Monitoring your weight

Maintaining a healthy weight is one of the most important parameter for maintaining a good health. Overweight and underweight both are associated with various health issues.

Your weight is directly dependent upon your diet.

One of the most difficult questions you face while monitoring your weight is how much to eat.

Factors affecting your caloric intake are:

1. Basal metabolic Rate(BMR)
2. Activity level

BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate):  Basal Metabolic Rate is the amount of energy expressed in calories that a person needs to keep the body functioning at rest (when you are doing nothing). Some of these processes are breathing, blood circulation, controlling body temperature, cell growth, brain and nerve function, and contraction of muscles.

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) affects the rate that a person burns calories and ultimately whether you maintain, gain, or lose weight. Your basal metabolic rate accounts for about 60 to 75% of the calories you burn every day. So higher the BMR more calories you burn daily.

BMR differs from person to person according to his age, height, weight, fat mass and fat free mass.

Fat mass: It is the amount of fat (adipose tissue) stored in your body. It includes both the visceral fat (around the organs) and subcutaneous fat (beneath the skin).

Fat free mass: This mainly consist of bone, water and muscles. Fat Free Mass can be increased by building muscles.

Higher the fat free mass more is your BMR. As muscle needs 6 Kcal per pound to maintain itself while fat tissue needs only 2 Kcal per pound to maintain itself.

In general BMR can be calculated by following formula:

MALES:  66.5 + (13.75*weight in kilograms) + (5.003*height in cm) - (6.755*age in years)

FEMALES:  655.1+ (9.563*weight in kilograms) + (1.850*height in cm) - (4.676*age in years).

 Activity level

Activity level is the amount of work a person does daily it includes the normal daily activities like sitting, walking, talking etc. to heavy physical workouts.

According to the amount of physical work, activity level can be graded into the following categories:

• Sedentary: You sit, drive, lie down or stand in one place for most of the day and don’t do any type of exercise.
• Lightly Active: You’re sedentary for most of the day and do light activity, such as walking, for no more than two hours daily.
• Moderately Active: You’re on your feet most of the workday, with light lifting only, and do no structured exercise.
• Very Active: Your typical workday includes several hours of physical labor, such as light industry and construction-type jobs, and / or you have a regular daily exercise program such as walking for an hour each day.
• Extremely Active: You do heavy manual labor and/or are into competitive sports like cycling or swimming for long hours or playing cricket or football or other games daily for long hours each day.

How much calorie should you intake

Calorie consumption can be determined by HARRIS BENEDICT FORMULA:

Required Calories for Sedentary Physical Activity= BMR*1.2

Required Calories for Lightly Active Physical Activity = BMR*1.375

Required Calories for Moderately Active Physical Activity (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) = BMR*1.55

Required Calories for Heavily Active Physical Activity (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days /week) = BMR*1.725

Required Calories for Very Heavily Active Physical Activity (very hard exercise/sports and physical job) = BMR*1.9

Track your weight every week: In order to know whether you are maintaining your weight or achieving your weight loss/gain target you need to track your weight weekly. The weight should be taken approximately at same time of the day and with same type of clothing.

Follow a schedule: Following sleeping and eating timings is very important to maintain a healthy body clock.  Maintaining an eating schedule helps ensure that you don't eat too much — or too little — throughout your day and helps you to plan your meal ahead of time. It also ensures that the food is digested properly and your body is better able to utilize the calories eaten. Skipping meals or eating at irregular times causes unhealthy highs or lows in blood sugar levels.

So the main mantra of monitoring your weight is Eat as much as you can Burn.