Basal Metabolic Rate – BMR calculator
Enter your gender, weight, height and age to deterimine your basal metabolic rate (BMR) or resting metabolism calories burned per day.
Advanced Resting Metabolism Calculator – BMR
Basal Metabolic Rate: How to Calculate and What It Is
Most people these days have heard about the term ‘metabolism’. Unfortunately, this term is viewed vastly different by most individuals you ask. I’m sure you have heard those that say “I can’t lose weight because my metabolism is too slow” or ‘fasting can boost your metabolism’ – I’m sure most of you now reading this are nodding your head.
Our metabolism is an integral part of our health, having a metabolism that functions optimally can make weight loss much easier, just ask someone with thyroid problems how difficult weight loss can be! But let’s dive deeper into understanding what makes up our metabolism, but more importantly what is basal metabolic rate (BMR) and why does it form such a large portion of our metabolism.
What is Basal metabolic rate
BMR is the number of calories that your body burns for basic living functions such as breathing, controlling your temperature, or thinking. Overall, at least 60% of our total daily calories are utilised to keep us alive – that means even if you lay down in bed all day and not move a muscle, you will still burn a considerable number of calories.
Say, you eat 2000 calories, and your BMR is 1000 calories per day, theoretically speaking (if you just laid in bed and barely moved) you would have burnt half of the calories consumed without even needing to do any exercise – remember, BMR can vary by up to 15% from each individual.
I want to briefly highlight that while the majority of the calories we burn is through BMR, there are also other components contributing to energy expenditure (calorie burning). These include:
- Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) – Basically, the amount of energy you burn performing daily physical activity such as gardening, washing your car, fidgeting, or walking up a flight of stairs.
- Exercise activity thermogenesis (EAT) – The amount of energy you burn performing structured exercise. For example, running for 30 minutes or lifting weights for 75 minutes. The amount of energy expended can be impacted by duration, intensity, frequency, and modality.
- Thermic effect of food (TEF) – The energy your body burns when breaking down food.
As you can see by this great image, BMR forms the largest portion of our total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) while NEAT, EAT and TEF form much smaller parts of our energy expenditure. Though, it is important to highlight that all these components vary based on each individual.
Factors that impact your BMR
Our BMR can be impacted by a number of factors, these can include:
- Body size – The more you weigh the higher your BMR is likely to be.
- Gender – generally, men have a higher BMR than women due to body size and activity levels. For example, a 90kg male will burn significantly more calories than a 50kg female.
- Amount of lean muscle tissue – Muscle cells burns more energy than fat cells. So, this is another good reason why strength training can is important for optimal health and your metabolism.
- Body fat stores – In comparison to muscle cells, our fat cells burn less energy (calories) when at rest.
- Being in starvation mode – When we consume too little calories, especially below our BMR, our body begins to slow down our metabolism and conserve more energy for survival – on average BMR can drop by 15%
- Age – Unfortunately, with age our metabolism does decrease due to a reduction in lean muscle mass and increased fat mass. Also, humans are more likely to become less active as they age.
- Dietary deficiencies – Being deficient in certain nutrients such as iodine may reduce thyroid function and consequently impact our metabolism negatively.
How to Calculate your BMR
All you are required to do is put in your gender, weight, height, and age. When complete, you will be provided with your BMR. This will give you a good estimate about the number of calories you burn per day. Overall, by using our BMR calculator you will get an estimate of the amount of energy (calories) you burn at rest.
As stated above, the number of calculators burnt per day does not only depend on BMR but also EAT, NEAT and TEF. So, I have also designed another awesome calculator which can be found on our website here – https://www.jasonkozma.com/free-fitness-calculators/caloriesperday/
This calculator also requires your age, gender, height, and weight but in addition you will be required to input your daily activity levels. This calculator will be very helpful if you are trying to find out the number of calories you burn per day when factoring in your activity levels. This is very useful information for when you want to accurately know the number of calories you need to consume for weight loss, muscle building or to just maintain your physique.
Overall, by using our BMR calculator you will get an estimate of the amount of energy (calories) you burn at rest. This is very useful information for when you want to accurately know the number of calories you need to consume for weight loss, muscle building or for physique maintenance.