How many calories do you need?

To calculate the daily requirement for calories, you need to determine the type of your physique, then determine what your ideal weight should be, and calculate how many calories are needed to maintain it.

You can determine your body type using table 4.

Pull the right arm forward and bend it at the elbow at an angle of 90 °.Straighten your fingers and turn your hand away from yourself. Place the large and index fingers of the other hand on the two protruding bones of the elbow joint. Measure the distance between the fingers using a ruler. Find your height in the left column. Compare the width of your elbow with the data from the right column of the table, corresponding to your height. The data given refer to people of medium build. If the width of your elbow is less than indicated in the table, then you are a person of a fragile constitution, if more - large.

Table 4

Data for determining the body type

Now that you have decided on the type of your physique, you will be able to find out what body mass is ideal for you.

Determination of the ideal weight

The ideal body weight data is presented in Table 5. The left figure in the "weight" column refers to the fragile physique, the right one to the large one. Average values ​​correspond to the average physique.

Table 5

Data for determining the ideal weight of

How many calories per day do you need

Choose from the list below the level of activity that is specific to you.

Record the number of calories corresponding to your activity level. You will need it to compose the following equation:

where B is your weight, K is the number of calories that corresponds to your activity level, JV is the approximate daily requirement for calories.

For example, you weigh 88 kg. You rated your physical activity as moderate( say, most of the day you do a sedentary job, but train one hour a day at least 5 times a week).Therefore, your daily energy requirement is:

Now that you have this data, let's get acquainted with the Diets of the Healthy Exchange System.

As you remember, the Healthy Exchange System( SZO) includes seven lists: five mandatory and two optional. These lists consist of different product categories. Diets of the SZD determine

Low physical activity Low activity Moderate activity High activity

- 30 kcal

- 35 kcal

- 40 kcal

- 45 kcal

In X K = AS

AS 88 x 40 = 3520( kcal).