Happy Wednesday.

Recently someone in the group told me they thought they needed to eat 800 calories a day to lose weight because their BMR (basal metabolic rate) was 1300 and they wanted to be 500 below that.

SO....let's talk about it because that number is scary low!

You've got the whole calories in vs calories out. This is also called energy balance and it's very important for your goals.

Calories in being food and out being BMR+TEF+NEAT+EAT....... (explaining now)

The first one is about your basal metabolic rate or your BMR. If you have ever done an inbody you'll see this number in the upper right side of your sheet.

Or you may have seen this before in a different way.

Many people think that this is the number of calories you need to eat per day to lose fat but that is quite far off.

Your BMR is how many calories your body burns if you just laid in bed and did nothing all day. It takes a lot of energy for your body to function properly, for your hear to beat, your blood to flow etc etc.

So if you want your body to continue to function well, you'll want to make sure you are always eating above your BMR.  

Of course remembering that it's an average of your calories over time that matters. Going over or under on certain days doesn't really matter if your average is on point.

So how many calories should you eat for fat loss?

Well you should add your BMR to the calories you burn with your purposeful exercise (EAT) plus the calories you burn just doing stuff all day (NEAT) and the calories you burn when you digest and absorb your food (TEF).

So you'd add all of those together and then subtract 250-500 per day to get you into the deficit you are looking for for fat loss (if that is your goal).

Woah, how the heck can you figure all that out?

Well, you don't really "have to" unless you want to live in a lab :)

Instead, you can pick an educated starting point and make adjustments based on your results. Everyone is so different so you must start somewhere and then adjust based on results.

This requires consistency, but you'll always need consistency to be successful so we won't worry about that!

A good starting point for fat loss, assuming you are working out regularly is 10-12x your current bodyweight per day. If this number seems scary, you can also use 12x your goal bodyweight. For maintenance you'd be 12-14x your bodyweight per day and then for weight gain you'd be 14++.

You do not need to track how many calories you burn in a workout or anything like that. We are factoring that in.

So if you weight 200 pounds then you would be 2000 calories per day. Remembering that 1000 one day and 3000 the next day is still 3000 per day.

Also remembering that 2000 Sunday to Thursday and a lot more than that on the weekend brings your average way up too (very common).

So now that you have your calories set, you'll want to judge your progress in 3-4 week blocks. One to two weeks just isn't enough time to know if it's working.

So every 3-4 weeks you'll jump on the scale. If you are seeing progress to your goals then just keep doing what you are doing until you aren't! Unfortunately over time as you lose a lot of weight your calories needs will be less so that is something that may come up that is confusing.

If you aren't seeing progress on the scale but feel amazing, I would probably also stick with it for another 3-4 weeks to see if the scale just hasn't caught up with your new habits yet.

If you aren't seeing progress and don't feel amazing then you'll want to either increase exercise by an hour per week (if possible) or reduce calories by 250/day.

Then for all of these we just keep repeating the process every 3-4 weeks and making the adjustments needed.

The 10x your bodyweight is an educated guess but everyone is very different. You can start there and then adjust over time based on your results.

All this said, you don't necessarily have to count calories. I would consider it a last resort if you can't figure out why you aren't seeing the progress you think you should be. Often we aren't aware of just high calorie some of our foods are or our portion sizes so it can be a good wake up call.

Check out our Evolve nutrition guide for a more in depth explanation of all of this here.  

I am using fat loss as an example in this email knowing that many of you don't have fat loss goals. The guide above explains other goals and you can always reply back to me anytime.

Have a great day!

Matt​