Do you know how many calories you burn in a day? Our bodies require energy every day to keep us alive and to perform all the various functions we ask it to do from breathing and digesting food to exercising and doing the housework. The amount of energy we require depends on a number of things including:
- Whether we are male or female
- Our age
- Our height
- Our weight
- How physically active we are each day
Our energy comes from our food. When we consume more energy (or food) than we use up, our bodies store this energy in our fat cells which can lead to us gaining weight. In order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, we need to understand how many calories our body requires each day. That way, we can consume the number of calories our body needs and optimise our health through maintenance of a healthy weight.
TDEE is your total daily energy expenditure. This is the total number of calories your body needs on a daily basis to fuel all its functions and any exercise undertaken. It is a good starting point for understanding your body’s energy requirements throughout the day.
Your TDEE is divided into 4 sections. These sections are your:
- BMR – Basal Metabolic Rate – 40%-50% of your overall required daily calories. Put simply, this is the number of calories your body needs to sustain basic functioning, like breathing and keeping your heart pumping. So, imagine you were to lie on a sofa all day and do nothing. This is the number of calories your body requires to survive.
- TEF – Thermic Effect of Food – 6-10% of daily energy expenditure for men and 6-7% for women. This refers to the amount of energy expended by the body through the ingestion, digestion, absorption, utilisation and storage of food.
- TEA – Thermic effect of activity. This is divided into:
- EAT – Exercise Activity Thermogenesis – 9-10% of your daily calorie expenditure. This is the number of calories you burn whilst doing a planned exercise session, so your gym session, your run, you bike ride, whatever it is.
- NEAT – Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis – 20%- 40% of your overall calorie expenditure depending on your activity levels. This is the number of calories you expend doing all the other activities you do in a day. This is the most variable component of your TDEE.
By calculating your TDEE you can get a good estimation of the number of calories your body requires each day and you can use this as a guide to determine how many calories you should consume in order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. There are some great tools online to help you calculate your TDEE. So, if you’ve always gone by the government recommendations of 2000 calories per day for females and 2500 calories per day for males, you may find you are either consuming too many or too few calories in relation to what you actually need.
www.tdeecalculator.net is a great site that can allow you to roughly calculate your calorie usage throughout the day and to begin to understand your body’s energy requirements. You simply key in whether you are male or female, your age, your weight, your height, a rough estimation of your activity levels and it will give you an estimation of calorie requirements. This is a very helpful tool for weight management as it will help you to understand your basic energy requirements. If you would like any further help with this, please feel free to get in touch.
