The Best Online
Calorie Calculator,
According to Science.
But it might not work for you.

Another free online calorie calculator, the Body Weight Planner, is now available to the public after several years of being used as a research tool for scientists at the National Institutes of Health. This one is noteworthy because its algorithms were validated in several controlled weight loss studies in human beings, and because it takes into account a person's slowing metabolism.
 
Kevin Hall, a scientist at the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, created the tool.

Dr. Hall says the 3,500-calorie rule is accurate only if a pound of human fat is burned in a lab.  However, unlike a lab, the body is not a static environment, and instead adapts when a person changes their diet and exercise.

As a person diets and loses weight, the body slows the metabolism in an effort to conserve energy. As a result, eating 500 fewer calories a day leads to slightly less weight loss as time goes on.

Instead of 3,500 fewer calories, over 12 months, a person will need to eat 7,000 fewer calories to burn a pound of fat.

Dr. Hall said that the biggest flaw with the 3,500-calorie-rule is that it assumes weight loss will continue in a linear fashion over time. "That's not the way the body responds. The body is a very dynamic system, and a change in one part of the system always produces changes in other parts.”

He admits that dieters may be “bummed out” by news that they must double their efforts at reducing calories. “But we believe it's better to have an accurate assessment of what you might lose, that way you don't feel like a failure if you don't reach your goal.”

Dr. Hall added that very few people seem to be able to keep losing weight after 12 months.

The BWP calculates how many calories a day a person should eat to achieve their weight loss goals in a certain time (for example, to lose 10 lbs within a year).  The link can always be found here in DietHobby, under RESOURCES, Links, Body weight Calculator - NIH (Timeline Projections).

The NIH bills the planner as a cutting-edge tool that will empower people to take their health into their own hands, but research on the success of such calculators and trackers is mixed.  Although the federal government is to be praised for its official nod toward the utility of trackers and calculators,  human beings themselves are not “simple machines” who operate on a calories in, calories out basis.
 
The assumption is that calories in and calories out are independent of each other.  That is, if you reduce Calories in,  Calories out are not affected.  However, this is untrue.  

DietHobby contains many posts talking about how hard it is to get an accurate ongoing count of  “Calories in”, but getting an accurate ongoing count of “Calories out” is far more difficult.  Most everyone makes an erroneous assumption that the “Calories out” number stays constant.

“Calories out” is not under our conscious control.  There are many metabolically active tissues, including brain, kidneys, heart, liver, etc whose activity is very difficult to measure. There are numerous hormones and enzymes and genetics involved in our individual metabolic processes…and some of these are still undiscovered. 

We make the incorrect assumption that our only variable that changes is the energy we spend in voluntary exercise or activity.  This is also not true.  Basal Energy Expenditure is not stable and can change up or down 50%.  Reducing Calories In reduces Calories Out. They are not independent of each other.

This isn’t news to anyone who has ever seriously tried to lose and maintain weight. A London research study released in July 2015 that tracked 278,982 participants, using electronic health records from 2004 to 2014 estimated that for people with a 30-35 BMI (Stage 1= obesity), an obese man’s chances of reaching a normal body weight (<25 BMI) were 1 in 210 for men, and 1 in 124 for women. For the severely obese-people with a 40+ BMI (Stage 2+ =severe obesity+), only about 8 percent of obese men and 10 percent of obese women were able to lose five percent of their body weights.  Almost all of the participants who achieved weight loss regained it within five years. 

At my highest weight, 24 years ago at age 47, my personal BMI was 52.9  (Stage 4=super-obesity). I have been at-or-near a "normal" BMI for the past 10 years. See ABOUT ME.
 
Calculators can't provide prescriptions for weight loss or protections against regain. They don’t apply equally to every single individual, and are merely averages ... standardized guidelines. The problem is that not all metabolisms, circumstances and eating habits are standardized.
 
For example, if a professional athlete walked at 3 miles per hour speed for a half hour, that athlete would burn calories totally differently than an average non-athlete who was the same exact weight.
 
Many factors are at play when it comes to how people consume and burn calories. Environment matters, for example. Also, everything from stress, to genetics, to cultural influences plus more, can affect an individual’s dietary habits and exercise levels.
 
