In order to figure out your metabolic rate you must know your Resting Metabolic Rate. Resting Metabolic Rate can be defined as the energy required staying alive with absolutely no activity. RMR is sometimes confused with Basal Metabolic Rate. Basal Metabolic Rate can be defined as “the minimal caloric requirement needed to sustain life in a resting individual. This includes the body functions such as circulation, breathing, generating body heat, transmitting messages to the brain, cellular metabolism, and the production of body chemicals.”(Robert Adams, CPT)

An easy way to figure out your RMR is by multiplying your weight by 10. For example someone weighing 110 pounds would have a RMR of 1000.Your RMR can more accurately be determined by using the Harris-Benedict Equation.

Harris-Benedict Equation

Men:	RMR = 66 + (13.7 x Weight) + (5 x Height) – (6.8 x Age)
Women:	RMR = 655 + (9.6 x W) + (1.7 x H) – (4.7 x A)
Where: W = weight in kg-(weight in lb/2.2/b/kg) H= height in cm-(height in inches x 2.54 cm/in) A = age in years

My Example:
RMR=655 + (9.6) x (50.5kg) + (1.7 x 160.2cm) – (4.7 x 26years) ->
       =655 + (484.8) + (272.34) – (122.2) = 1289.94 kcal

Now that you know your RMR you can multiply that by your daily activity level and that will give you your metabolic rate. Ex: 1289.4 x .35 =451.5 this makes my BMR 1740.9. This number does not include exercise. Usually this number is too low for someone with a lot of muscle and too high for someone who is fairly over-weight.

As early as 1991, there was evidence to show that highly restrictive diets were not as effective for weight loss. Frost, et al. (1991) showed that highly restrictive diets tend not to be followed as closely, that people tend to underreport what they are eating (“a few Twinkies don’t really count”), and that people whose diets were based on BMR rather than diet history lost more weight.

Somehow, though, the myth still persists that the less you eat, the more you will lose.
If you eat less than your (BMR) you sacrifice all of your hard earned muscle. The more muscle you have the higher your metabolism will be. When you don’t eat enough your body goes into starvation mode and will use your precious muscle as fuel. Your metabolism will sink faster than the Titanic when you don’t eat the proper amount of food.  Every time you eat you increase your metabolism due to the thermic effect of food. When you eat often you greatly increase the number of calories you burn. That sounds great doesn’t it? The days of eating like Paris Hilton are over!

Before you go too crazy remember that there is a catch. You cannot eat too much or you will put your metabolism to sleep. You want to eat until you are no longer hungry, not necessarily until you are full and definitely not stuffed! Your metabolism is like a fire. When you don’t eat enough your metabolism slows down because of a lack of fuel. If you eat too much you put out the fire. Try to find a happy medium and keep that metabolism revved.

Putting together information from several sources (Robert Adams, CPT; ShapeFit.com, and Johnstone et al.), we can determine a fairly exhaustive list of the factors that affect BMR including both normal day-to-day factors and external or event-based factors, sometimes called short-term factors:

Final Thoughts
Understanding how your metabolism works is imperative to achieving your fitness goals. By computing your caloric requirements you can salvage your hard earned muscle by making certain that you eat enough. You will also save yourself from wasting time with uneducated guesses. Some people have the tendency to overestimate their needs while others severely underestimate their needs. The formulas above will be a valuable guide for you as you persist on your fitness journey. Now the only thing left to do is go to the gym and put in the hard work!

Mardiastuty, T. (n.d.). Resting Metabolic Rate Calculator. Retrieved May 1, 2009 fromhttp://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calrmr.htm

“Factors That Affect Your Metabolic Rate” http://completefitnessconcepts.com/BodyGem/index_files/MetAffects.htm

Johnstone, A., Murison, S., Duncan, J., Rance, K., & Speakman, J. (2005). Factors influencing variation in basal metabolic rate include fat-free mass, fat mass, age, and circulating thyroxine but not sex, circulating leptin, or triiodothyronine1–3. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 82, (5). Retrieved April 30 from http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/82/5/941

Frost, G., Masters, K., King, C., Kelly, M., Hasan, U., Heavens, P., White, R., & Stanford, J. (1991). A new method of energy prescription to improve weight loss. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics. Vol. 4

Also see:
Frost, G., (1997). Commentary on Frost, G., Masters, K., King, C., Kelly, M., Hasan, U., Heavens, P., White, R. & Stanford, J. (1991) A new method of energy prescription to improve weight loss. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics; 4, 369–373. Journal of Human Nutrition & Dietetics, Vol. 20 Issue 3. Retrieved May 1, 2009 from Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition database

http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html

Does this sound like you? It sounds like me too, not long ago. It’s tough enough finding time in our busy schedules to fit in exercise, without trying to make sure your food is healthy too. It’s so easy to order out from work or to just stop somewhere and pick up a bite to eat.

The solution is to have a system.

Chicken breast -> Grill -> Weigh and pack

Things you’ll need:

• Containers (we use a combination of Ziplock, Rubbermaid, and Gladware)
• Cooking supplies (a pot for veggies and either an oven or a Foreman-style grill)
• List of foods you like (or want to try)
• A food scale (if you want to track portions closely)

Then you pick a day and cook!

So is this doable, and does it help?  Let’s look at a standard meal we eat often and compare nutrition, value, and time against picking something up.

We usually put together meals with a meat, a vegetable, and a starch.  One of our most common is grilled chicken, broccoli florets, and sweet potato.  The sweet potato does add some extra carbs, so you could swap this out to reduce the carbs even further. I’ve given the meal sizes in terms of what I would eat, as a 200+ pound man. Obviously, if the portions were reduced, for instance to 4 oz of chicken and a 3oz sweet potato, the calories will go down even more.

This is a healthy meal with no added preservatives or other chemicals, and it only took a few minutes to put together several for the week. Now how much did it cost?

We get boneless chicken breast on sale and stock up, so it’s usually $1.99 per pound. That makes a 5 oz portion $0.62. We’ll buy the broccoli in a large bag for quantity, and that’s about $3 for a pound. A cup of broccoli is about 85g, or 3 ounces, so the broccoli comes to $0.56. Finally, a sweet potato goes for maybe $1.50 per pound, so at 4 ounces the cost is $0.38.

Total cost for a home made meal: $1.51 per meal.

Now let’s compare that to a “healthy” McDonald’s or frozen meal.  I’ve picked some of the best offerings as well, so these are the choices that are the most healthy. Pick almost anything else from these lines of food and the calorie count will go up significantly.

Meals for a week

Notice that even with the frozen meals, where the calories aren’t too high, you get less ounces of food and a trade-off: either lots of fat or lots of sugar, and you’ve paid more for it than when making your own meal! With the meal we constructed you have low fat, low sugar, good fiber content, and lots of protein.

The ‘Meals for a Week’ photo shows our refrigerater once most of the work is done. We have szechuan green beans, broccoli florets, sweet potatoes, steak, chicken breast, and stir fry – enough for about 3 days of meals. A few extra servings of chicken and you have a week’s worth of food. It’s cheap, ready-to-go, and you can even mix-and-match.

Mix it up further with variations. Make chicken cordon bleu or pork chops for the main meal.  Add spinach or asparagus for additional veggie choices. The options are endless, limited only by your imagination and taste buds.

So give it a shot. Start your week with a plan: healthy food ready to go. You’ll actually save both time and money, and you’ll feel better too!

Muscle & Fitness magazine has a great chicken cordon bleu recipe here:
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/nutrition/122

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