Figuring out your actual average burn rate
UPDATE: 04-27-09 - I have completed an Online Calculator to figure out all of this for you automatically, as well as some new information. It can be found online at http://www.ignte.com/cc
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My girlfriend and I have been dieting for 45 days now and we stopped to take a look at the past 45 days and what we have accomplished so far.
I found out some interesting things and I thought I would share them with you all. Be aware that it is a little math heavy but it gives you some powerful numbers. I can help you out with the math if you want to see the formulas with your information.
She has lost 13 pounds and I have lost 22 pounds.
which means she loses 2.02 pounds per week. Formula: (13 lbs / 45 days x 7 days in a week)
And I lose 3.42 pounds per week. Formula (22 lbs / 45 days x 7 days in a week)
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Each of us have been eating at 1500 calories a day for the entire 6 weeks. So to figure out how many calories we each burn on an average day I do this:
Known Data: 1 lbs = 3,500 calories
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Avg Daily Calories burned for me.
Formula: (1,500 daily calories eaten x 7 days) + (3.42 weekly lbs lost x 3,500 calories in a pound) = 22,470 calories burned in a week.
To get the daily calories burned we divide by 7: 22,470 / 7 days = 3,210 Calories burned in a day!
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Avg Daily Calories burned for my girlfriend.
Formula: (1,500 daily calories eaten x 7 days) + (2.02 weekly lbs lost x 3,500 calories in a pound) = 17,570 calories burned in a week.
To get the daily calories burned we divide by 7: 17,570 / 7 days = 2,510 Calories burned in a day!
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So now I know why I have been losing weight so quickly when I thought I only had a calorie deficit of 800. Calories count is simply way off in regard to how many calories I personally burn in a day. I actually have been maintaining a way to high deficit of 1,710 calories.
If anyone would like me to run through the numbers for them I will. Just post back with the following information:
-Pounds Lost
-Days you have been dieting (the longer you have been dieting the more accurate the numbers will be!)
-Average Daily Calories Eaten
Very nice! Thanks for making that. I dabble in PHP (very amateur) so when I read your first post, I was thinking of how it would work in PHP 
I will have to start paying closer attention to details so that I can get accurate results from this.
Thanks I am glad you like it.
The php on this is VERY simple. I did most of the math when declaring the variables, and there is a single If Then statement to figure out if the weight loss rate is healthy or unhealthy.
I have updated the calculator. Now it is optional wether or not you want to enter your Average Daily Calories Eaten.
If you don't enter it, no big deal, it was only used to show how many calories you burn a day/week total, instead of just the deficit.
This should make things easier for those of you who stagger your calorie intake. Or do not have a steady number for whatever other reason.
Well I looked at my numbers for last week and according to them I burn 2,200 calories a day. I was pretty shocked by that considering CC says 1800 and it seems if I have a bad day and eat 1900 calories I will GAIN 2 pounds overnight! But it's like you always hear, the last ten pounds are the hardest. That has turned out to be especially true for me! I.ve been fighting to loose the last ten pounds since, lol, the day after Thanksgiving 2007!! WOW. But after loosing 50 pounds and feeling soooo much more comfortable in my own skin I've definitely become a lazy dieter, not taking it as seriously. Plus I've always been torn between CC activity choices, between light and moderate. I chase 4 kids around, not to mention cook and clean and all that fun stuff for my large family of six. Do the soccer Mom thing, go to school, go to the gym, and garden and maintain my acre lot. At the same time I'm a spoiled housewife, I'm busy, but I can sit down and take a break any time I want, do things at my own pace. So because of that I choose light activity. Better underestimate then over, I figured. But I just changed it to moderate and it says 2100 now. So I guess I'm more active then I thought. Now if I could just stick with the calorie counting for a few months and loose that last ten pounds!!
Ok so I've been doing this for awhile (21 pounds GONE!) and I'm down to my last 8 lbs! :)
Pounds lost: 21
Days dieting: Since Sept. 17th so... 222 days??! wow really?
Average daily calories eaten: between 1400-1500 i'd say
do I need to put information on lifestyle? i'm a student and workout a lot, like 6 days a week or so. thank you so much for doing this and congrats on your weightloss so far! :)
What a great calculator! Thanks for adding it to your post!