Emerging research shows that even gut bacteria affects a person's ability to absorb calories. For instance, food may be absorbed as three calories in a lean person and seven calories in an obese person simply because of differences in how gut bacteria breaks down the meal.
Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect ANY calculator to give everyone a full and accurate game plan.

In the video below, Dr. Hall demonstrates how the calculator works by using his own weight loss goals as an example:

Hall, a 44-year-old man who wants to lose 20 pounds off his 5’10, 180-pound frame, is going to have to eat about 2,300 calories per day, provided he sticks to his resolution to walk his dog in the mornings three times a week. Once he reaches his goal weight, he’s going to have to maintain that weight loss by keeping up his dog-walking activity level and eating about 2,600 calories a day.

NOTE: originally posted on 12/1/2015.  Bumped up for new viewers.

Endurance is the ability to do something difficult for a long time.
                Lie: A diet is temporary
Believing this lie is the biggest mistake that obese people make.

Obese people convince themselves that they will change their eating BEHAVIORS for a relatively short period of time, … until they see the weight RESULTS they want.  The truth is that changing one’s diet must be a permanent and ongoing activity. It takes just as much, or more, effort to keep lost weight off, as it does to lose that weight initially.

A Marathon isn’t just a 26 mile race.  The definition of “Marathon” includes ANY endurance contest, ANY activity that is characterized by great length or concentrated effort. The length of a diet Marathon is “for the rest of one’s life”.

The dieting Marathon doesn’t end when one reaches “goal” weight, because as soon as the desired weight-goal number appears, the task of maintenance begins. Maintenance of weight-loss requires continual, permanent, ongoing effort.  The “Finish Line” is crossed at death.

The “health and wellness” marketing industry publicizes the Lie, and actively works to conceal this unpopular truth.  However, that Truth continues to exist, and it is visible to anyone who chooses to look beyond the B.S. mirage and examine the actual facts that exist in reality.

For a better understanding, see: Running Down the Up Escalator.

What did

one skeleton

say to

the other?

Congratulations!

You

reached

the

Finish

Line

For obese or reduced-obese people, weight-loss or maintenance of weight-loss takes an ongoing Awareness of their eating Behaviors and the Results of those eating Behaviors.

It requires consistently following SOME METHOD of conscious eating Behavior that restricts calories to an amount which is the same-or-less as the amount used by that individual body....

....Together with a consistent and precise METHOD of measuring the ongoing weight Results of that eating Behavior. 

Here, the “rose” represents a thin or normal-sized body.

The “thorn” is restricted calorie eating (Behavior),
and a scale or other measuring tool (Result).

Obese or reduced-obese people who are not courageous enough to “grasp the thorn” need to abandon their desire for the “rose”, which is a thin or normal-sized body.

Reality, take it or leave it,

But I won’t be joining those who choose to spend their lives in the Forest waiting for the Unicorns to appear.

When we talk about plateaus we are talking about lack of WEIGHT loss, but the goal is really FAT loss.  Unfortunately, weight and fat loss don't coincide, especially at the beginning of a diet when the body’s water balance is altered by the smaller amounts of food or new foods that you are eating.

During the first few weeks of losing weight, a rapid drop is normal. In part, this is because when you cut calories, the body gets needed energy initially by releasing its stores of glycogen, a type of carbohydrate found in the muscles and liver. Glycogen is partly made of water, so when glycogen is burned for energy, it releases water, resulting in weight loss that's mostly water. This effect is only temporary.

Everyone wants, and hopes for, fast weight-loss. Unscrupulous “experts” … in books and advertising ... promise dieters more weight-loss than is possible.  It is only possible for the human body to lose a certain limited average amount of fat per week. 

Also the sharp decrease in weight that often happens during the first week or two of dieting raises false and unrealistic expectations that this fast initial weight-loss rate will continue throughout the following weeks.

It’s an unfortunate fact that the bodies of most women max out at an average of about 2 pounds of fat loss a week, and even this only happens with very active dieting. 

Below are calculator chart examples demonstrating this fact. So if you have 20 pounds of real fat to get rid of,  it will probably take at least 10 weeks, and it often takes 20 or 30 weeks for even a very successful dieter to lose 20 pounds of fat.

