How Many Calories Do I Need? - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. My name is Alyssa Chicci, I am a registered dietician and certified diabetes educator with Nutrition Resolution. To figure out how many calories you would need per day, you first need to figure out your resting metabolic rate, and that is how many calories you burn when your just not doing anything, when your body is just at rest to normalize your heartbeat, your body temperature. There are different equations that can do that but the easiest way is really just to go on the Internet and there is a healthy body calculator on askthedietician.com; mypyramid.gov will also calculate your calories and help you formulate a meal plan. They will use various equations that will incorporate your height, your weight, your age, whether or not your pregnant or breast feeding and that is the basically what you need to get to is your basil metabolic rate. And then you want to multiply that by a factor anywhere from adding 10-30% and that is accounting for activities of daily living, just moving around, the things you do normally in a day. Then to that, you would add whatever activity you do. An important thing to consider is whether or not you want to maintain your weight, or lose weight or gain weight. So, if you want to lose weight, you would want to have a calorie deficit. There is 3500 calories in a pound so, if you want to lose a pound in a week, you would want to subtract 500 calories somehow to lose a pound over the week. You can do that by either burning 500 extra calories, eating 500 less calories or a little of both. Its a better idea to do a little bit of both, that way you are preserving your metabolism. So, that would mean burning, say an extra 250 calories, and eating an extra 250 calories less per day so that you have that 500 calorie deficit.
