Knowing how to calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is crucial for effective diet and exercise planning. BMR is the number of calories your body burns if you were inactive all day. The formula for men and women differs, and BMR considers age and metabolism. However, it doesn’t consider lean body mass, so it may not be accurate for very muscular or overweight individuals.
Knowing how you can calculate your basal metabolic rate can be very helpful when it comes to formulating an effective diet and exercise plan. Basal metabolic rate, or BMR, sets the number of calories a person’s body will burn in a single day if that person were completely inactive for the entire day. Knowing how to calculate basal metabolic rate, then, can help a person know the amount of calories he needs to consume to gain or lose weight. BMR can also help a person know how many extra calories to try to burn through exercise. It is not difficult to calculate the basal metabolic rate, but the formula that men should use is different from the formula that women should use.
The BMR calculations for men and women follow the same basic formula, but the fixed values in the formula are different. For men using imperial measurements, the formula is as follows: 66 + (12.7 x height in inches) + (6.23 x weight in pounds) – (6.8 x age). That formula for men using the metric system is as follows: 66 + (5 x height in centimeters) + (13.7 x weight in kilograms) – (6.8 x age). Women using imperial measurements should use the following formula: 655 + (4.7 x height in inches) + (4.35 x weight in pounds) – (4.7 x age). Using the metric system, women would use the following formula: 655 + (1.8 x height in centimeters) + (9.6 x weight in kilograms) – (4.7 x age).
The strength of the BMR formula is its ability to take many factors into account. Unlike many other health indices, BMR considers more than just the subject’s weight. Instead, he acknowledges that as we age, our metabolism slows down, and acknowledges that men tend to have a higher rate of metabolism. BMR provides a clear indicator of your resting metabolic rate, so taking these factors into account is crucial for an accurate measurement.
However, there are some limitations to the overall accuracy when we calculate the basal metabolic rate. The BMR does not take into account the amount of lean body mass and therefore does not consider the ratio of lean body mass to total body mass. Therefore, two people of the same gender, who have the same height, weight, and age will always have the same BMR. However, if one of those people was overweight due to high body fat, and the other weight was the result of being very muscular, their resting metabolic rate would be quite different. For this reason, trying to calculate the basal metabolic rate for the very muscular or overweight is often not that helpful.
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