Finding your BMR and how to increase it

If you've ever wondered what your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is, that is how many calories your body burns AT REST (if you laid in bed all day), then this site is good place to start. You can use this calculator to get your magic number-just keep in mind that it's not 100% accurate. It doesn't take into account your body fat % (the more muscle and less body fat you have, the higher this number is). You take this number, add 200-400 calories you burn just doing your everyday things (which ranges depending on how active or sedentary you are, type of job, etc), and lastly, add the calories you burn from exercise. For most people this final number rounds out to be around 2000 calories give or take (averaged over 7 days in a week). From that you can figure out how many calories you should consume each day to lose body fat. If 2000 is your number, than you should be eating approx 1500 calories a day to lose 1 lb. a week.

To increase that BMR so that you burn more calories, and ultimately, FAT, you need to add muscle. For every 1 lb. of muscle mass added, add 50 calories to your BMR. That's a lot when you think about it! And remember, muscle is denser than fat, meaning it takes up LESS space (making you look thinner). That's why WEIGHT alone can be deceiving-it doesn't take into consideration muscle mass ratio. To add muscle, you should do 2-3 days of strength training into your routine. Make that circuit training, and you're killing 2 birds with one stone-strength training and cardio all in one workout and look at all the benefits you're receiving.