For Weight Lose how many calories do you need to eat.
To find out how many calories you burn a day, you need to know your total energy expenditure, or TDEE. It starts with finding your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which you can get measured with a machine like the InBody Test, which sends electrodes through your body and calculates your BMI, body fat percentage, and basal metabolic rate, among other stats.
You can also do a math equation to find your BMR using the Harris-Benedict formula based on your total body weight, height, age, and sex. It's a little more complicated, but it's more accurate than quick-and-dirty formulas found online. For a woman, the calculation is:
BMR = 655 + (1.8 x height in centimeters) + (9.6 x weight in kilograms) - (4.7 x age in years)
For a woman who is 30, 5'6" (167.6 centimeters), and 150 pounds (68 kilograms), her BMR would be: 655 + 301.7 + 653 - 141 = approximately 1,470 calories a day.
From there, you multiply your BMR by your activity level: 1.2 if you're sedentary, 1.375 if you do light exercise one to three days a week, 1.55 if you do moderate exercise six to seven days a week, 1.75 if you're very active (hard exercise every day or exercising twice a day), and 1.9 if you're extra active (hard exercise two or more times per day).
So for that 150-pound person who is moderately active, it would be: 1,470 x 1.55 = approximately 2,280. That's about how many calories your body burns on any given day. To lose weight, you would have to create a calorie deficit.