Reader Q&A: How To Calculate A Calorie Deficit

As a follow up to my recent post on designing a healthy eating plan a reader sent in a question:

In your post on Jan 9 about a good diet plan, you mention that in order to lose one pound you need to create a 3000 caloried deficit.  Do you have any idea when it stops being a deficit and becomes your rountine?   In other words, when do you need to create another 3000 calorie deficit to continue losing weight?

The first thing you need to do is to figure out how many calories you need right now to maintain your current weight.  For this you will need a calorie calculator.  The one I use can be found HERE. Just select the BMR & RMR calculator.

When I enter in my parameters:

• Weight - 215
• Height - 5′11″
• Age - 35
• Gender - Male

I get the following:

Factor	Category	Definition	BMR	RMR
1.2	Sedentary	Little or no exercise and desk	2,486	2,318
		job
1.375	Lightly Active	Light exercise or sports 1-3	2,849	2,657
		days a week
1.55	Moderately Active	Moderate exercise or sports	3,212	2,995
		3-5 days a week
1.725	Very Active	Hard exercise or sports 6-7	3,574	3,333
		days a week
1.9	Extremely Active	Hard daily exercise or sports	3,937	3,671
		and physical job

So if I want to maintain my current weight, I would need to 3574 calories a day (based on the fact that I fall into the very active category).  If I eat less than that, I have a calorie deficit and I will lose weight.  If I eat more than, I have a surplus and I’ll gain weight.

Now let’s say that I have a calorie deficit and I slowly lose weight.  I get to my target weight of 190lbs and I wonder, do I still have a calorie deficit?  Am I going to keep losing weight?  If I enter in the same parameters but change the weight to 190, I get the following results:

Factor	Category	Definition	BMR	RMR
1.2	Sedentary	Little or no exercise and desk	2,299	2,183
		job
1.375	Lightly Active	Light exercise or sports 1-3	2,635	2,501
		days a week
1.55	Moderately Active	Moderate exercise or sports	2,970	2,819
		3-5 days a week
1.725	Very Active	Hard exercise or sports 6-7	3,305	3,138
		days a week
1.9	Extremely Active	Hard daily exercise or sports	3,640	3,456
		and physical job

So at 190lbs I need 3305 to maintain my weight at my current activity level.  If I’m eating less than that, I’ll continue to lose weight.  By the way, you can reverse engineer your way to a good eating plan by putting in your target weight.  It will tell you how many calories per day you need in order to maintain that weight.  Now you simply adjust your diet to provide you with that number on average and you will eventually hit your target weight.

Remember, this isn’t an exact science.  Your metabolism might be slightly faster or slower plus you’re not going to hit this calorie goal exactly every day.  Just aim for the general vicinity and make adjustments as you go along and see what the results are.

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My apologies for the delayed post by the way, my computer was hit by a virus and had to be wiped clean.  Ooooh, I hate malware!

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