Known Data: 1 lbs = 3,500 calories
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3,500 calories per 1lbs of fat or protien and are you acountign for water loss i think this is ok to think this way but not sure its all that precise.Original Post by cferrari:
Ok so I've been doing this for awhile (21 pounds GONE!) and I'm down to my last 8 lbs! :)
Pounds lost: 21
Days dieting: Since Sept. 17th so... 222 days??! wow really?
Average daily calories eaten: between 1400-1500 i'd say
do I need to put information on lifestyle? i'm a student and workout a lot, like 6 days a week or so. thank you so much for doing this and congrats on your weightloss so far! :)
Thanks =] This is actually my second time dieting. I started the first time last year and did great I lost 43 pounds.
But before I got all the way to my goal I met my current girlfriend. And I stopped excersizing and we cooked together alot and didn't make very healthy choices. Next thing I knew I had gained back 24 pounds.
But now we have been together for a while and things are settling down and its easier to make healthier choices and we still cook together but now with calories in mind. And I am almost back where I was when we started dating, and this time I am going to go all the way until my goal, just 13 more pounds.
As for figuring out your burn rates, for best results use the calculator I made: http://www.ignte.com/cc
Without knowing all the details though, it looks like you have an average daily deficit of 331 calories, which equates to .66 pounds of weight loss per week.
If you use the calculator it will help you figure out some additional information like the estimated time to reach your goal.
Original Post by reigh7:
Known Data: 1 lbs = 3,500 calories
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3,500 calories per 1lbs of fat or protien and are you acountign for water loss i think this is ok to think this way but not sure its all that precise.
Water loss can effect the number you see on the scale in the short term as your water weight fluctuates. This calculator is not for people who have been dieting for a short period of time, as you stated the numbers would not be very accurate.
This is meant for looking at averages over a longer period of time (I recommend 4+ weeks). The longer period of time helps to reduce the margin of error due to small gains and losses from water weight and other factors.
Original Post by mkeys5000:
I have finished building the online calculator to figure all of this out for people automatically.
Please feel free to check it out, use it, and bookmark it.
I made it just for the community here.
Thanks for this calculator...my biggest downfall was trying to figure out what my average burn rate was...this will help me greatly.
No problem my pleasure, I am glad you commented actually.
I would like more people to see this and take advantage of my work before it gets buried in the forums never to be seen again, and your post brought it back to the front. :)
To everyone else, if you like the calculator, please comment so that more people will have a chance to see it and use it.
So I tried out your formula. While I realize it may be a bit accurate because I've only been dieting for 2 weeks (well I had lost a couple of pounds before this, but I started calorie counting 2 weeks ago), apparently I burn 2130 calories a day versus the 1800 I thought I burned according to the estimate! I was on a 1200-1250 calorie diet, and now I realized that my moderate 550-600 calorie deficit is really more like 900 calories!
I'm going to up my calories by 200 and see the results in 2 weeks. Thanks for posting this, I'm so glad I tried this out I could have really been misinformed!
oh my josh! thank you so much I have been looking for this exact thing. You are a god send!
I`m so excited to use this!!!
:D
Quick question though.
So I just used your calculations, and it says I burn about 1686 calories per day (which seems a little low since I`m at the gym about 6 days a week doing cardio and weights)
Is that possibly because I hit a plateau for a month or 2 ?
I started out at 135, down to 120 and have been dieting for about 108 days roughly.
Without knowing all the details I can only guess but here are a few thoughts that ran through my head.
1) Yes a 1-2 month plateau would skew the number
2) however if you are short that number may not be terribly far off
3) This provides averages over time, so unless you have been exercising 6 days a week for the entire 108 days that you entered, the numbers will not reflect what you burn on days you exercise, but instead an average of what you burn over the entire 108 days.
You can try running the calculator for a shorter period of time, after your plateau and see if you get better results. If that time period after the plateau is really short the numbers may still be off though, I recommend 4+ weeks of data to go off of.
Yay. I just checked the statistics and 409 people have used the calculator as of 6:00pm today!
That's a good calculator but it appears to be quite dependent upon intake calories as I calculated my burn rate for prior weight loss at 1150 cal for 108 days and it gave burn rate of 1506 at 2 years ago. Current intake of 1545 for 62 day gave burn rate of 1726. What's really strange is that I was more active at the gym 2 years ago too.
