Basal Metabolic Rate - Check!

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Question 1:

How many of you think you have a slow or sluggish metabolism? 

Don't be shy... I did.

Question 2:

How many of you have actually gotten it tested? 

Probably very few of you.

Well, I had this very quick, simple and more the the point cheap test done on Thursday evening.

Now I have often whinged and complained that I eat hardly anything at all, and when I do eat, I eat just a regular meal in the evening and bla de bla de bla...

We are told - nearly categorically - that if you diet for years you are screwing your metabolism right up. Yo yo dieting makes it harder and harder to achieve your goals bla bla bla. I am certain that the years of buggering about with my body have ruined me, and I am in a place where I will never recover from without a spell in a solitary confined health prison.

To be honest I was pretty sure that my metabolism was right down there with satan in hell!

Well friends, the Sports Fitness girl (A whippet as well just to rub salt into the wound) said that she has been testing people for years, fat and thin, and has never found anyone who is not in the normal range. She said that the most differences come when they do a VOX test - apparently that's when you exercise at different levels of pain and they measure how your body is utilising food etc. as people do burn calories at different rates, and that's often what makes the difference in reality.

Well ok, thinks I, but to be honest love I just want to know how many calories my body burns/needs just to stay alive and then I can gauge how many calories I can eat to lose weight. I am thinking that if my RMR is low, then I need to eat a lot less than what I do normally.

So, very briefly, there is a scale called the Harris Benedict scale which, similar to your BMI measurements, you put your age, height, weight etc into and it calculates your Resting Metabolic Rate. This is the basic calories your body needs just to stay alive lying in bed not even farting.

The test I had uses EXACT calculations from the mask strapped around my head whilst I lie still as death and breath normally for 15 minutes.

I was very excited to see the lady floored when she saw that I had the metabolism of an amoeba. (- Actually maybe an amoeba has a high metabolism... I dunno it's hard to make an analogy but you get my drift!)

I had the test and the results were shocking. I wasn't just normal, but right in the MIDDLE of normal. In fact if I had sat at home and plugged in my data on one of the many online BMR or RMR calculators I would have only been 2% adrift of what they said... and even the 2% was not in my favour!

The result of the test was that - just to stay alive - I need 1947 calories. Put another way - I BURN 1947 cals by doing absolutely zilch. This therefore means that during any given day I will obviously be burning more than that as I go about my daily chores, work, dramas etc.  Every day will differ obviously, but it gives me a great ball park!

The key though is in that magic number.

Livestrong suggest that I stay below around 1600 calories to lose 2 pounds a week, and that's MORE than enough. In fact, given my 1947 status, it means that I should definitely achieve 2lbs of weightloss a week if I do stay below it.

On a day when I know it's going to be tricky - if I have a wedding to attend, or a dinner out or something like that - all I need to do is make sure I up my exercise for that day to compensate.

So although it shocked me that I don't have a slow metabolism, and the truth is that probably none of us do, it gives me a clear figure of what is going on and where to start from on my new campaign.

It puts me in control as I know FOR SURE where I am at.

It also means, for those of us who are struggling, that I am probably eating around 1800 -2300 calories a day on average and therefore maintaining my weight. If I have several days where I am eating only say 1 or 2 hundred more calories this will increase my weight slightly and not particularly dramatically... We can get into trouble deep very quickly!

I would urge you all to get a test done if you are flagging like I was as it gives you a slap round the face and a starting point. £40 well spent.

  
 
Anyway, here are my food logs for 17th and 18th May including the lush Tandoori Chicken and Jeera Rice
MMMMMMmmmmm

17th May 2012
 

Meals
Meal	Item Name	Calories	Sugars	Carbs	Fats	Protein	Cholesterol	Sodium	Dietary Fibre
lunch	Cheese, Cheddar	90	0g	1g	6g	7g	20mg	240mg	0g
lunch	Value Baked Beans	185	7.9g	18.9g	1.1g	9.9g		50mg	7.4g
lunch	White Medium Bread	170	1.5g	17.2g	0.5g	2.9g		0.1g	0.9g
lunch	regular butter	100	0g	0g	11g	0g	30mg	95mg	0g
dinner	Pasta	185	…..	…..	…..	…..	…..	…..	…..
dinner	Salami 36g	158	…..	…..	…..	…..	…..	…..	…..
dinner	Olive Oil	120	0g	0g	13.5g	0g	0mg	0mg	0g
dinner	Red Bell Pepper, Raw	60	0g	8g	0g	1g	0mg	0mg	2g
snacks	Cup A Soup Extra Chicken & Mushroom With Pasta	260	1.8g	21g	3.6g	3.4g		1070mg	.9g
	TOTAL CALORIES:	1328

18th May 2012

Meals
Meal
	Item Name	Calories	Sugars	Carbs	Fats	Protein	Cholesterol	Sodium	Dietary Fibre
breakfast	Bacon (smoked)	240	…...	0g	9.8g	8g	…...	…...	…...
breakfast	Egg, Fried	100	0g	1g	4.5g	6g	215mg	65mg	0g
breakfast	Value Baked Beans	185	7.9g	18.9g	1.1g	9.9g		50mg	7.4g
snack	Cereal bar	85	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...
dinner	Baked Chicken Portion	290	0g	0g	13.7g	39.2g	138mg	132mg	0g
dinner	Easy Cook Long Grain Rice	202.5		28g	1.3g	2.8g	…...	…...	…...
dinner	Fat free Greek yoghurt 100g	45	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...
dinner	Onion	30		6.9g	.1g	.9g	…...	2mg	1.4g
evening	Bottle Red Wine	630	5g	21g	0g	.547g	0mg	31mg	…...
evening	Nuts	135	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...	…...
	TOTAL CALORIES:	1942

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