After dieting for a while, a woman’s weight can go up and down by 3 pounds between one day and the next ... because of changes in hydration and water balance, ... and for some women, menstrual cycle hormones make water change weight even more than this.

This daily change in water weight makes it genuinely hard to see the comparatively small loss of an ongoing one or two pounds of fat loss per week. 

There are many of methods of dieting … including low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic, intermittent fasting (i.e. everything from fasting between meals to long-term fasting), whole foods, unprocessed foods, food exchanges, portion control etc. 

However, cutting calories is the basis for every effective weight-loss diet because the only way to lose actual fat is to consistently get one’s calorie intake lower than one’s calorie expenditure.

So for weight-loss the average daily calorie number is the bottom line.

After weight-loss stalls, in order to continue losing weight, one must create a consistent calorie deficit until reaching desired goal. This means one needs to start paying attention to how many calories are consumed and how many are burned.

The best way to begin figuring out how many calories your body is burning is to use an online calorie calculator that gives you the average calorie burn for someone your age and size.  

These calculators are based on mathematical formulas, and a mathematical formula will not necessarily provide an accurate calorie number result for an individual ..... because that number is always the result of AVERAGING. 

It is very common for people of the same size, age, and activity level to be up to 15% lower or higher than the stated averaged number, and some people will have even a larger percentage of deviation up or down.

Mifflin is currently considered to be the most accurate of these formulas, and that is the one I normally use to run calorie burn numbers.

Here’s a link to a Mifflin online calorie calculator. 

For more Accuracy,
 ....  when I use a calculator to run the Mifflin formula calorie numbers ...
I always enter a person’s activity level as “Sedentary” because using the inexact numbers provided as "Activity calories" greatly increases the chances of an incorrect result.

Exercise has many benefits, but recent research has proven that, despite the marketing claims by the fitness industry, weight-loss usually isn’t one of them.

It is an unfortunate mistake to over-estimate one’s activity level when calculating one’s calories, because while being guided by a calorie number that is too low could result in additional weight LOSS, ... being guided by a calorie number that is too high can result in actual weight GAIN.

Getting an individual calorie burn number from an online calculator is a good place to START, but it is always important to recognize and remember that YOUR own personal calorie burn could be a lot lower than the number given.

Earlier in this article, I stated that that the bodies of most woman max out at an average of about 2 pounds of fat loss per week, and even this only happens with very active dieting.  People who dispute this unpopular truth aren’t doing the math.



 

The pictured charts above show calorie calculations for a 50 year old female, 5’4” tall.  These calculations show her Maximum Average Weekly weight-loss potential:

At 170 pounds.......
..........eat only 651 calories daily to lose 2 lbs per week

At 150 pounds……
..........eat only 542 calories daily to lose 2 lbs per week

At 130 pounds….
.........eat only 434 calories daily to lose 2 lbs per week.

Remember, all of these calorie numbers are Averages, in that some women of that age and size will have numbers that are Lower or Higher.  Unfortunately, the burn rate numbers of most dieters tend to be either average or lower than average.   This is because most women with a higher burn rate have bodies that are better able to maintain a “normal” weight without dieting.

The term “plateau” is commonly used to describe the fact that weight loss has come to a halt before it was intended.

Sometimes this happens because people forget to adjust their caloric intake down as they lose weight, or they don’t adjust it down enough. People also generally get some muscle loss along with fat loss, which makes their metabolic rate a bit less than they expected it to be.

Sometimes after having some weight-loss success people get a bit more relaxed with the way they track their food intake. They don’t notice some of the things they eat; or they begin to guess at their portion sizes instead of measuring them ... which leads to additional food eaten and a higher calorie intake.

Also, illness, injury or medications can sometimes have an effect on the way someone does or doesn’t lose weight.

An ongoing calorie deficit will always cause fat loss in every human body… eventually. 

Obesity expert, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, M.D. says that physiologically, “Plateaus” don’t actually exist.   He says that although it is common for people to experience several weeks, or even a month or more without seeing weight-loss, …. that “unless it is a temporary trick of the scale, …. if you’re not losing, either you’re burning fewer calories than you think; you’re eating more than you think; or some combination thereof”.

