First Step: Calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

Second Step: Pick an exercise

Fourth Step: Make a plan to achieve your goal

In this page you will find a guide to take an active role in reaching or maintaining your ideal weight. You can accomplish this by following four steps detailed below.

The BMR calculator is a tool you can use to calculate how many calories you need per day.

Basal Metabolic Rate determines the minimum amount of calories your body needs to function in a day, considering a sedentary state. The sedentary state constitutes the most basic metabolic processes your body performs, for example: respiration, the pumping of blood by the heart or any other activity executed by any other organ, while you are awake.

BMR does not include digestion or the absorption of nutrients and it is a result of the body in a fasting state for 12 hours.

You can use the following calculator to determine your BMR.

RMR means Resting Metabolic Rate, and it is a result of the body in a fasting state for 4 hours, awake but lounging. It is 6% higher than the BMR.

If you want to maintain your current weight, then you must consume the calories indicated by the BMR calculator.

If weight loss is your goal, then you need to subtract 500-1000 calories from the BMR.

However, you must never consume less than 1200 calories daily.

Weight gain can be accomplished by adding calories to your diet.

BMR considers a sedentary state, without performing exercise. Remember that exercise is essential to maintain health.

The following site helps you know how many calories your body burns while performing a specific exercise. The use of energy by the body depends on many factors such as, duration of the exercise, your current weight, your muscle mass and how many times a week you execute it.

Our Exercise section has many activities and plans you can practice daily. You can pick any of those and use the following page to determine how many calories you will burn.

In order to accomplish your ideal weight you need to write an action plan. In downloads we offer guides you can use to develop your plan. You can also use de BMI calculator to determine if you have a healthy weight.

Go to the Food Plan page to use as a guide to start your action plan.

Now that you chose an exercise to perform daily, you will calculate the calories you need to achieve your ideal weight.

It is recommended to perform 30 minutes of exercise daily, however not many people have enough free time to follow this recommendation.

You can do two things to achieve the exercise quota. First, you can divide the 30 minutes into 10 minutes and repeat the activity chosen several times during the day. The second thing most people do is choose 3 days of the week to perform exercise for 1 hour to 30 minutes.

Also, there are many ways we burn additional calories throughout the day. For example, when we clean our house, wash the dishes, use stairs or walk toward our destinations. Even though, we do not burn that many calories when we carry out these activities, they still contribute to our physical health.

The difference between exercise and physical activity consists in the intention you have while doing it. Exercise is planned and its goal is to improve your health. Physical activity includes those tasks we do using energy, but our goal is not improving our health.

The following calculator will determine how many calories you need per day to maintain, lose or gain weight.

You need to fill in the level of exercise you wish to perform.

There are four options:

Light Active: exercise 1-3 times a week
Moderately Active: exercise 3-5 times a week
Very Active: exercise 6-7 times a week
Extra Active: intense exercise, choose this if your job requieres sport or physical work