If you want to succeed in any program for weight loss, you must include both dieting and exercising in your weight loss plan.  Dieting alone does not work, neither exercise alone.

In a healthy weight loss program, we need to apply our weight loss plan to both variables in our body weight workouts equations:  the calories consumed and calories expended.  Here we need to revisit the Harris Benedict equation posted in my BMR calculation article.  If you have never been calculated the calories needed to support your daily life activities, now it is the time to plug in your current age, weight and activity level for your weight loss plan.

Let’s use an example for illustration purposes.  A man of 45 years old with 90kg in weight and 175cm will get his original BMR calculation figure of 1,868 using the Harris Benedict equation.  I do hope you still remember BMR or basal metabolic rate refers to number of calories that our body requires on a daily basis if we stay in bed all day and do nothing.  After 4 months on the program for weight loss, this man now weighs 76kg.  His BMR equation now is 1,676 .
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The key to any successful weight loss program is boosting your metabolism, which is your body fat internal burning mechanism.

1) Boosting Metabolism through Exercises

There are two types of exercises that can help in boosting metabolism: Aerobic and strength exercise.

Aerobic or cardio exercise is one of the exercises that can help in boosting your metabolism.  But more important is it helps forming a good base for a healthy lifestyle. In a long run, doing aerobic exercise regularly will strengthen your heart, lungs, and improve the whole cardiovascular system and thus reduce the risk for chronic deceases such as diabetes, high blood pressure etc.

Strength exercise or weight training is the most important exercise in helping boosting metabolism.  The reason is simple. We can build lean muscle through strength exercise.  Recent study shown that 1kg of lean muscle in your body can burn 16 to 23 calories, while 1kg of body fat can burn only 1 to 1.4 calories. By increasing 3kg of lean muscle in your body, we can have extra 60 calories burned daily or 21900 calories burned in a year.   This means your body weight can be reduced by 2.8kg in a year time by just increasing your lean muscle by 3kg. Isn’t it wonderful?

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After the first step finding out weather you have a healthy body weight, you need to understand and do your BMR calculation now.

Before any BMR calculation, you might ask what is BMR? Actually, BMR (basal or resting metabolic rate) is the number of calories that our body requires on a daily basis if we stay in bed all day and do nothing. It goes to the functioning of vital organs in the body such as the pumping blood to the heart, repairing the worn out cells, temperature regulation etc.

The most well known way in BMR calculation is the Harris Benedict equation. This calculation is more accurate than determining calorie needs based only on total body weight. Anyhow, the Harris Benedict equation does not take lean body mass into consideration. Calculations will be accurate in all except for the extremely muscular and the extremely obese people.

English BMR calculation Formula:
Female: 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Male: 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )

Metric BMR calculation Formula:
Female: 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kg ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Male: 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kg ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )

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