The way to track your calorie intake is to accurately count the calories in every bite of your food intake.

Until you get into the habit of doing this, it can seem time-consuming and tedious, but research studies have shown that the more regularly a dieter keeps a food log, the more weight they lose.

During my lifetime, I’ve lost and regained a great deal of weight.  For the past 11+ years, I've maintained my body at or near my “normal” BMI range.

I’ve experimented with many different diets, lifestyles, ways-of-eating, and non-diets.  See ABOUT ME. 

After all these years, here’s the most important basic fact that I’ve learned about losing weight and keeping it off.

How to Lose weight:
Sustain a caloric DEFICIT.

How to Keep it off:
Sustain a caloric BALANCE.

Various diet “experts” exist who dispute this law of calorie balance.  I’ve spent a lot of time studying and experimenting with that issue, and it has become clear to me that manipulating micronutrients does NOT “open a rift in the space-time-insulin continuum to transport body fat into the fifth dimension”.

I find it helpful to deal with Reality.

There are lots of methods of dieting including low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb, high-fat,  ketogenic, intermittent fasting, whole foods, unprocessed foods, food exchanges, etc. etc. etc.

However, cutting calories is the basis for every effective weight-loss diet because the only way to lose actual fat is to consistently get one’s calorie intake lower than one’s calorie expenditure. So in actuality, the bottom line for weight-loss is the average daily calorie number.

There are essentially 3 issues involved in all Diets,

The main food issue is: AMOUNT; and two sub-issues are: KIND and FREQUENCY.

•  AMOUNT -- of food eaten
  
•  KIND – fundamental nature (micronutrients) of food eaten
  
•  FREQUENCY of eating food

All Diets involving weight-loss or maintenance of weight-loss place restrictions on one or more of those three food issues.  The fundamental purpose of each of these restrictions is to reduce a dieter’s calorie intake. 

Some diets Directly restrict the food AMOUNT; while other diets Indirectly restrict the food Amount by restricting the KIND of food eaten, and/or the FREQUENCY of eating.  For additional information on this issue, see: The Essence of Diets. 

Every weight-loss diet requires that, … through some method, … attention be paid to how many calories one consumes, and how many one is burning.

ANY diet will lead to weight loss if one is in a caloric deficit, even one that is based on Twinkies, Doritos and Oreos, like Professor Mark Haub’s junk-food weight-loss experiment diet.

Some Diet Experts discount the importance of calorie restriction in order to get dieters to focus on their recommended way-of-eating. 

For example, Dr. Jason Fung, a proponent of Intermittent Fasting, refers to it as CRaP (Calorie Restriction as Primary).  While he doesn’t deny that a calorie deficit must exist for weight loss to occur, his claim is that calories aren’t the First and Most Important consideration. 

Calories are what matters for weight loss, but that doesn’t mean that all foods are equal, or that one shouldn’t pay attention to the specific foods eaten, because quality affects quantity. Low quality foods tend to be higher in calories and lower in nutrition.

There are “experts” everywhere who will tell you exactly What, and When, and How to eat. 

But food issues are very personal, and many of these involve a need for self-experimentation to find out which food restrictions will cause weight-loss without making one feel suicidal.

My personal choice is to track and record all my food intake in a computer journal which provides me with a calorie count. 

I have consistently done that every day for the past 12+ years, and I plan to continue with that practice. 

Calorie Counting gives me the Freedom to make my own individual food choices.

But with Freedom comes Responsibility, meaning that for ME, it requires consistent Food Tracking.  See: Freedom and Calorie Counting.   At the beginning, doing this can seem time-consuming and tedious, but for ME, it has now become a rather enjoyable habit. 

Accuracy or lack of accuracy is always an issue when counting calories, but I do my ultimate best to weigh, measure, and record consistently and accurately, and I am willing to trust that my personal best efforts are good enough.

While it is impossible for any calorie count to be totally accurate, it is possible ….

with
Consistent Effort,
Attention,
and Honesty

…. to get calorie numbers that will provide successful weight-loss and maintenance. 

Research studies have shown, again and again, that the more regularly a dieter keeps a food log, the more weight the dieter loses.