Hello All,

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly how many calories you needed each day to maintain your weight? You wouldn’t be looking up a range on a chart and then figuring out where you fit in. There’d be no guess work and more importantly no fudging! Your number is your number and that’s it. Eat less than your number to lose weight, eat more to gain weight, eat the same number to maintain. Simple.

Well I recently had the chance to find out my exact number with a device called the BodyGem. 

This device was developed to assist doctors and nutritionists working with the overweight population. A great nutritionist, Nicole Cormier, introduced me to it. You plug height and weight into the system and place a breathing tube in your mouth, seal off the tube with your lips, seal off your nostrils with a padded nose clip and hang out for a few minutes. (it’s helpful to have reading material) The machine does it’s thing and comes back with your RMR. RMR stands for resting metabolic rate, or the amount of calories you’d burn if you laid in bed all day, no additional activity added.

Nicole says the average for women is 11 calories per pound per day, so a 150 pound woman should be around 1,650 calories per day for her RMR. However, on the day Nicole tested me, she had seen a range of calories per pound of 6.5 to 16. That translates from 975 to 2,400 calories per day! By the way, guys are around 14 calories per pound per day.

Once you get your RMR you can then add on an estimate for active calories. The typical sedentary rate is 1.2. So for our average 150 pound woman, she’d be able to eat 1,980 calories per day to maintain her weight. Nicole recommends knocking 500 calories a day off of the final number to lose weight.

If you’re interested, the BodyGem is available in most major metropolitan areas. Fees for the test are in the neighborhood of $50. Upscale health clubs, local nutritionists and weight loss programs are likely to have them. These little devices have a great deal of science behind them and are pricey ~ over $2,000 ~ so not everyone will have them.

If you’d like to get an estimate of what your calorie needs are try this site and grab your calculator. A recent study suggests the equation is about 74% accurate so be prepared to adjust your calories up or down to meet your needs.

As for me, I burn 13 calories per pound and need about 2,000 calories per day to maintain my weight. Since I am trying to lose weight these days I’ve knocked my calories down to 1,500 per day. It’s been a freeing experience for me. I can’t cheat the number, the number is real. If I’m feeling feisty I can meet 1,500 calories no problem. If I’m having a bad day, I know I have to stop at 2,000 calories or I’ll do myself damage. It’s really been a relief. I am excellent at justifying this, or wiggling that and my test results toss all those arguments out the window. I am not one for endorsements, that’s not what the point of this blog is, but I thought you’d like to know about a device that can give you a leg up on maintaining or losing weight.

Let me know your thoughts, thanks for reading,

Lisa

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