Following on from the explanation of each of the three food groups we will now look at how much of each macro we should be eating. The actual macros I divided I will look at next week, first I want to look at overall calorie intake.

The first thing to consider is how many calories overall per day you are eating. This will depend on your height, weight, activity levels and also whether you want to lose, gain or maintain weight.

If you want to work this out use this calculator. This will give you your Base Metabolic rate, which the amount of calories you roughly burn throughout the day just powering your organs and breathing. It will also give you an overall daily estimated calorie burned based on your level of activity. This is the number you need calculate according to your goals. https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/health/bmr-calculator.php

You can then use this number to work out how many calories you should be eating based on your goal. If it is maintenance then obviously it is the number given dependant on your activity.  If it is weight loss you are after subtract 15-20% and eat around this many calories and if it is weight gain, add 15-20% more calories to your intake.

 

For example I am 5ft7” and around 64kg. My BMR is around 1400 calories and based my activity I should burn 2100 calories. So for maintenance I would eat 2100 calories, for weight loss I would eat around 1700-1800 calories and for weight gain it would be 2400-2500 calories.

Calories are relevant not just as a weight loss tool, but also as a monitor of energy levels and performance. Particularly as I see many professional equestrians who eat very little throughout the day, mucking out, riding several horses and generally being very active and then find themselves extremely tired, aching muscles and perhaps prone to constant colds and infections. This can be caused by a lack of adequate nutrition, as their bodies do not have the fuel required for energy as well as muscle and immune repair.

And again, those that say they eat very little and are very active yet still carry extra weight-if they accurately monitored their total intake I would almost guarantee they are overeating.

In order to make yourself aware of how much or how little you are eating, I recommend my clients use MyFitnessPal. It is a great app you can get on your phone and basically you record EVERYTHING you eat and drink and it will calculate your calories-it will also calculate your macros hence why it is so useful for next week’s blog when we look at how much of each we should be eating.

So I want you to do that this week, whether you are looking for a change in weight or not, download the app and get used to recording your food and then you will have an idea of how many carbs, fats and proteins you eat already and monitor how those current numbers make you feel energy and health wise.

 

We have 2 spaces available in our Tuesday evening 7.30pm class at the studio based WN8 9QP. Let me know if you would like to join us!