BMR stands for Basal Metabolic Rate, which is the amount of daily calories your body uses to keep you alive at a basic functional level. For practical purposes, it is the same as your RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate), but different from your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). Use calcount’s BMR Calculator to find out what your basal metabolic rate is. Enter your weight, height, gender, and age to calculate your BMR:
Your BMR Calculator result is an important indicator of how much energy your body needs for its basic functions like breathing, heart pumping, and temperature regulation. If you want to find out how many calories you need per day, you should check out our calorie calculator (it factors in daily activity). If you want to calculate how to lose weight with a calorie deficit, see calcount’s Calorie Deficit Calculator. To learn more about BMR, read this:
BMR Calculator calculates your Basal Metabolic Rate
Use the calcount BMR Calculator to find your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). BMR is the amount of energy your body uses for basic functions, over time. Basic functions include breathing, maintaining body temperature, pumping your blood, and fuelling the brain. Simply put, the bigger your BMR, the higher your minimum required energy. Ever heard someone say that they have a fast metabolism? What they mean is that their BMR is high, so that they burn lots of energy relatively quickly even without purposeful exercise. Toned people with a high muscle to fat ratio tend to have a relatively high BMR.
What is your Metabolic Rate?
What is Basal Metabolic Rate and why is it important to understand? Put simply, it is the number of calories your body needs just to survive. Basal Metabolism is the lowest, most basic (basal) life functions (metabolism) your body does in order to keep you alive.
It is the speed at which your body uses energy when it is basically keeping you alive: it determines how much energy per day your body needs for its basic functions. The higher the caloric need, the easier the weight loss will be.
BMR keeps Running for as long as you Live…
Think about what your body is doing when you are lying in bad, gazing up at the ceiling.
Even though you are not “doing anything”, your heart, liver, kidneys, brain and all the other organs are fully functional.
They stay functioning and using energy for as long as you are alive.
BMR is your heart, lungs, liver and other essential organs just doing their thing.
Different People, Different BMR Calculator Results
Our BMR Calculator applies the Harris Benedict formula to your height, weight, gender, and age, so two different people with the exact same weight, height, gender, and age will have identical results. However, such a case of two people with the same metrics shows the limitations of any BMI-like formula. In reality, no two people can have the exact, identical BMRs. Think about it: a person used to gym training and exercise simply breathes harder and stronger than a person with poor muscle tone. That person breathes more and has a higher BMR because a toned, fit body simply needs more energy.
Besides muscle tone, body size, age, the ambient temperature, genes, hormone balance and other factors all affect the rate of energy burn at a basic level.
Exercise is Good, but not Necessary, to burn kJs
All this to say, your body burns kilojoules even without exercising. Just breathing in, and breathing out, is burning calories. Utterly sedentary actions like simply reading these words is using energy. In fact, over time, this sort of activity burns the most calories. That’s what Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is!
Truly, we burn most of our energy in “basal” mode. At least 60% of all energy used by everyone goes into basal metabolism.
Your liver alone burns about 15% of your daily requirement just by doing its basic job.
Every person has muscle fibre which at some point will be active, so there is always a level of fitness regardless of body type. Every little movement of any muscle is real exercise!
BMR means We Burn Calories lying in Bed!
Think about it, in any given 24 hour period, most people spend most of their time time lying in bed asleep or sitting comfortably. The truth is, even though we burn calories faster when we are active, we burn the most when we are at rest! On any given day, we might burn a choc chip cookie’s worth of energy on a treadmill workout, but we will burn three square meals’ worth of calories doing everything else that day!
Now, perhaps you want to find out how many calories you need each day to maintain your current weight?