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I'm trying to work out my bmr and so the amount of calories i burn a day. Based on the online calculator for my height and weight, 14 stone and 5"11, my bmr is 1800, which is a fairly average value I'd guess. Given that the the recommendation for men is to consume up to 2500 calories per day, this would leave 700 calories a day to be burned off by exercise.

Using my fitness tracker app 700 would require roughly 12 miles brisk walk ever day. This sounds like a lot to me, and I find it very difficult to believe that the average person walks 12 miles a day.

Can someone explain to me how this 2500 calories value can be correct for the average man?

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You are not taking into account normal daily activity.

BMR is Basal Metabolic Rate, or for a comparison, if you wake up in the morning, don't roll over or anything and just sit there and blink your eyes and breathe in and out all day, that is how many calories you need to sustain yourself.

There are minor calories involved in the act of eating, digesting and eliminating. In addition, you get up and move around during the day, go to work, school, whatever. A "typical" desk job will burn ~ 34 calories an hour. So if you work an 8 hour day, that is ~ 280 calories. Now your exercise goal is 420 calories, not 700.

Everything you do besides just breathe uses calories, and you need to factor them all in to get an accurate estimation of your true calorie needs.

Edit: Also, just a quick peek, I'm not sure what you mean by a "brisk" walk, but walking at 4.5 miles per hour will burn about 425 calories per hour for a 200 lb person (14 stone is 196 lbs). Add that to the desk job and you are at your goal.

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  • There has been a lot of stuff in the UK news recently about middle aged people needing to do a10 minute brisk walk every day. The best I can find is that it equates to about 3 miles an hour (which doesn't sound very brisk to me, but that's what I was assuming above). For my 12000 tracked steps it was about 3.5 mph, so roughly a brisk walk by the 3mph standard. – Slicc Oct 10 '17 at 5:39
  • I guess what I'm getting at here though is that most people in the UK don't do exercise every day (many none at all), so achieving 700 calories by digestion and a desk job seems very high in comparison to the exercise required to achieve it. This makes me think that 2500 calories is too high for the average adult man. Is the average person really burning an additional 700 calories a day? – Slicc Oct 10 '17 at 5:44

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