BMR Calculator provides you with an estimate of how many calories your body burns in a day, just to maintain itself (not including exercise), using your height, weight, age, and sex.
When you are trying to figure out how many calories you should eat to lose, maintain, or gain weight, your basal metabolic rate, or resting metabolic rate, will help give you an estimation of what your body consumes daily.
Use your BMR and your calories burned during exercise to estimate how many calories youve burned for the day. Then compare your daily food intake with the total calories burned. Burned more than you consumed? Over time you should lose weight. Consumed more than you burned? Over time you should gain weight.
Keep in mind that these estimates do not take into account lean body mass. If you are more muscular (ie a small percentage of body fat) the BMR caloric estimates are low and you would need to consume more calories than the BMR estimate to break even. If you have more body fat (ie a higher percentage of body fat) the BMR caloric estimates are high and you would need to consume less calories than the BMR estimate to break even.
Please consult a physician before starting any exercise regimen as I am not a doctor and cannot give you personal advice for your caloric needs. This app only offers an estimate and the general idea behind its use.
For those that want to know the particulars on how the BMR number is calculated, we use the Mifflin equation which was developed in 1990 and has proven to be more accurate. Other sites use the Harris-Benedict equation which was developed in 1919 and is less accurate when taking into account todays more sedentary lifestyle. For this reason, the number calculated in this app will be lower than others using the old Harris-Benedict equation.