Thursday, 2 January 2020

A free online tool for calculating caloric requirement and target weight loss

A new year, a new resolution. Not.

Same old. Same old... loose weight, get fit, and finish off the whole swag of financial planning postgrad and specialist courses that I'm part-way through (and hopefully also get my first few financial planning clients this year!).

Anyhow, reading an article about the weight loss progress of Jessica Irvine in the SMH, I followed her link to the TDEE calculator and used it to check on my maintenance calorie level. It gives and answer of 2,794 cals/day, which is about what I'd calculated from empirical measurement of my actual weight loss/gain data plotted against average calorie intake.

The tool also used various formulae to suggest my "ideal weight" is in the range 69-73 kg, which is in line with the "ideal" weight calculated using BMI recommendations.

However, the same tool calculates that my "maximum muscular potential" is to be 76 kg with 5% body fat, or a more reasonable 80 kg with 10% body fat. After the DEXA scan results I'd revised my target to 80 kg and 10% body fat, so the "maximum muscular potential" figure for 10% body fat is a much better guide (for me) than a simplistic BMI target.

The tool also suggests a maintenance macronutrient target of 279g protein, 124g fat and 140g carbs for the 'low carb' option. This would result in consuming my maintenance caloric intake of 2,794 cals/day. I'll continue to try IF (or fasting) on Tue and Thu each week, and to reduce my carb intake to that approaching a 'ketogenic diet' level (under 50g of carbs/day).

I tend to have trouble eating almost 300g of protein a day - even with extra whey protein added to my morning porridge, salmon for lunch, and chicken breast or fillet steak for dinner I tend to only get to around 120-140 g of protein. But I also tend to eat more than 50 g of carbs/day, so I suppose I'll just have to substitute some more high carb foods with more protein intake.

In any case, as long as I keep going to the gym, walking 10,000+ steps/day, and aiming to minimise carbs and eat around 1,800 calories on my 'normal' diet days and do some level of fasting on Tuesdays and Thursday I should continue to make progress towards my target of 10% body fat and around 80 kg weight by the middle of this year.

If I can average around 1,800 cals/day each week (my tendency to overate a bit on the weekends offsets the caloric deficit boost of my 'fasting' days) I should loose around 7,000/7,700 = 0.9 kg/week.

Onwards and downwards!

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