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Chart of Calorie Requirements for Women and Men
These are very easy to use - no data input required. Find your calorie needs in the chart based on your weight and activity level.
- Description and comments
- Source: Various, Basal Energy Expenditure: Harris-Benedict Equation
- View Calorie Requirements for Men
- View Calorie Requirements for Women
Description and comments
The calculations of calorie requirements found on the Web are mostly based on the Harris Benedict formula. Harris Benedict was a researcher who published his results more than 85 years ago. The formula goes like this:
For women: ( 655.1 + (9.563 x kg) + (1.850 x cm) - (4.676 x age) ) x Activity_level
For men: ( 66.5 + (13.75 x kg) + (5.003 x cm) - (6.775 x age) ) x Activity_level
The Activity_level is based on the amount of exercise you get, and varies from 1.2 to 1.8 or perhaps as high as 2.0, depending on what source you look at.
From a statistical point of view, there are a lot of problems with this formula.
- Too many significant digits. Multiplying your height in centimeters by 5.003, instead of, say, 5, is a little silly when you can't measure your height to within more than half a centimeter or so.
- The significant digit problem is much worse when you consider that the Activity_level is a rough guess at best, and affects the result much more strongly than any of the other variables. For example, changing your age by 10 years only changes the calorie requirement by 68 calories, while changing your Activity_level estimate from 1.2 to 1.4 causes about a 300 calorie change.
- The formula makes no allowance for differences in metabolism between one person and another, or even from one time to another for the same person.
So, 'estimate' is an important word to remember here.
The charts were drawn for a 40 year old person of average height (5'9" for men, 5'4" for women).
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