Starting a healthy lifestyle is more than going on a diet or buying a gym membership for your New Year's Resolution. A healthy lifestyle is about embracing a way of life that helps you avoid disease and perform at your optimal levels. It requires a balance of healthy foods, exercise...
When I first started The Calorie Project, my ultimate goal was to gather enough data in order to analyze the relationship between calorie intake, energy expenditure, weight and body fat. Fully understanding these relationships would allow me to gain, lose or maintain weight more precisely without having to guess the...
One of the most important "secrets" to reaching any diet or exercise goal is counting calories. Whenever I tell people to count their calories, I hear complaints about how tedious it is. Some people insist they accurately estimate their calorie intake and don't need to count. Others don't understand the...
Before smartphones and apps, counting calories was tedious. I started counting calories back in 2006 using Excel Spreadsheets. In mid-2012, I found an app called MyFitnessPal which made counting calories "fun." Instead of using spreadsheet functions, I could simply scan a bar code, enter the serving size and let the...
It seems as though every month a new diet book, pill or product is released and claims that you can lose weight without giving up your favorite foods or even exercising more than you already are. Before you get all excited and spend your money on these "miracles", realize that...
Calorie calculators can be found on countless websites. Even Straight Health has its own calorie calculator which uses sex, weight, height, age and activity level to estimate a person's daily calorie expenditure. But are these numbers reliable and should you base your diet off of them? Formulas The answer is a...
Hi Jeff, this is an excellent question, and if I would be able to answer it, I would have probably won a prestigious scientific prize. BMR stands for "Basal Metabolic Rate", which is a measure of how many calories you are using when you are just "being". More specifically, it...
I get many versions of this type of question. Gaining or losing weight is largely about calorie control. As explained in an earlier post, body weight is determined by the balance of energy in (food eaten) and energy out (energy expenditure). Therefore, you would alter your energy intake/expenditure depending on what...
