“You are what you eat.” We’ve all heard that phrase before. I would change it to include, “You are how much of what you eat.”

More people consistently search google for how to lose weight over ways to get rich, yet in the US we continue the trend to being overweight. (See this article I recently published for statistics and one recommendation to help curb the tide).

The overweight person wanting to shed the extra pounds will find that it is not an easy journey, especially if the amount of weight needing to be lost is large, but it can be done.

In recent speeches I’ve given, I’ve asked the audiences, what two things a person should do, if they want to lose weight. In all cases, someone has immediately responded, “Diet and Exercise.”

“Atkins is dead. Pass the bread.”

As an engineer, I would get stuck in analysis paralysis if I tried to evaluate every available diet that someone has put out and marketed. The south beach diet, the Atkins diet, Paleo, Vegetarian, Vegan, etc. I had to simplify the process, under the umbrella of diet and exercise. Here are two things that will raise your awareness and help with the weight loss process:

Know what your daily caloric intake should be Track what your net daily caloric intake actually is.

F actors Determining Our Net Caloric Intake.

Since my educational background is engineering, I like to put this into equation form. Stick with me on this. It’s worth the understanding if you want to start losing weight and keep it off.

The equation is: BW = CI-CO

So, what are these mystery variables, you ask?

BW = Body weight

CI = Calories In

CO = Calories Out

If this equation balances (like conservation of energy, for example), then all is well. The problem is that rather than this being a law of physics, it is a law of weight.

Put on your algebra hats for a minute and answer this question. What happens if CO is less than CI? Think hard. Yep, that’s right. BW gets bigger.

Therein lies one of the answers to life’s mysteries. Why do I keep getting bigger? Hmmm. It might have something to do with BW = CI-CO.

If you lie in bed and sleep, you are actually burning calories. It takes some amount of energy for your heart to keep pumping and your lungs to keep breathing. The number of calories used when the body is at rest is known as the basal metabolic rate, or BMR. Another contributor to the use of calories are those calories used during digestion. These are referred to as the thermic effect of food. Finally, there are calories burned for physical activity. These are the three ways that we can burn calories.

CO = BMR (basal metabolic rate) + TEF (thermic effect of food) + PA (physical activity)

If we want to maintain our current body weight, then our caloric intake must equal the sum of those three elements. If we want to lose weight, then these three need to be more than our CI. We’re going to look at how to estimate values for BMR and TEF below, but an important component of attaining and maintaining our ideal body weight is physical activity, including exercise.

Estimating daily caloric “budget”

Here is a formula to estimate your daily caloric need. An estimate for your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is your ideal body weight X 10. (You can get your ideal body weight from the chart in this previous article). Add to that some number of calories for physical activity. For a sedentary person, you would add another 30% of your BMR estimate to get your total caloric budget. If you are extremely physically active, you can go up to 100% of your BMR. (Professional athletes could go as much as 2 to 3 times the BMR as the calorie budget for TEF and physical activity, but they probably have professional nutritionists figuring all of that out for them anyway.)

If you are somewhere between sedentary and extremely physically active, you choose the percentage, (between 30 and 100) that you think most likely corresponds to your level of activity.

So here it is again:

1. BMR estimate = Ideal body weight X 10

2. Additional calories for physical activity and non-exercise activity:

a. Sedentary + 30% of BMR

b. Extremely active = 100% of BMR

As an example, let’s calculate the daily caloric intake for the average man and woman in the United States from the chart above. We’ll assume a moderate physical activity level for each and use a 50% multiplier.

Male:

BMR = 166 (ideal body weight for 5’10”) X 10 = 1660

Physical Activity = 50% X 1660 = 830

Total daily Calorie budget (to maintain weight) = 2,490

Female:

BMR = 120 (ideal body weight for 5’4”) X 10 = 1200

Physical Activity = 50% X 1200 = 600

Total daily calorie budget (to maintain weight) = 1800.

You can use the above information to determine an estimate for what your daily caloric intake should be. The next step is tracking your actual caloric intake. Gratefully software and smart devices facilitate the tracking process.

Tracking Your Daily Net Caloric Intake

For me, tracking my actual caloric intake was a big eye opener. Until I started doing that, I wasn’t aware of how many calories I was getting, or where they were coming from.

My son was a bit ahead of me on the calorie tracking curve. He introduced me to the app, “Lose It.” I have been using this for the past four years with great success at both tracking my weight and my calories. There are dozens of available apps, so choose one that works for you.

At first it’s a lot of work, particularly for the foods that you should be eating more of (salads, fruits, vegetables and home cooked meals). If you try to estimate the quantities you will probably estimate low. I recommend a food scale to weigh out actual portions of food when you start doing this so that you can calibrate your future estimates.

When I started logging my calories, I quickly learned where they were coming from, and some of them were not what I would have anticipated. For example, I used to drink a 20 oz orange juice for breakfast everyday. I didn’t realize how many calories were in juices. Orange juice is healthy, right? I mean, it’s not like it’s a sugary carbonated pop. But guess what, it has a lot of calories.

With that awareness, I cut the size in half, still getting my daily allowance of vitamin C, and yet saving the calories for other desired consumption.

As you begin to track your actual calories, the light will go on for you as well. I almost never drink pop anymore, because it has a lot of calories. I do go for the flavored carbonated beverages that have zero calories, but I prefer to chew my calories, rather than drink them.

For the BW = CI-CO formula, we haven’t touched on the calories out option yet. I will address that in a subsequent post.

For now, my recommendation is that you 1) determine what your daily caloric intake should be and 2) track your actual caloric intake.

You can take this two-minute quiz to see how you’re doing overall with your health.