BMR stands for basal metabolic rate and is the rate at which you burn calories while doing nothing at all. That’s right; you burn calories just by sitting there on the couch watching television. Of course, you are not really “just” sitting there, are you? You are blinking, which involves moving tiny muscles in your eyelids to open and close. You are breathing, which means that your lungs are inflating and deflating, your diaphragm is moving up and down. Your heart is beating, contracting and expanding, beat after beat after beat. And all of these complex processes are happening because your brain is sending out billions of electrical impulses, neurons interacting via synapses making it all happen. All of this major activity, whether you realize it or not, is going on or not, takes energy. Your BMR is the amount of calories that you burn to simply maintain life.
But, why, you might ask, is it important to know your BMR in the first place? First, you must know this number so that you have a baseline to work with, when you are trying to decide how many calories you need to eliminate from your diet each day. Too few and you will never lose any weight. Too many and you will never lose any weight. It is a game won and lost by inches, and too often people just blast for the bleachers when all they need is an in-field bunt to get the job done.
If you cut too many calories out of your daily diet, your body will become convinced that it is starving to death and will send up the panic flags. All non-essential systems will be slowed or stopped. The metabolism will slow to a crawl- all fuel that is being brought in now will be considered essential and will be immediately stored to protect against impending doom.
On the other hand, if you are eating too many calories, the body will be overwhelmed. Storage systems will be overwhelmed with all of the food that is being brought in- the body will start storing everything for future sorting. Sadly, the body is not so great at file retrieving and new foods just keep coming in every day. Keep flooding the body this way and your metabolism will walk off the job in utter frustration.
Trying to lose weight requires a lot of information. You need to know how much your maintenance is costing you in terms of total calories. Once you know what your BMR is you can experiment by reducing your total daily calories by 500 for a week or two. If you do not lose any weight at all, you can go up to 1000 calories. At no point should you drop more than 1200 calories per day without a doctor’s express notice to do so. Steady weight loss is what you are aiming for, not dangerous weight loss. The faster you lose it, the faster you will regain it is the old adage – aim for a slow and steady weight loss of two pounds the first week and then one pound every week thereafter.
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Hello. Thank you for the article. Can you tell me how I can determine what my basal metabolic rate is? Also does your bmr change depending on how much you are exercising, eating or how much water you take in per day? My husband says that weight lifting and building muscle changes your bmr. Also, are there any specific food that increase or decrease your basal metabolic rate? What about caffeine? Thank you.
Great questions.
Your BMR can be easily estimated using the Harris Benedict equation. Use this free BMR calculator by clicking on the BMR “take a test”.
To truly determine exactly how many calories you burned, we would need to do directly measure your metabolism with a calorimeter.
There are two ways to do this. Direct and Indirect.
1. Direct calorimetry – monitoring the amount of heat produced inside a room large enough to allow moderate activity. This method measures the expended heat energy. As you can imagine, it’s typically expensive and requires special facilities.
2. Indirect calorimetry – The human body consumes a fixed amount of oxygen for each calorie burned. Traditionally recording it as the test subject exhales into a special tube. This measure of oxygen consumption is then compared to stored data and your BMR is calculated.
As you can see by using the BMR calculator above, your activity level is essentially a coefficient of the equation and as such – directly affects it. the more active you are, the higher your resting metabolism is – similarly, eating smaller meals more frequently aids your digestion as well as your metabolism.
Things that increase your caloric consumption are called thermogenic agents. The actual amount of thermogenesis that results will vary between individuals. That said, caffeine can induce thermogenic effects as can other stimulants.
Is it just cutting back calories that will help you lose weight? From what I have understood, in past studies with friends, cutting carbs will help you lose weight too. My mom is fifty and she is a tiny person, so thankfully I get that from her. I can eat whatever and whenever I am hungry no matter how much. But, now I am getting closer to thirty and I wonder how bad my cholesterol and health really is. I can still be unhealthy and eat the wrong foods even though I am genetically thin, right? What is a good diet for someone like me, that wants to stay healthy and eat healthy foods, but not bland tasting meals? Thanks for the article. It really got me thinking more about my eating habits!
It is amazing how easily it is to disturb the balance in your calorie intake to support weight loss. To quote Dr. O: “Too few and you will never lose any weight. Too many and you will never lose any weight.” A lot of times that’s when you hit your plateau, when you have come to the point when your BMR and your calorie intake have leveled out. It is time to look again at your diet and workout routine and increase activity or lower calorie intake or both. I like to switch up when I eat and the size of my meals to keep my body confused. It seems when you get too comfortable your body knows exactly what to expect and adjusts to that level so that you never use any stored energy which is the fat we all want to get rid of.
Well, that was exactly the answer I was looking for. Thank you! It makes perfect sense that we should eat at different times every day just like you said. I guess I never realized that our bodies can get used to routines.
I never realized that either. I am going to give that a try because I have definitely hit a plateau where I have about ten more pounds to lose, and just can’t seem to shake it. I have tried increasing my cardio and weight training levels, and it just isn’t working. But, I have definitely gotten into a routine with my eating, so I am going to shake it up. Thanks for the great advice!
If you’ve hit a plateau another thing to consider is what kind of exercise and cardio you are doing. Just like our bodies get used to our eating schedule, it also gets used to our exercise routine. If you normally do one type of exercise, try switching that up. If you usually use the elliptical machine, try boxing, or the rowing machine. Another thing to consider is the new interval training. I like the tabata style of 4 min sections of 20 sec all out and 10 sec recover. Repeat this for the whole 4 min and I promise you will be exhausted by the end of the 4 min. Take 3 mins at a normal pace and start the 4 min all over again. Do this up to three times a week and you’ll be shedding those last 10 lbs in a month or two.