points
I start by collecting all the information needed to calculate a person’s Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) – which accounts for all the homeostatic processes of the body – including sex, age, height, weight and body fat percentage. You can plug these variables into various online calculators to get approximately how many calories you need to maintain your current condition. You can then consume slightly more or less, depending on your goal.
Don’t forget NEAT
Beyond your BMR, an important (and often overlooked) contributor to your TDEE is non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which is everything we do that is not eating, sleeping or exercise. NEAT includes non-training activities such as walking around, standing up, fidgeting and performing other daily tasks. NEAT varies widely from person to person, and the difference can affect TDEE as much as 1,500 to 2,000kcal per day between people with a similar BMR, according to one Journal of International Medicine study. So it’s easy to see why an active occupation – such as a personal trainer or cleaner – can more easily stay lean compared to those in sedentary professions, such as an office worker.
On tracking steps
Some coaches track steps
