If you want to lose, maintain or gain weight, your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is an important number to understand.
Basal Metabolic Rate – what is it exactly?
Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR, is simply the number of calories your body needs just to function properly if you were lying in bed all day not moving.
You may not think your body would need much energy if you were just chilling in bed, but you’d be surprised! Breathing, blood circulation and organ function are just a few examples and they all require energy.
In fact, your BMR accounts for around 60 – 75% of your total energy expenditure (TEE), depending on your body composition and activity level.
Why should you care about BMR?
Whether you want to lose, maintain or gain weight, BMR is an important number to understand. It is the starting point for all your calorie calculations.
If you want to understand more about calculating your daily calorie requirements for fat loss, weight maintenance or weight gain, check out this post.
BMR calculator
Below is a simple BMR calculator.
Once you have plugged your numbers in, the calculator will spit out your BMR.
Remember, this is the number of calories your body needs each day JUST TO FUNCTION if you were lying in bed all day.
Real life tip: Even if you are trying to lose weight, for healthy and sustainable weight loss, you shouldn’t eat fewer calories than your BMR on a regular basis
Accuracy
One thing to be aware of is that all online calorie calculators are based on averages and actual numbers can vary from the results given.
The variations come from factors such as body composition (how much muscle and fat you have), but it is not fully understood where all of the difference comes from.
When doing these calculations, you should therefore just use them as a guide, don’t cling to the numbers as an absolute certainty.
My BMR number seems quite high, are you sure this is right?
I know, I thought the same when I first learnt about BMR. “My body really needs 1300 calories each day just to function, and that’s if I’m lying in bed all day?!”
Yep, it does. There is a lot going on in your body all the time and all those functions require some energy.
That is why you shouldn’t decrease your calorie intake to below your BMR, at least not on a regular basis. If you do that consistently then some of your body’s functions will start to suffer.
How to increase BMR
Have you ever heard people complain that they have a “slow metabolism” and that’s why they can’t lose weight?
Although it can be the case, in reality over-eating is the cause of weight gain for most people.
So, is it possible to increase your BMR? In reality, the jury is out on this.
Some of the biggest factors impacting BMR are outside of our control: age, gender and genetics.
Another factor is body composition: your muscle and fat mass.
It is true that muscle is more metabolically active than fat, but it is not really clear by how much. This makes it difficult to quantify the true impact that increased muscle mass will have on your BMR.
That being said, increasing muscle mass through strength training is still advisable, as it will have a positive impact on your BMR, we just don’t know by how much.
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On top of that there are all the other benefits of strength training, such as stronger bones, less risk of injury, changes to body shape, and the EPOC effect.
“Eh? Who the what now? What have those cute, furry guys from Star Wars got to do with strength training?”
No wait a minute, you’re thinking of an Ewok, not EPOC.
Believe me, if you are looking to lose weight, you’re going to want to know about EPOC.
How to burn more calories after you stop exercising
It may not be completely clear how much of an impact extra muscle mass will have on your BMR, but one thing is for sure: if you train with enough intensity then you can benefit from EPOC: excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.
I’ll explain in more detail below, but what it means for you is that if you train really hard, then your metabolism will be increased for a while even AFTER you stop training. BONUS.
Simply put, EPOC is the amount of oxygen required to restore your body to its normal resting level of metabolic function (homeostasis).
Your body converts nutrients in your diet into the fuel your body uses for muscular activity (ATP – adenosine triphosphate) in 2 ways – either aerobically (in the presence of oxygen) or anaerobically (without oxygen).
Anaerobic pathways can provide energy (ATP) more quickly, but it is not sustainable for long. This is why during heavy strength training or HIIT you work intensely for a short period, but then have a rest period to allow the ATP to be replenished.
During strength training or HIIT you need to be working anaerobically to get the EPOC effect – the harder you train, the higher the oxygen deficit will be. The oxygen deficit is basically the difference between the volume of oxygen consumed during exercise and the amount that would have been used if the aerobic energy system way used.
Conclusion
Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR is a very important number to understand. How much energy your body burns just to function is the basis for all calorie requirement calculations. This means that if you care about maintaining a healthy weight, then your BMR is important.
Eating enough so that your body can function properly is critical, that’s why eating fewer calories than your BMR is not advisable on a frequent basis.
It is not fully understood whether you can significantly increase your BMR. Some studies suggest that increasing your muscle mass has a big impact on your BMR, other studies show a smaller impact. Whatever the truth is, strength training and increasing muscle mass is still a positive thing to do for your health.
Have you calculated your BMR? Were you surprised by the number?